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90 Percent of Businesses Say IP Is "Not Important"
langelgjm writes "In 2009, the National Science Foundation teamed up with the Census Bureau to ask U.S. businesses how important intellectual property was to them. Now, after three years of surveys, the results are in. Astonishingly, it turns out that when asked, 90 percent of businesses say intellectual property is 'not important'. While some very large businesses and specific sectors indicate that patents, copyrights, and trademarks are important, overall, the figures are shockingly low. What's more, the survey's results have received hardly any press. It appears that formal intellectual property protection is far less important to the vast majority of U.S. businesses than some federal agencies, such as the patent office, are willing to admit."
Most people don't care about spoilers, but people who care about spoilers REALLY care about spoilers.
That said, it is an interesting result, and I wish it were more widely reported (and that it influenced policy, but oh who am I kidding).
a business not on internet will fail. everyone should call and get IP from local ISP
I'd say logically.
When is IP important to you, as a business? If you hold patents and if you're heavily invested in R&D, and copyright is something that you care about strongly if you're creating content, be it music, movies or software. Else, at best, it's uninteresting to you. At worst, it is a headache to you since you always have to watch out whether or not something trivial you do steps on someone' patent toes.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Thinking otherwise is counter-productive.
90% of businesses are in fields that don't have the type of IP you see in new fields like IT.
I'm sure a small, local bakery would care about IP too if he had to pay license fees for every bread he bakes, simply because his oven has a digital timer.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Well, of course 90% of business say intellectual property(IP) is not important. That's because 90% of businesses, or more, don't develop or produce products and therefore have no need to protect IP. Most businesses are distributors, retailers, or resellers. They don't design a new product and they don't manufacture anything. Furthermore, a good percentage of manufacturers don;t design the products that they manufacture either.
But, if you are the inventor or designer of a new product, IP is absolutely essential to you ability to make a profit from your idea. If you can't protect your IP, then some third world mass production facility will essentially take your product away from you by mass producing it and selling it for a price that you cannot possibly match or profit from. Duh!
I'm opposed to some IP stuff. Software patents, especially, are mostly ridiculous. But, the freetard mentality that all IP protection should be eliminated is ludicrous and clearly indicative of the fact that they themselves have never produced anything of their own.
But IP also includes trademarks, which in theory are relevant to virtually every business... unless maybe you supply a purely fungible commodity.
That said, I think you're right. When I considered my experiences with small businesses (a cabinet shop and a veterinary hospital), I realized that not even trademarks were particularly relevant. There was simple no real danger of someone ripping off the name of the business... it wouldn't really make sense to do so.
I'd love to see how politicians and government officials react when confronted with this kind of survey data.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
The problem with this logic is that the survey specifically targets businesses performing R&D. From TFA:
"The target population for BRDIS consists of all for-profit companies that have five or more employees and that perform R&D in the United States.”
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
My example is this. In the automotive industry the car manufacturers make new intellectual property. Everyone else is in inventory, logistics, or repair. The same thing goes with software. Most people in technology are in the integration and configuration business.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
The 10%, however, care quite a lot.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Those things weren't important *to them* in their business, not that they thought those things weren't important. Big difference.
It is logical... unless you're the U.S. Patent Office, which claims that IP is responsible for 40 million jobs and 35% of the U.S. GDP.
The survey results throw a wrench in the narrative that IP is critical to "the economy." It's clearly critical in certain industries, or for certain companies, but if 90% of businesses say its not important, blanket statements about how IP an economic "engine", etc. need to go.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
From TFA:
According to the NSF, the Business Research and Development and Innovation Survey (BRDIS) “is an annual, nationally representative sample survey of approximately 43,000 companies, including companies in manufacturing and nonmanufacturing industries. The target population for BRDIS consists of all for-profit companies that have five or more employees and that perform R&D in the United States.”
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Round up the usual "software patents are evil" suspects.
When the fuck did he ever claim that he does have an exclusive right to his password? Oh, that's right, HE NEVER MADE THAT CLAIM.
OBSCURITY is not the same as OWNERSHIP.
Passwords aren't registered with some central authority. There's no legislation giving him control over the use of a specific password by others. They are not intellectual property in any sense.
