Posts Tagged: "incentive to innovate"

America innovates most when government stands behind a stable property rights regime

America innovates most when property rights are stable and government gets out of the way so risk takers can dream the impossible and then go accomplish those dreams… The patent system all three branches of our government has created over the last 12 years has increasingly incentivized the stealing of patent rights rather than engaging in an arm length negotiation with innovators who possess patent rights that are supposed to be statutorily presumed valid. This is antithetical to basic, fundamental principles embedded throughout American law, and basic economic principles. Laws are supposed to be certain, stable and understandable. When that occurs externalities and transaction costs are low, which allows for the bargaining of rights to ensue.

America’s largest tech firms acknowledge plenty of issues with the current U.S. patent system

Typically, the reform debate over the U.S. patent system features smaller players, but America’s largest tech firms also have issues with the patent system, which go way beyond any single company’s ability to sustain success… Leading off the panel’s remarks was Manny Schecter, chief patent counsel for IBM, who noted that innovation is a risk-bearing operation. “The likelihood that you ever make an investment [into research & development] is based on the return you anticipate on getting in that investment,” Schecter said. Any reduction to the anticipated return caused by uncertainty in IP policy discourages R&D investment. Schecter added that one of the ways in which intellectual property promotes innovation is by preventing others from taking innovations which are not their own. “We want to minimize or control uncertainty in the IP space if we want to maintain an IP surplus and promote the viability of the economy,” he said.

Does innovation lead to patents, or patents lead to innovation?

We pick up our conversation with me suggesting that there is a problem with claims being found to be abstract when the decision maker has been able to do a complete 102 (novelty) and 103 (obviousness) analysis. We then move on to discuss the meaning of “innovation,” whether innovation leads to patents or patents lead to innovation, and briefly touch on a long-time disagreement about whether patents are property rights. … LEVY: “Uncertainty I agree makes businesses nervous. That’s obvious. But, and again, I’m speaking only for myself here, it seems to me that for many businesses there is a desire to have the benefits of taking the risk without the down side of taking the risk. And one of the downsides here is that the law can change. Patents are not — even if we didn’t change the law patents are no guarantee of anything. Once you get an issued patent that patent could be found invalid. It’s in the law that a patent can be challenged and that I can be found invalid. So no one should think that once I have this patent that’s it, it’s good for all time and I can take on all comers and they’re going to have to pay me regardless. I have heard too many time people thinking that this is some sort of guarantee and any sort of challenge is a violation of their Constitutional rights.”

Want to Revive the Economy? Restore the Patent System!

The old arguments that patents inhibit innovation, and non-exclusivity with compulsory licensing leads to a brave new world are now in vogue. We’ve stood at this fork in the road before. It requires courage to reject the easy path downward and restore the system which created our prosperity. If we lack the will, we have no one else to blame as we plunge deeper into the mire. That’s the last place anyone wanting to drain the swamp while growing the economy should go.

Governments’ Thumb on the Scales

These government agencies target successful, inventive U.S. firms. They politicize their processes and disregard the exclusivity that rightfully belongs to patent owners. They take away private property from the creators and give it to favored domestic companies like Samsung and Huawei, which apparently lack the smarts to win fair and square in market-based competition or by ingenuity. It’s time that America put an end to these threats, foreign and domestic. Either you believe in property rights and free enterprise or you don’t… In essence, Chinese, South Korean and FTC officials demand the benefits produced by free markets and property rights for free from American innovators in mobile technology, who took all the risk and made investments in research and development.