Among the many barriers to innovation success, one of the most painful and dangerous is rapidly gaining momentum in the United States due to an almost perfect storm of challenges to patent value. I speak of the blight of “efficient infringers,” the many companies, often large and politically influential, who make the cruel calculation that …
Efficient Infringers: A Vibrant Source of Innovation Fatigue Read More »
After seven years of working with intellectual property and innovation in China, I’ve seen some of the ups and downs as well as the gross misunderstanding of Chinese innovation and IP in the West. I’d like to briefly summarize what I’ve seen. First, when it comes to innovation in science and industry, graduates of Chinese …
Under the America Invents Act, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) was given broad new powers to “correct” past mistakes in issuing patents through the power given to the PTAB, the Patent Trials and Appeals Board. The PTAB is an administrative law that decides issues of patentability, formed on September 16, 2012 under …
A Surprising Insight About the USPTO’s “Patent Death Squad” Read More »
A book on World War II teaches a lesson for today on innovation. In Churchill and Orwell: The Fight for Freedom by Pulitzer-prize winning author Thomas E. Ricks (New York: Penguin, 2017), we learn about some of the reasons England struggled to defend itself effectively in dealing with Germany. A key problem discussed by Ricks …
Innovation Fatigue: How Britain Almost Lost the War Against Hitler Read More »
Be careful about the vehicle you’ve been driving. As sturdy, tangible, useful, and inventive as it looks to you, it may turn out to be merely an abstraction, perhaps nothing more than the mere idea of “transportation” or “going places,” making it unworthy of the thousands of patents protecting its numerous technologies — if the …
As I watch the decline of the US patent system, I have to marvel at how much loss the world is facing through the crushing barriers to innovation and job creation in the U.S. Once the beacon of innovation for the world, now would-be innovators are afraid to take the risks required to bring their …
Shock and Awe: The US Government’s War on Innovation Read More »
The great challenge in innovation is not coming up with a discovery or great invention. The challenge is in making it stick, in nurturing it and growing it so that it spreads and changes the world. Numerous antibodies and barriers are ready to snuff out every great idea, even when it offers a solution that …
Lessons from the British Navy: Why the Cure for Scurvy Took 200 Years to Be Implemented Read More »
The steady loss of IP rights in the United States is alarming. Big companies like Google and Apple tend to preserve or expand their market power and in IP battles, they tend to get their way through their money, influence, friends in high places, and market clout. But for lone inventors and smaller companies, the …
In This Economy, We Need an Innovation-Friendly Environment More Than Ever Read More »
Abraham Lincoln said that the patent system “added the fuel of interest to the fires of genius.†Today the fires of genius and the fire of innovation itself is getting doused with something less helpful than fuel. These fires are being cooled and, in some cases, extinguished with harsh attacks on the IP rights that …
More Cold Water on the Fire of Innovation: Unnecessary Patent Reform Read More »
Many leading IP professionals working with the US patent system are growing increasingly concerned about the weakening of the IP system there. Some are so concerned that they are wondering what steps can be taken to save it. Save it from what, you might ask? Save it from erosion of the basic property rights that …
A Need To Save the US Patent System: A Warning from Dana Rohrabacher Read More »