You can use the same password for your account that he's using for his account, even if you don't realize it, and even if you do. There's nothing he can do to prevent you from using the same password as him. It's not property.
For crying out loud, if you're going to try to form an argument here, at least make it cogent. Don't go off on a tangent spewing fecal matter that's without any basis whatsoever.
Ip is not Important. Especially if you are still using UUCP.
Make of that what you will.
The vast majority of businesses have no significant branding to speak of, publish no significant media, and do no significant R&D. To put some perspective on it, there are more companies in the US than there are individual engineers and very few companies produce anything where copyright is central to the business.
Most businesses are built almost entirely on individual customer relationships. Restaurants, contractors, specialty manufacturers, agriculture, etc. In all of these areas there are a few outliers that develop a substantial brand that they trademark but more often than not the "brand" is the individuals that work there or run the business so trademarks simply are not that important to their success.
I think this is surprising to people only because most of the largest and most visible American companies do have substantial investment in IP, so it is an availability bias. It overlooks the myriad smaller companies that have little investment in IP. It would probably be fair to say that IP is important to a significant percentage of the American economy but only because it tends to be concentrated in many of the largest and most successful companies. It is not evenly distributed across all companies.
Lots of business are just in the business of selling stuff. So there is very little IP to be had.
Similarly there is very little IP to be protected in the vast majority of services businesses. That's everything from dog walkers to hotel chains, law firms and banks.
The building industry has very little IP as well apart on certain widgets used.
That pretty much leaves high tech manufacturing, software, and something that is probably best describes as "media".
While surprising, the results do make some sense. IP laws are only meaningful to companies that have the means to sue. They would also have to look at the return on investment for launching legal action. A small business on the east coast is unlikely to sue another small business on the west coast simply because there is no return (i.e. no overlap in potential clients).
IP is mostly geared towards the interests of large entities and multinational entities: businesses that have both the means to sue, and where their market is large enough that it is likely to overlap with someone else's market.
I'm still waiting for the pdf to download, but I can smell the BS from here. Does anyone really believe that most businesses wouldn't mind if a competitor misappropriated their name and opened a competing establishment with the same name across the street?
Someone said that small businesses don't build a brand and don't care about their names (trademarks). I've owned a couple of small businesses and in two of those all of my customers were small businesses. For most small mom and pop businesses, the reputation attached to their trademark is EVERYTHING. They don't have national ad campaigns, their business comes from friends telling friends "go to ShoeDoc to get that fixed, they do a great job." If someone else opened a shoe repair place down the street and violated their IP by calling it ShoeDoc that would be a VERY big deal to them.
The methodology used to determine the significance of IP to the economy relies on the assumption that a business that generates IP, views that IP as important to competitiveness.
This survey undermines that assumption. So, we are left with the question, if IP is view as generally unimportant, why are these companies generating IP?
Someone needs to ask this question in their survey.
I'm still waiting for the pdf to download, but I can smell the BS from here. Does anyone really believe that most businesses wouldn't mind if a competitor misappropriated their name and opened a competing establishment with the same name across the street?
No, no one believes that. However, apparently this isn't a big enough concern for most businesses to get them to respond that trademarks are "somewhat" or "very" important. I wonder how realistic the "You've Got Mail" scenario of theft of goodwill for the Shop Around The Corner bookstore actually is.
For most small mom and pop businesses, the reputation attached to their trademark is EVERYTHING.
Well, their reputation may be everything, but I'm guessing many businesses don't even bother filing a trademark registration. I think one of the takeaways from the survey may be that formal intellectual property protection isn't always valuable to most businesses, even though intangible things like reputation may be very valuable.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
The author shows their complete ignorance of how the economy works when they select GROCERIES as their example of an industry where they claim IP doesn't matter. Imagine if you were to walk into the grocery store and all of the cola made by different companies was labeled "Coca-Cola". It's trademark, intellectual property, that allows you to tell the difference between Coke, Pepsi, and RC cola. Were it not for IP, the generic stuff that sells for under a dollar would also be labelled "Coca-Cola".
