Posts Tagged: "US Economy"

By outsourcing manufacturing to the lowest bidder abroad not only have we destroyed the working middle class in America, but also we are also increasingly turning over our last economic advantage – our intellectual property… While there is nothing wrong with negotiating better, smarter trade deals, what America really needs is smarter manufacturing policies. After all, what exactly are better, smarter negotiators going to do if the United States remains an inhospitable climate for business, with extraordinarily high tax rates, unreasonable environmental regulations and loopholes that only the richest corporations can take advantage of? How could we ever reclaim widespread manufacturing in the United States if the deck is stacked against the industry?

It’s a fundamental principal of economics that the secure ownership of personal property is essential for prosperity. Walk through any public park and see how seldomly people bother to pick up trash thrown so thoughtlessly about by a few. But if someone throws trash on your lawn, it will quickly be made clear that this nonsense better stop, including calling the police if necessary. But what happens when the police won’t protect the rights of homeowners? Neighborhoods deteriorate, crime flourishes and investors move their money to other markets. That’s what’s happening to patent owners as “effective infringement” becomes an accepted business practice. However, we’ve been down this road before and have a good roadmap of the way out.

Technology transfer is blocked in a weak patent system since companies employ the “efficient infringement” model. In a weak patent system, enforcement is expensive and burdensome, supplying the infringer with incentives to infringe. Rather than voluntarily license technology, incumbents engage in reverse hold out in which they ignore patents and refuse to deal with patent holders. When an entire industry engages in reverse hold out, that is, collective refusal to deal, which is enabled by a weak patent system with high barriers to enforcement, they exhibit anti-competitive behaviors. In fact, enforcement in the courts, as expensive as it is, is generally caused by the belligerence and refusal to deal by technology incumbents which force matters to the courts. Particularly in the absence of an injunction as a remedy for the patent holder, the patent holder can no longer possibly be considered a hold out because their patents cannot enforce an exclusive property patent right. In the pervasive business and political environment that enables the collective refusal to deal with patent-holding market entrants, with high transaction costs to patent enforcement and with reduced compensation from enforcement because of a reduction in patent remedies, there is no incentive to invest in innovation.

Over the past 25 years, I have patented innovations relating to digital watermarking, content recognition, deep packet inspection, rights management, and related technologies. Today digital watermarking is found on billions of files moving around the Internet every day. This technology protects musicians, artists, writers, and developers from having their work illegally copied. How ironic it is that for the past decade, I have been forced to file many legal challenges to protect my own intellectual property. With the passage of the America Invents Act of 2011, Congress sharply tilted the playing field in favor of large corporations that decide to infringe patents owned by small businesses and inventors like me.

By providing a property right in exchange for the disclosure of a novel and useful invention, patent law supplied an incentive to perform risky and expensive scientific research. By embedding a property right in a patent, the market, not a biased government, could pick winners and determine value. A patent embeds a micro-economic property right in an invention from which market-based incentives are derived. From the property right, market competition is developed as multiple competing parties enjoy similar benefits of owning the fruits of discoveries in which they have vested financial interests. The patent system thus levels the playing field for different competitors as it encourages investment in scientific research. From the fair competition that arises in the system of patent rights that protects investment evolves economic and technological progress.

In the past decade, economic growth, wage growth, business investment and productivity growth have declined dramatically. Economists have discovered that productivity growth alone explains the dramatic development of industrial economies. Yet, the causes of productivity growth are unclear, with capital, labor and technological contributions. My central thesis is that productivity growth is strongly correlated with a strong patent system. Consequently, I will show that the attack on patent rights starting about 2005 is correlated to the decline of productivity growth. The patent system is designed to induce business investment in technology R&D. In effect, the macroeconomic analysis of productivity growth rests on microeconomic phenomena of decisions made by entrepreneurs to risk capital on technology projects in the expectation of a reward.

