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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."
Kind of goes along with the huge valuation given to IP assets for US companies compared to their real assets.
Hard to beat out IBM when it's submitting applications for LOL, regex for SSN verification, changing the color of email text, and 40 minute meetings.
"I'd just like to emphasise that taking a million years isn't a metaphor here..." -Rich Bradshaw
It's not a zero sum game. The more produced, the wealthier the world becomes as a whole. Of course this only goes to an extent due to limited natural resources.
In fact this is a good thing, I mean honestly do you expect 6% of the population to produce 50+% of the worlds intellectual property?
Isn't there more overseas companies than US companies? And if so, why should this be surprising in the slightest?
FTA:
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
Ah, except the patent office isn't exactly concerned with quality. A patent is a patent, regardless of quality, and granting more of them is in the interest of anyone in the system (as the actual cost of the economic burden it imposes isn't accounted for by the granters, legislators or recipients).
While American companies continue to add patents, IFI Patent Intelligence says foreign firms are also working to win patents at a "frenetic pace," which could be considered a good thing for the U.S. economy overall.
Right. As IPR is macro-economically equivalent to taxation, that's the same thing as saying 'more taxes are a good thing for the economy overall'. As a general rule, I don't actually think that's an accepted theory within any economic branch; even the most tax friendly theories usually prefer a somewhat efficient use of the taxation burden.
"The silver lining may be that the high priority foreign firms place on U.S. patents is a confirmation of the value and importance that the U.S. market represents."
The question is why wouldn't a foreign company be interested in obtaining taxation rights to the US economy? There's nothing as lucrative as having government enforced rights to take money without doing anything.
Of course it utterly screws those paying for the system, but it certainly is nice for those who can skim the pot. Eventually it falls apart of course, as the burdens on industry and workers mean they simply cannot compete and when the ability to borrow to keep going is lost one ends up without industrial base, in deep debt and with significant legal risks to any industry trying to operate within the economy.
I can only speak for the domain of software development, but there was a period from 1996-2008 when the USA was disproportionately feeling the rewards of software patenting. The rewards were always severly outweighed by the costs ($11 billion in 2008), but there were always people pointing at these rewards.
Now that the companies of the USA's economy will increasingly become the targets of software patents instead of the users, those rewards will diminishing.
Patent policy for other domains can be considered while only looking at the economic effects. For software, the social effects have to be considered too because software development is something that individuals can do and participate in - like writing a book, reporting news, or writing music. So, it makes sense to have economic studies to make our point, but we also have to remember to have other arguments and to point out that these other issues exist.
The good news is that there's the Bilski case which might solve the problem, and there are also initiatives in other countries, most notably Israel, New_Zealand, the EU, Australia, and something starting in . Help sought.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
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.
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.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
...it's important to consider quality, as well as quantity.
To name a few.
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
Er?
Slashdot really needs a "+/- 1, Incoherent" moderation.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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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.
And what about Zimbabwe? There is tangible evidence (Photos, videos, witness accounts, missing opposition leaders and members, etc) of tyranny, oppression and gross human rights violations but the US is not helping them. If Zimbabwe suddenly discovered oil reserves within their borders, the US would invade them in an instant under the guise of 'removing the yolk of tyranny and oppression from the people of Zimbabe'.
They're probably US companies with offshore interests. You know, the kind of interest that substantially reduces a company's US tax burden.
And more to that point, many companies now a days start to be multinationals and for tax or legal purposes registered offshore. It could still be an "US company" or do majority of its business in US. Even Google plays that tax game
At those levels, the taxes the company pays for its operations are also significant, so much that choosing the right country to pay those taxes for its international revenue can save it several hundred million pounds a year
Outside of its US operations, the UK market is the biggest revenue earner for Google, yet the company doesn't pay any taxes whatsoever in the country. Instead it reports all revenue from the UK, from all over Europe in fact, in Ireland where the company has its headquarters for the continent. Thanks to the much lower corporation tax levels, Google can avoid paying as much as £450 million in the UK alone. And the savings can be significant, taxes are as two to three times lower in Ireland.
The company is, by far, not the only one doing this, all large corporations, even smaller ones with an international presence, will try to find the market with the most flexible tax system to set up shop. The practice in itself isn't illegal, but it certainly isn't viewed very well, especially with the economy being what it is.
I'm actually surprised they haven't moved their US operations.
Well if they file for a patent, they obviously think its worth the cost. You can't always directly measure the return either, since you don't know if you holding the patent lowers competition.
Also remember that because the system is like this, companies that aren't patent trolls still need to file for the patents if they want to defend their technology. Blame the system, not those who have to play by its rules.
Erm, doesn't the law say those of low quality shouldn't even issue? http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/usc_sec_35_00000103----000-.html
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The reason is simple: We need to stop letting the government make life difficult for American buisiness. The government already destroyed the credit market by subsidizing high risk loans and now we're facing a huge debt problem, not personal debt but government debt. Regulations have become crippling. It's choking American enterprise.
The large percentage of the sub prime loans weren't subsidized. Simple regulations/requirements on loan prudence, capital reserves and transparency for financial instruments like the infamous CDS would've saved the economy far more than changing subsidies. In fact, countries with more tightly regulated financial systems (such as Australia) did much better in the recent crisis than those that didn't.
Sure, the government is at fault (as are the businesses themselves for making imprudent investments), but blaming over-regulation and too much government interaction is just an ideological kneejerk. Sometimes regulations are good, sometimes they're bad but the important thing is you get them right instead of focusing on some narrow ideology.
I've personally always wanted to be in buisiness for myself, but recently it's become all but impossible due to the taxes, regulations and so on. You know what it takes to hire a single employee? Payroll tax, record keeping regulations, insurance, OSHA compliance, registration, W-40, workers comp insurance. I can't do it! It's gotten so bad no matter how bad I want to expand, I can't do it. The current administration has made it so much worse.
Half of the things you mentioned are there for your benefit, in particular when you get sued (just see what happens if you don't have insurance and you haven't kept proper records) or need to take a trip to the accountant. The other half are for the employee's benefit, in that they should be able to work for you without risking serious injury or at least being fairly compensated if they do. Really, it sounds awfully like you want a free ride here; employees are an investment, you have to pay money to make money. They may not be instantly profitable, but if you can't afford to pay for them, it's your business model that's wrong, not the government. As a business owner myself, you have to realize that the benefits of having a business come with a whole bunch of responsibility and risk.