Do you think it's important to grocers that customers can distinguish Guiradelli and Hershey from Z corp "chocolate flavored bar"? Of course! The grocery industry is ALL about trademarks. The author proves they are completely clueless by claiming IP doesn't matter in the grocery business.
And, I'm sure that local baker has house recipes and processes that they would rather their competitors not have. Trade secrets are IP.
It's also important to businesses that get sued. Mine got a couple strongly worded letters of how we allegedly infringed on patents. Next thing you know, we're patenting up our stuff to protect ourselves against other assclowns.
I worked for over a decade at a midsized company, founded in the late sixties, whose business was the manufacture of $30,000-$100,000 high-tech products. The development process included internal firmware, quite a lot of interesting and non-obvious mechanical and optical engineering, and driver software.
To say they were casual about intellectual property was putting it mildly. The mindset seemed to be, basically, that they copied good ideas from the competition and expected the competition to copy ideas from them. (I do mean IDEAS though, nothing more). They felt their business success depended on getting needed products to market in a timely way, and that it was all about good execution of ideas, not exclusive possession of ideas.
All of us software people put copyright notices on our code because we just thought it was good practice, but nobody told us to do so or send out memos on how to do it or monitored us to make sure we were doing it right.
I created a mini dust-up once when the head of marketing told me to send the complete source code to one of our software drivers to another company--a 200-age listing--and I said sure, but that I wouldn't do it without written directions from an officer of the company. He was furious that I would even question his directions and insisting that it was inappropriate for me to demur because it was no big deal, and I replied, sincerely, that I didn't think it was a big deal, either--in context it really wasn't--but that nevertheless I thought I needed to have that level of authorization, and that since it wasn't a big deal it shouldn't be hard to get it. It's not that he was being a PHB, either--the point is that nobody in the company quite got it that maybe you didn't just send out half a pound of listing on a casual say-so.
For a while, there was one mid-level manager who liked patents and embarked on a semi-systematic effort to get things patented, and recognize engineers by posting framed notices about the patents that they had gotten--there were maybe about ten such frames on the wall by the time he left. But it was not part of the corporate culture.
I don't remember ever hearing about the company suing or being sued over a patent except for one case, where it was embroiled as a party in a lawsuit involving some software components they had purchased and licensed from another firm.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I'm still waiting for the pdf to download, but I can smell the BS from here. Does anyone really believe that most businesses wouldn't mind if a competitor misappropriated their name and opened a competing establishment with the same name across the street?
Someone said that small businesses don't build a brand and don't care about their names (trademarks). I've owned a couple of small businesses and in two of those all of my customers were small businesses. For most small mom and pop businesses, the reputation attached to their trademark is EVERYTHING. They don't have national ad campaigns, their business comes from friends telling friends "go to ShoeDoc to get that fixed, they do a great job." If someone else opened a shoe repair place down the street and violated their IP by calling it ShoeDoc that would be a VERY big deal to them.
Don't confuse a trademark with a patent...
The article doesn't claim that IP doesn't matter to grocery stores. It just points out that it doesn't make sense to attribute the entire employment figures of all grocery stores across the U.S. to intellectual property. Which is precisely what the Patent Office's report did.
It may be fair to call grocery stores an IP-intensive industry, but if it is, that's a definition of "IP intensive" that most people aren't thinking of when they talk about patent and copyright policy.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
He knows more than you do, clearly.
Trade secrets are not considered intellectual property in many jurisdictions. The differences from patents, copyright and trademark are quite clear. There's generally no registration of trade secrets. Their transferability is quite limited, if not non-existent. They do not share the same pseudo-tangibility that other forms of actual IP have.
In fact, the concept of "trade secret" arises out of contract law, rather than intellectual property law. It's the act of disclosure, contrary to a previous agreement of non-disclosure, that is the issue in cases involving trade secret. Once the information is public, regardless of how this came to be, it is generally considered to be reusable without consequence by third parties.
While some may ignorantly lump trade secrets in with intellectual property, trade secret is conceptually a result of the lack of, if not a complete rejection of, intellectual property rights. It arises because the parties involved resort to contract law to try to merely limit the dissemination of the information, rather than control it as a from of intellectual property.
Don't confuse a trademark with a patent...