According to the patent application filed by Walmart, the system will utilize a series of docking stations, sensors, motors and cameras to offer consumers the ability to “hail” a shopping cart using an app on their smartphones, much like they would a taxi or Uber and that upon completion of use, the system will somehow be able to recognize abandoned carts within the store or in the parking lot and will be able to manually return itself to a docking station for use by another consumer.

Patent reform is a subject that most Americans are unfamiliar with. Additionally, significant lobbying efforts and financial resources dedicated by large corporations have confused the subject further. Nevertheless, patent reform is a critical issue for our country. Will the U.S. patent system continue to be the fuel that fires genius, to paraphrase President Abraham Lincoln, or will the U.S. patent system continue to throw cold water on the spark of innovative entrepreneurism in America? I’d like to know, and the American public deserves to know, if the candidates are aware of just how cumbersome, one-sided and unfair the U.S. patent system has become.

Clinton’s tech agenda revolves around five main points that she hopes will lead to American dominance in research and development as well as overall innovation. First, she’s pledged to devote resources to educational innovations that will position U.S. workers well for the well-paying tech jobs of today and the near future. Second, she’s pushing for major infrastructure upgrades that she argues will bring broadband Internet access to a much wider audience. Her third point focuses on protecting American tech export interests to countries abroad. Her fourth agenda point discusses a framework by which concepts of the open Internet as well as personal privacy can be balanced. Finally, her fifth point hones in on the ways that technology can make government agencies more efficient and effective.

Inventors and investors demand a system that affords predictable and durable intellectual property rights in a timely manner. If the system that we implement for granting patent rights does not meet those criteria, inventors will not make use of the system, the public store of knowledge will suffer, and investment in innovative and entrepreneurial domestic enterprises will diminish. Perhaps more importantly, if those rights are not found here, the procurement of intellectual property rights and associated investment and commercialization will move to foreign lands. The result will be lower domestic economic output, fewer jobs, and a decline in American innovation.

Where an ex parte order is unavailable under the DTSA, complainants may still seek injunctive relief. However, unlike the UTSA, which also offers injunctive relief, the DTSA includes language providing that an injunction is improper and not issuable if it: (1) prevents a person from entering into an employment relationship, or if conditions placed on employment are not supported by evidence of threatened misappropriation, or (2) otherwise conflicts with an applicable state law prohibiting restraints on the practice of a lawful profession, trade, or business.

Trade secrets are the only major type of intellectual property (IP) that is not backed by U.S. federal civil remedies to compensate owners for theft. Notably, American businesses face hundreds of billions of dollars in losses per year due to trade secret misappropriation, and the problem is worsening, as cybertheft (particularly from China) continues to grow in scale… Appropriately crafted civil trade secret legislation is no panacea, but it holds the promise of providing tangible benefits, not just to private trade secret holders, but to the overall economy. In addition to vindicating property rights and protecting individual businesses, such legislation should enhance the effectiveness of the competitive process and thereby raise economic welfare.

On the Republican side, front-runner Donald Trump, whose inability to be stopped by his own rhetoric has proven to be a hallmark of his campaign, has said himself that he is “changing” on this issue, at least where skilled talent is concerned. Trump has been on both sides of the H-1B visa issue, which makes it difficult to know what he really believes and what policy might become during a Trump Administration.

In the tech world, the H-1B visa for a person in a specialty occupation has been a heated issue at times. According to the official website for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the H-1B visa category applies to people who wish to perform services in a specialty occupation, services of exceptional merit and ability relating to a Department of Defense (DOD) cooperative research and development project, or services as a fashion model of distinguished merit or ability.

There is evidence to suggest that the H-1B visa program for skilled workers has proven itself effective in helping the U.S. economy. The H-1B visa is intended to enable companies to hire skilled workers where there is no pool of talent capable of filling a new job… Of course, if we’re to explore the good inherent in the H-1B visa program, we must also expose the bad and speak to the at-times heartbreaking effects of this program on American workers, especially in instances where alleged abuses of the H-1B visa are involved.