The Economist Disagrees With The Economist: Argues We Need More Patents, Approved Faster
from the or-what? dept
The Economist famously goes without bylines, in part to get people to focus on the content, rather than who's saying it, but if it's going to do that, shouldn't it be at least a little consistent? Just about a year ago, we were quite happy to see The Economist recognize that the theory of the patent system was broken. It was a good article, highlighting the differences between innovation and invention, and recognizing that more patents will quite frequently hinder, rather than help innovation. And yet... just last week, it decided to publish a story that seems to ignore all of that, and which assumes that more patents approved faster must be better.It builds off of the budget debate in the US, questioning why the US would cut funds to the Patent Office, not for once recognizing that more patents might not be a good thing. Instead, it just assumes there is some direct causal realtionship between patents and jobs. I'm not kidding:
Last year the Patent Office granted 244,358 patents out of the applications it examined. Although you can debate how many jobs are created on average per patent, there is no doubt that, collectively, they are a useful contribution to an economy that is still struggling to grow.I would imagine it might lead to the employment of a few more lawyers, but not much more than that. The idea that patents create jobs is simply not supported by the evidence at all.
Imagine, though, how much bigger that contribution might be had the Patent Office been able to process the applications that it has still not even looked at. There are more than 700,000 of these.
Thankfully, lots of people are calling The Economist out on this one. Paul Kedrosky, from whom I found the article, questions if the article is "clueless and out-of-touch." It's too bad the anonymous Economist author of the latter article didn't speak to the anonymous Economist author of the first article. Or, well, anyone who actually works in the field of innovation today.
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For that matter...
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Re: For that matter...
As it only managed to process under 250k patents last year, to get through the extra 700k applications it would have had to hire almost three times as many patent examiners. That could make an appreciable dent in the unemployment rates.
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Imagine it?!? I can't wait!!! $2000 to replace my $500 smart phone. The inability to innovate. Time frozen at the current state of technology because nobody can navigate the thicket.
I'll never have to upgrade! I'll have to waste time learning new features! What an awesome world!
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1) There is a relationship between the number of patents issued and the number of jobs created.
2) The relationship is positive.
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Re:
Bisected as you have shown them, I am inclined to agree with #1.
#2, not so much.
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For one, the glacial pace allows for submarine patents as the unlimited revisions can lead to substantive changes in the scope of a patent. It makes it hard for others to design around a patent (application) and leads to easy patent trolling behavior.
Second, it's a huge amount of uncertainty for everyone else in the industry. If I put in an extremely broad patent, the rest of the industry has to gamble for at least 2-7 years as to whether my patent is valid. You then have a bunch of poor choices to make as a competitor.
A. Do you go ahead and assume it's invalid and go ahead with product/process development and assume the increased legal risk?
B. Or do you wait and see if it's invalid, potentially slowing down or halting innovation for years and putting your company behind in development?
C. Or do you design around it, incurring unnecessary cost and time wasted for something you may not have even needed to do?
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Re:
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Re: The entire process needs to enforce stricter quality standards and be faster.
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Re: The entire process needs to enforce stricter quality standards and be faster.
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Faster IS better
...And I just realized something. When a patent is "Applied for" in '96, does that mean it is there in it's final form, or is it being ammended while keeping the '96 date? Maybe this isn't such a lottery after all...
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Re: Faster IS better
A. Create an overly broad patent.
B. Let it be denied, and wait a year or two.
C. Ammend the patent to use a new technology (or several) just coming out.
D. Get the patent, because it is now narrow enough for the USPTO.
E. Sue the person/company who actually created the technology.
F. PROFIT!!!
All of a sudden, the cries of, "well, it wasn't obvious when the patent was applied for" ring very hollow.
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Re: Re: Faster IS better
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Re: Re: Faster IS better
It took 11 years to patent an upgrade button? Sure, they had the idea in 1992, they were just refining it until 2003. WTF????
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Ummmm Not Sure about this
"Although you can debate how many jobs are created on average per patent, there is no doubt that, collectively, they are a useful contribution to an economy that is still struggling to grow."
Ummm... If you can debate how many jobs are created per patent, then how can you state there is no doubt that they are a useful contribution to the economy. How may jobs were lost on average per patent? I mean since we are doing a causal relationship, go back to 2001 and do the math.
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What needs are really needed
BUT at the same time that the process is streamlined, it needs to be reformed too. Vague patents need to be trashed, patents on general business processes need to hit the trash, and bullshit patents on things that cannot be built with current technology at the the time of application should be trashed as well. The idea of using the patent system to speculate on obscure ideas and processes that may some day make you rich is getting old.
Most process and all software patents really need to be trashed or at least severely restricted in scope. Of all the talk on here about patents hindering development, these are the ones that I feel do the most damage in this area. The entire concept of "obvious" and "prior art" is not enough of a restriction on these. A LARGE majority of these patents are on nothing more than taking age old processes and changing them from a physical process to a computer based process. They get approved way too generously and cost billions in legal fees to defend against.
MOST Software Advances today have a foundation in taking an existing business process and automating it. Thank God most of the UI patents have expired, or we would all be trying to find unique menu structures and screen layouts to avoid stepping on those patents. ONE of the few good things that come from Microsoft and Apple was the concept of keeping all desktop applications structured similarly for ease of training and use.
I was actually in the software development industry when these patents were being used to kill off the small software companies.
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Re: ... spending 5-10 years waiting for a patent to be approved is a bit rediculous.
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Your conflating the two leads to unnecessary confusion.
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Let's not forget how the current system if not changed can backfire later. Eventually China will reach parity with the U.S. and whatever policy they take will vastly outclass the United States policies.
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Let's try changing the PTO's incentives
Make the fee very high if the PTO rejects the patent for any valid reason. (Novelty, prior art, non patentable subject matter, etc)
Make the fee very low if the PTO grants a patent.
This will both speed up the process of rejecting patents, and will significantly increase the percentage of rejected patents.
This will also give the PTO incentive to crowd source the finding of prior art, etc. In fact the PTO could pay a bounty to anyone who can show grounds that lead to rejecting the patent application. (eg, it will create jobs)
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patents=jobs
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