Don't confuse subsets of intellectual property for intellectual property as a whole.
Pretty much the only thing they all agree on is that excessive taxes and unreasonable regulations are evil. Even then they don't actually agree on what that sentence means. The guy whose job is to sell coal thinks any carbon tax is excessive by definition and renewable energy requirements are inherently unreasonable. The guy who sells solar panels disagrees strongly.
In this case what's going on is that your local yogurt shop doesn't give a shit about patents or copyright because it sells yogurt. They don't have patents or copyrights. They do have a trademark, but unless some other yogurt shop has recently moved in and adopted a similar name they probably don't think of their trademark as important to their business. And their one vote is as important as Exon's.
It would be interesting to do a study weighting the response by the actual economic importance of the business. But that would be really fucking hard, particularly if you're only trying to tease out a couple aspects of IP law. The article mentions a government study that tried to do this, and criticizes it for including grocer's as important users of IP, but if you think about it for a second grocery stores use IP a lot more often then anybody else. If you're a geek obsessed with the IP implications of file sharing and the Samsung/Apple patent battles that sounds like ridiculous BS, but that's only because you aren't counting trademarks as Intellectual property. Coke is more expensive then RC Cola or the house brand for the same reason. Most people who buy Coke couldn't tell the difference between it and the house brand, but the grocery store probably charges double or triple for Coke, particularly if the House Brand is sold in 3-litre bottles. That markup is 100% due to the intellectual property of the Coca-Cole trademark. Yeah the music industry and software will use this trademark info to claim all Walmart associates will be fired the second that copyright is weakened, but that does not mean the government scientists were technically wrong for saying those Walmart associates are working for a business that is very dependent on the IP of trademarks.
I have 3 problems with today's IP. Most IP is completely obvious; the one click patent is 100% crap. Any web developer with 3 months training would stumble upon that as completely obvious if they were building a large online sales site. Things like patents and trademarks should be reserved for something innovative. Monster suing people for using monster as a synonym of big or great should be punished with their losing the trademark. There is definitely room for some patents and trademarks such as Xerox (completely made up). And inventing the transistor. But if someone invents a new way to generate light, nobody should be able to patent putting that into a flashlight.
But even in music and books there should be much shorter limit on the copyright. It just seems bizarre that someone who came up with an innovative guitar riff 60 years ago should be able to go after some indy band who "re-invented" the same riff and worked it into their song. To me copyright should start wearing out in stages. The wholesale copying of say a song or book should have a fairly long lifespan. But works based upon it or derived from it should be fine even after 5 or 10 years.
If you are looking for a simple historical precedent just look at Hollywood. Basically one of the main reasons they went out into the wild west to make movies was that movie technology was new and the patents were controlled by a few capitalist robber barrons who ruled east coast movie making with an iron fist. So people went out west and made movies where the federal government had far less control to enforce the dictates of east coast judges. Not only did an industry boom but free of IP they innovated and innovated. Stole the latest ideas from each other and everyone got rich.
IP is not always bad but generally where the best IP is applied is when it protects the public. Is the drug you bought actually made by the original company? Is it even the drug you think you are buying? When I buy a HEAD tennis racket I don't want something crappy that is painted with the HEAD logo. But when IP only serves to protect the profits of the company such as MS being able to protect some obvious file system patent to keep Linux out of the market then it should be eliminated.
People blah blah about China stealing so much IP. But the reality is that they have thrived doing so and if anything are probably laughing at us stupid westerners who have shackled ourselves to a few parasitical lawyers. Think about it. If every computer or robot innovation is locked up for 20 years then this might explain why we read about things in the science journals and then it stagnates for 20 years. A simple example would be 3D printing; a handful of key patents run out this year and I suspect that we will see a genuine 3D printing revolution that starts the week they run out.
For most companies, trademarks and trade secrets are much more important.
The local bakery probably doesn't care about the copyrights on its secret recipes (yes, making and testing new recipes is a form of R&D). But if an employee pilfers them and leaks them to the competition, they would care very much that their trade secret was compromised. Likewise, if another bakery started using a nearly-identical logo or other "trade dress" in a way that caused confusion in the marketplace, they would care.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
You can only taste it after you've bought it.
