Posts Tagged: "joff wild"

The Chinese intellectual property legal system has matured rapidly. Just 40 years ago China did not have a patent system, and today the country is aggressively using patent policy to create an innovation pathway… Meanwhile, China is pursuing what they refer to as the Made in China 2025 initiative.

How do you create – how do you harness that value and how do you turn it into something that is meaningful for the people that own the intellectual property? We have sessions looking at specific industries, so we’re looking at things like semiconductors and the rise of artificial intelligence. We’re looking at how big data can be used to harness IP value. We’ve got two really interesting sessions that I’m looking forward to where we’re putting different scenarios to panels of chief IP officers and asking them how they would react to those scenarios.

The Chinese have absolutely without question focused hugely on patents over the last 10 to 15 years and over the last five years there’s been an absolute explosion in strategic thought around patents. It’s really unparalleled anywhere else in the world. It’s extraordinary… I think the Chinese understand the very close link there is between patents and the encouragement and incentivization of innovation and invention in a way that perhaps we’ve lost sight of in the West to an extent. In the U.S. you get the feeling that over the last three or four years people felt they could do without patents. I don’t think the Chinese see it that way.

As patents become more essential to more businesses, investors are going to want to have more information about them. They’re going to want to have more visibility about the decisions being made around patents and so they’re going to need to know what’s going on in terms of deal making. They’re going to need to understand why deals are being done, how much they’re being done for and that kind of stuff. And another issue I think which is really important is what’s going on in the moment between the U.S. and China in terms of IP and the U.S. being very concerned about Chinese companies getting hold of U.S. technology. We all know for the last 10 years, Chinese companies have been buying shedloads of U.S. patents. But what more do we know than that?

It should be self-evident that not all patent owners are patent trolls, and when you acquire rights it is not an economic cost, yet these absurd propositions are at the foundation of the Bessen/Meurer “study” relied upon by Chambers and Ullman. Shame on anyone who uses the thoroughly discredited, agenda driven, biased conclusions of Bessen and Meurer. Shame on Congress if they are swayed by such snake oil and shiny objects. The Bessen/Meurer conclusions, seriously flawed as they are, shouldn’t be used to destroy the patent system and tilt patent laws toward infringers and away from innovators.