Posts Tagged: "Presidential Commission on Industrial Competitiveness"

Past as Prologue: Is there Hope for America’s Patent System?

We need to remember that we’ve seen America’s patent system in near complete collapse before. In the 1960s and 1970s the Supreme Court never saw a patent that was valid, which lead to the creation of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. In the 1970s and early 1980s there was great concern that Japan would win the technology future and America would become an also-ran in the burgeoning technological revolution, but that never happened… In the 1980s, a strong patent system was the primary driver for the economic achievements that unleashed American enterprise and allowed the United States to compete on the world stage. It worked in the 1980s to address what was a similarly difficult time, and it will work today.

A Short History Lesson on Patent Policy

Starting before World War II and continuing throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s, short sighted and now discredited government antitrust policies, coupled with judicial hostility toward patent enforcement and patent licensing, converged to reduce the enforceability of patents and to restrict the ability of patent owners to license their inventions. The result: foreign competitors began to capture entire industries that should have been dominated by U.S. companies that had pioneered the relevant technologies.