It's the Coke trademark on the bottle that allows you to know what it's going to taste like. Without trademark, all of the different sodas would be labeled "Coke" and all of the different companies making them would call themselves "Coca-Cola".
There is a real life example of that here in Texas. A company in Elgin, Tx made great sausage and built a reputation for the best sausage in the state. If you were driving through Elgin on the way to Austin, you'd stop and get some "Elgin sausage". The problem was, you normally can't register your city name as your trademark. So four other companies opened up selling "Elgin sausage". Some of it isn't great. Most people no longer stop in Elgin because you never know whether you're getting the good Elgin sausage or not. The lack of trademark protection (because they chose a bad trademark) really hurt their business, and ruined customer's ability to pick up extra yummy sausage.
You know, that transmission thingy using IP.
Internet Protocol.
The vast majority of businessmen are not billionaires. Those who are billionaires probably consider IP important. This may be only coincidence...
The problem with this logic is that the survey specifically targets businesses performing R&D. From TFA:
"The target population for BRDIS consists of all for-profit companies that have five or more employees and that perform R&D in the United States.”
Continuing in TFA:
If you examine the details, the survey results begin to make more sense. Larger companies tend to report intellectual property as being more important; businesses designated as especially “R&D active” also place more importance on various kinds of intellectual property.
And if you follow the link to the actual data tables in the report, you'll see that the various numbers pulled into the article - 96% say patents are not important, 54% in the "information" fields say copyright is not important, etc. - are all including the non-R&D active sets. If you do look at the target population that performs R&D, those numbers change, respectively, to 34% and 69% saying that they are important.
More telling, go to the data chart for new or improved products or processes by businesses who performed or did not perform R&D. For companies that did not perform any R&D, 88% did not create or improve any products or processes. Accordingly, it's pretty reasonable to consider that they wouldn't see much value in IP over that time. For companies that did perform R&D, 65% created new products or processes, and that starts getting a lot closer to the percentage saying that IP is important.
So, sure, depending on what numbers you cherry pick, you can "support" almost any conclusion, but you're not telling the entire story.
From TFA:
According to the NSF, the Business Research and Development and Innovation Survey (BRDIS) “is an annual, nationally representative sample survey of approximately 43,000 companies, including companies in manufacturing and nonmanufacturing industries. The target population for BRDIS consists of all for-profit companies that have five or more employees and that perform R&D in the United States.”
From TFA:
If you examine the details, the survey results begin to make more sense. Larger companies tend to report intellectual property as being more important; businesses designated as especially “R&D active” also place more importance on various kinds of intellectual property.
The survey is not confined just to the target population, as it includes non-R&D active companies.
Your local "Quickie Laundromat" may say they don't care about IP. But if I open another business right next door called "Quickie Laundromat", and if I copy their ads and signs word-for-word, they might change their minds.
Thing is, this survey probably suggests that your scenario doesn't happen that often. In your example, I'd suspect laundromats tend not to open up right next to each other unless there's adequate demand (e.g., next to a university). And even if they do, washing clothes is not a particularly differentiable product. Sure, maybe one laundromat has machines that always work and a change machine that is well stocked, and the competitor wants to trade on the good name of Quickie Laundromat... but that ruse is only going to work one time, if that.
IP is more than just patents. It also encompasses trademarks and copyrights. 10% say they care about IP. The other 90% don't understand what IP is.
TFA states that when directly asked about trademarks, "87.2% of businesses reported that trademarks were 'not important' to them." Perhaps most business owners don't know what trademarks are (though that seems a bit unlikely), or perhaps they just don't see value in the formal protection offered by trademark law. Instead they're probably relying on informal branding, reputation, word of mouth, the community, etc. There are certainly intangible aspects here, but they don't require trademark law to function. Trademark law helps deal with disputes, but perhaps those disputes are less likely than we might think.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
For IP to not be important, your business could not have any of these things:
a name and logo
a customer list
a supplier list
a product distinguishable from that of competitors
a way of making a product distinguishable from that of competitors
a plan for dealing with an employee absence
The overwhelming majority of the comments here, either for or against, assume IP is only something you consume. IP is also something you produce.
