After seven years of working with intellectual property and innovation in China, I’ve seen some of the ups and downs as well as the gross misunderstanding of Chinese innovation and IP in the West. I’d like to briefly summarize what I’ve seen. First, when it comes to innovation in science and industry, graduates of Chinese …
A book on World War II teaches a lesson for today on innovation. In Churchill and Orwell: The Fight for Freedom by Pulitzer-prize winning author Thomas E. Ricks (New York: Penguin, 2017), we learn about some of the reasons England struggled to defend itself effectively in dealing with Germany. A key problem discussed by Ricks …
Innovation Fatigue: How Britain Almost Lost the War Against Hitler Read More »
Many of the greatest inventions in America came from immigrants. See Steve Brachman’s article, “American innovation has been fueled by immigrant inventors” at IP Watchdog. Nearly all of our inventions, in fact, came from people who were either immigrants or descendants of immigrants (sometimes we seem to forget our own roots!). Immigrants with skills and …
Be careful about the vehicle you’ve been driving. As sturdy, tangible, useful, and inventive as it looks to you, it may turn out to be merely an abstraction, perhaps nothing more than the mere idea of “transportation” or “going places,” making it unworthy of the thousands of patents protecting its numerous technologies — if the …
As I watch the decline of the US patent system, I have to marvel at how much loss the world is facing through the crushing barriers to innovation and job creation in the U.S. Once the beacon of innovation for the world, now would-be innovators are afraid to take the risks required to bring their …
Shock and Awe: The US Government’s War on Innovation Read More »
The steady loss of IP rights in the United States is alarming. Big companies like Google and Apple tend to preserve or expand their market power and in IP battles, they tend to get their way through their money, influence, friends in high places, and market clout. But for lone inventors and smaller companies, the …
In This Economy, We Need an Innovation-Friendly Environment More Than Ever Read More »
Abraham Lincoln said that the patent system “added the fuel of interest to the fires of genius.†Today the fires of genius and the fire of innovation itself is getting doused with something less helpful than fuel. These fires are being cooled and, in some cases, extinguished with harsh attacks on the IP rights that …
More Cold Water on the Fire of Innovation: Unnecessary Patent Reform Read More »
Many intellectual property practitioners worldwide are scratching their heads over what is happening to IP in the United States. There’s a revolution underway that over the past few years seems to have steadily eroded the value of patents and any semblance of predictability and order in the law. Patents can still be valuable, if you …
The US Supreme Court recently ruled that “abstract” concepts are not eligible for patents. The 2014 case, Alice Corporation Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank Intl. or more simply Alice, is said by some to mean the death of thousands of patents if not entire industries. Critics such as Gene Quinn say it is unworkable, vague and …
The recent Alice decision from the Supreme Court threatens patents for many innovators working with computers, software, information, and knowledge–in short, the heart of the modern Knowledge Economy. By waving around the undefined word “abstract”–a word that the Court expressly refused to define–they have ruled that a major part of the economy is simply not …