“The COVID-19 crisis has once more highlighted the need for incentivizing investment and innovation—and thus, for patent laws that duly “promote” and protect such “progress,” precisely as our Founders envisioned,” writes Chief Judge Paul Michel, now retired from the Federal Circuit. As he so often is, Judge Michel is absolutely correct. Many are asking why testing for the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 has been slow to roll out, and why tests in many countries are inaccurate. Those familiar with U.S. patent laws understand the problem. There has been a deemphasis on medical diagnostics in America as the result of a series of Supreme Court and Federal Circuit rulings, coupled with Congressional inaction.
Certain innovations—known as enabling technologies—provide the foundation for progress across a range of industries. Enabling technologies include mobile wireless, the laser, CT scanners, the microprocessor, artificial intelligence, and freight containerization. Such technologies drive wealth creation throughout the economy. However, the difficulties associated with monetizing this type of IP, which I explore in this article, mean that private enterprise tends to underinvest in new enabling technologies. Public policy needs to be more supportive, and firms need to be willing to support more blue-sky projects. As a nation, we are harvesting the fruits of old enabling technologies without investing sufficiently in new ones. We are eating our seed corn.
Assuming America wants paradigm-shifting, truly disruptive innovation we need to recognize the need to incentivize the risk-takers and those that provide the capital to those risk-takers who dare to challenge the status quo. This means policies, laws and rules that foster innovative activities from smaller entities who are most likely to innovate. With an eye toward policies, laws, rules and actions that would most benefit innovators, their endeavors more attractive to investors and more feasible to pursue, the U.S. should adopt policies, laws, rules and actions including…
The myopia associated with chasing quarterly earnings isn’t the only short-sighted predilection giant tech companies display. Affirmatively weakening the patent system in order to avoid upstart competitors who are lean, full of ideas, and willing to take risks to succeed is not just myopic, it is plain stupid. Sure, copying the work of others today may make business sense when trying to beat or meet earnings expectations, but expecting others to continue to invest, innovate and take risks when what they produce is simply copied is naïve to the extreme.
In the absence of a discernable IP policy, America achieved leadership through laws and courts that supported inventors, and commerce, and that encouraged risk-taking. But the world is now flatter than we could have imagined. If America hopes to remain at the innovation forefront, it needs to rely not only on the ingenuity of its inventors and creators, but on the leadership and vision of government and businesses… Despite the incredible success of several Internet companies — and, some believe, because of it — U.S. IP dominance is in quantifiable decline. Compounding the problem is China, which is now able and willing to fill the void. It has been widely reported that China is a better place than the U.S. and most other nations to obtain patent injunctions and receive a fair hearing in court. Despite this, many U.S. businesses and consumers, impatient with IP rights and cavalier about the impact of IP theft, have come to act with much same attitude the Chinese did before they learned better.