As I recall, the US workforce is about 155 million people, so 40 million is about a quarter of that. That means 75% of jobs don't rely on IP, according to the USPTO.
That doesn't follow at all. Just because 75% of jobs don't make their money from creating IP, that doesn't mean those 75% of jobs would be done as well, or even possible at all, without the creations of the other 25%.
This is why the whole framework for this discussion is silly, really. Political considerations aside, as economic tools the various kinds of IP aren't there just as a boon to creative industries, they are there because having those creative industries be creative is valuable for others as well and so giving them incentives to to create is in the general interest of society.
It doesn't surprise me that businesses that consume rather than create these works don't report that IP is important. If IP went away, their costs might go down, at least in the short term. That doesn't mean a small business of tradesmen who build houses for a living won't benefit from the R&D that leads to a more efficient building method, and thus benefit indirectly from any IP-based incentives that made that R&D economically viable.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Ninety percent of ANYTHING is crap.
- Theodore Sturgeon
A contextual explanation for GP's post can be found here.
I've recently been involved with the patenting process, at it applies in the US and Europe.
In some respects, I was pleasantly surprised. The patent lawyer genuinely seemed to want to use the system as it was intended, do a good job of writing everything up, and secure some real protection for the inventors of something genuinely new and useful.
In other respects, I was disappointed. I think the biggest downer for me was when we were formally advised that reading other patents in the field was potentially dangerous. Clearly the reality is that a patent lawsuit in the US is a very uncertain proposition for all concerned, particularly if the patent itself is of the broad-but-possible-not-enforceable variety and/or if the parties involved have substantially different resources to spend on the case. We were warned that having read anyone else's patents would mean if we were ever found to have infringed them in one of those uncertain lawsuits, that infringement would incur greater penalties as it would then be considered wilful.
That seemingly minor detail did more to damage my belief that at least the principle of various kinds of IP is worth having than any arguments about awarding trivial patents for nonsense inventions with vague descriptions ever have. Perversely, the very people who would most benefit from being aware of inventions -- those working in the same industry, who might want to license them or otherwise collaborate with other inventors -- appear to have a substantial incentive not to actually explore the disclosed knowledge the system is designed to share.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
What a silly study and one whose results are hardly surprising. Some 90% of businesses have nothing to do with IP. They don't create or make anything that's protected by IP. Similar studies would find what the FCC or FDA don't matter to their business.
businesses that deal in intellectual property care about intellectual property, those that don't, don't.
90% of US firms are hairdressers, grocery stores, plumbers, etc
I mean, does anyone in their right mind think their plumber cares about IP
Or has the money to get, let alone defend, a patent ?
Or the knowledge to right decent, defendable, worth while claim language (if u don't know why this is important, the SHUT UP)
But if you think strategically important IP is going to be put into a patent, you're nuts. That just gives the competition a head start on working around the technology or business method. If I have a better way of doing business, I'm going to do my best to keep that to myself. Perhaps plant a few false leads and use some misdirection to keep my competitors guessing as to why we are so successful.
So, when asked, I'm going to say, "No. No special IP here. Just lots of hard work, blood, sweat and tears."
This is also one reason so many people are nervous about the NSA. You think Snowden was the only person making off with intelligence? It has been standard practice among various businesses (particularly those doing work in the military/intelligence area) to have a few buddies in intelligence agencies who can slip you some info. on what the competition is up to.
Have gnu, will travel.
IMO
and is there any reason to think your opinion is worth 2 cents ?
I have found, that most people - perhaps not you- are pretty hypocritical: their attitude toward patents depends on which side they are sitting; if you own a valuable patent, you think one thing; if you are impeded by someone elses patent, you think another thing
as to your non valuable opinion: in biotech, it can take years and millions of dollars to develop something.
I should just let someone copy, and all my hard work is for naught ?
why would people invest ?
go educate yourself, and comeback
This is the reason business is so fucked up and no one gives a shit about the NSA
people had to have been dumb monkeys who's DNA was fiddled with by ET intelligence - it's the only conclusion who man is so retarded.
The survey asked whether IP laws were important to their business. Not whether they were "important", as in "important to society".
