Posts Tagged: "economic growth"

Policy Solutions to Repair the US Patent System and Restore Productivity Growth

The declines in productivity growth in recent years are undisputed. There is some controversy over the causes of these declines, particularly, the sources of the declines in technology investment. However, the arguments of the present article elucidating a decline in the patent system suggest a clear and potent explanation for the declines in technology investment and in productivity growth…. The tech cartel has been relentless in denying opportunities for patent holders to enforce patents. The three main ways for attacking patents include instituting IPRs in the PTO, constraining enforcement in federal court and limiting damages. Each of these must be retuned.

Causes and Consequences of Productivity Growth Declines

While all economic views of productivity growth may have a grain of truth, I argue that all of these theories of productivity growth are fundamentally wrong. The economic evidence shows clear relationships between the trend of decline in productivity growth and the trend in declines of the U.S. patent system. As the patent system has been weakened in the last decade, there is less investment by start-ups in technology R&D. At the same time, the technology industry has become highly concentrated, with big tech incumbents dominating their industries. The combination of increasingly concentrated competitive configurations in the technology industry with the reduction in key rights embedded in patents, has resulted in substantially reduced incentives to invest in R&D innovations.

What if we don’t have sufficient intellectual property rights?

Fundamentally, patents facilitate access to VC financing, market entry and job creation. Without patents and an effective IP environment, the process stalls and, in some cases, firms may never emerge. Without adequate IP protection, innovators are unable to attract investments, business creation is slowed and jobs lost. Evidence suggests that this same story plays out, albeit with differing dynamics, across all sorts of firms and all nations. Economic prosperity relies on job growth, and it is clear that strong, effective IP rights have a role to play in creating both.

The Innovation Act vs. The Innovation System

There is no credible evidence behind proposals to make the drastic changes embodied in the Innovation Act, the removal of discretion from judges to judge each case on an individual basis with mandatory stays and fee shifting, and new rules for pleading and discovery that would undermine the ability of legitimate inventors and patent holders from enforcing their rights against infringers.

The Innovation Act Will Harm Income, Employment, and Economic Growth

The legal costs of the IP system should be measured against the value of intellectual capital in the U.S. economy, estimated in a study by Kevin Hassett and Robert Shapiro to equal between $8.1 trillion to $9.2 trillion… Weakening the US patent system harms economic prospects for middle income earners because it will stifle innovation, discourage patenting, reduce private investments in new technologies protected by patents, slow economic growth, increase unemployment, and harm consumers. The proposed reforms will reduce prospects for economic advancement for middle income earners because they damage entrepreneurship and small business and favor large incumbent firms over inventors and innovators.