Half of US Patents Issued Out of US For Second Year

netbuzz writes "According to a new report from IFI Patent Intelligence, 51% of patents issued by the United States in 2009 went to companies located overseas. While this marks the second consecutive year that a majority of US patents have landed abroad, an author of the report says: 'It's foolhardy to use this statistic to infer that American firms are losing ground to foreign competitors because with patents, it's important to consider quality, as well as quantity.' IBM was once again granted the most patents of any company, 4,914, followed by Samsung and Microsoft."

Comments

Re:US != 50% of world

[jwinster]

What is their criteria for calling a company a US company now anyway? Most of the companies that obsessively file patents these days are so multinational (outside of the defense industry) that national borders are kind of a moot point.

Re:Stick a fork in it, the US is done

[Anonymous Coward]

As a foreigner i see this a a huge win for the US.

Just think, the US patent system has attracted the cash of thousands of foreign companies. Sure, it might just be because the US is the only country allowing things such as the "do some every day task but on the internet" type patents, but whatever the reason, you have foreigners paying money into the US patent system. The filing fee for a software patent can be ~$10,000 according to Google.
I wish my country had a stupid patent system raking in the dough like that.

Here in Australia It's quite common for people who have never been to the US to be extradited for not giving in to IP trolls. The US government even provides a mechanism to help the patent trolls do this called the USPTO-IPAU patent prosecution highway.
http://www.uspto.gov/patents/init_events/pph/pph_ipau.jsp

The Hew Raymond Griffiths case showed us that apparently the internet is allowable jurisdiction for court of Virginia and that IP crimes are enough for extradition.

So if we Australians were ever to think about creating a competitor to Amazon for example we'd probably get a letter stating we have violated their 'one-click' patent. We couldn't fight it without traveling to the states yet if we didn't fight it we'd be extradited. In the end you'd need a US patent portfolio of your own.

All in all this broken system is a win for the US. You have foreigners pouring in money to the US government and legal system. Any foreigner that pisses of a US organisation can be extradited by simple patent trolling.

Move over US car industry, your replacement has arrived - international IP trolling, backed by the long arm of US international law enforcement.

Re:Stick a fork in it, the US is done

[dgatwood]

Neither did Somalia, for all practical purposes. Didn't stop the U.S. from helping. Rwanda just got really unlucky in their timing, with the whole genocide happening just a month after the U.S. pulled out of Somalia, which was something of a disaster. And Rwaanda was basically exactly the same situation as Somalia---a civil war between warring factions. The U.S. and the U.N. had just failed miserably at stabilizing the first situation, and were still licking their wounds. Had they failed to learn from that experience and turned right around and made the same mistake, one could rightly have called them insane beyond all hope.

What happened in Rwanda was tragic. Knowing about it and being able to realistically stop it, however, are two different things. In the history of the world, attempts to interfere in a civil war have almost invariably ended badly, usually very badly. That's something that would be good for future political leaders to remember.

Re:Stick a fork in it, the US is done

[nmb3000]

Er?

Slashdot really needs a "+/- 1, Incoherent" moderation.

Trends probably understated

[khallow]

It's foolhardy to use this statistic to infer that American firms are losing ground to foreign competitors because with patents, it's important to consider quality, as well as quantity

If we do make that consideration, then it's probably worse. Keep in mind that a) we have a thriving patent troll industry in the US, and b) anyone outside the US who bothers to patent in the US probably is more likely to have something worth patenting.

Re:US != 50% of world

[timeOday]

What you're ignoring is the trend - the majority of US patents being for foreign companies is a new thing. It indicates US economic dominance is in decline. Now, you can argue that's the natural state of things and it should always have been so, but regardless, it means we'll be paying more for scarce natural resources (think OIL), making less money (e.g. UAW went down the toilet), and we can't impose our will on other countries as much politically.