That is a VERY major difference, and one TFA seems to have completely missed. In fact this appears to be an excellent example of "lying with statistics"... even if it wasn't done intentionally. It all depends on how survey questions were asked.
For example, here's a quote from the NSF about this [emphasis added]:
"Fifteen percent of all businesses reported trademarks as very important (6%) or somewhat important (9%) to their business in 2008,"
I'll give you 99 to 1 odds that when asked this question, a respondent will think, "Well, my business is not involved in patenting, or trademarking, or any of that stuff, so no, it was not important to us in 2008."
Which means, as I wrote above: this study probably does not show -- even a little -- what somebody is trying to claim it shows.
the number one IP-intensive industry by employment in the United States was grocery stores.
I suspect the number of grocery stores that have any IP is pretty small.
Rather than ask if Intellectual Property is important. Is brand name recognition important to your business? Is marketing important to your business? Are brand names important to you as a customer? When you work, is it important for you to get paid? Is your company name important for your business? Should a company be paid more for higher quality products? Should a company be paid more for innovative products? Should a competing company be allowed to reverse engineer your product and market the exact same thing at the cost of manufacturing until you go out of business?
This is not surprising at all. 90% of all human advancement is due to the 10% of humans. So it only follows that 90% of the companies are there to support the other 10% that do all the innovation, just like the rest of the humanity. More power to the 10%.
'Intellectual property" isn't a whole. Patents, trademarks, and copyrights have nothing whatsoever to do with each other and only disingenuous lawyers try to claim they do.
It is nice to see that 90% of business are still primarily involved into producing goods or services, IMO most of the remaining 10% are pure parasites.
Hamilton on the 10
Franklin on the 100
Chase on the 10,000
That question definitely doesn't belong into the list. Getting paid for working is (a) not an IP question (not even for those who sell IP; they don't get paid for their work, they get paid for the results of their work, which is a big difference), and (b) not applicable to businesses (businesses don't work, humans work in businesses).
Also this question doesn't belong to the list. Higher quality products are not related to IP, but to care.
This is a clear NO. I don't want innovative products, I want useful products. If it is innovative in a way that it makes it more useful, then that's great. If it is innovative in a way that it doesn't affect usefulness, I'm certainly not willing to pay more for it. And if the less innovative product is more useful, then that one is the better product, period.
Innovation is a means, not an end. Don't treat it as an end, because if you do, that usually makes your products worse.
I'm actually planning on merging this survey data by NAICS codes with other data from the Statistics of US Businesses and Economic Census surveys to look at precisely these questions. It's not a huge amount of work to do this, but it's not trivial, either.
FWIW, I was still surprised at the survey data in isolation... e.g., TFA notes that even if you look at a sector in which you'd expect people to say that IP is important (like software), only about half say that is important.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
The survey is by definition confined to the target population of companies with 5+ employees and that "perform" R&D. However, they break down results and report by "all companies" as well as those that are especially R&D active versus those that still "perform" R&D, but not are not particularly R&D active. But "not active" does not mean not performing R&D at all.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
I looked more closely, and I think GP is right. I was misled by the initial description in the survey, but in the data tables they note that R&D active company statistic "are representative of companies located in United States that performed or funded R&D," and the sample does in fact include some companies that have reported zero R&D.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Most companies don't create IP. They move it, repackage it, interpret it, show it... But make it? Mostly no.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
You're definitely right with respect to patents. However, I'm not sure the R&D Active/Inactive distinction matters as much for trademarks and copyrights.
Trademarks are valuable to all kinds of companies, so for trademarks I think the relevant category probably is "all companies", not "R&D active" companies.
Copyrights are more complicated. The survey explicitly excludes the development of most copyrighted products from the definition of R&D: "R&D also does not include literary, artistic, or historical projects, such as films, music, or books and other publications" (pg. 399). So there will be plenty of non-R&D active companies that stand to benefit significantly from copyright.
But, their definition of R&D would include software development, which falls under copyright (and possibly patent as well). So with respect to copyright, it's not obvious which category of company (All, R&D Active, or non-R&D active) would be best to use.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
I'd expect 99% to be more realistic. There are few businesses who depend on IP.
What subsection of businesses were they surveying?