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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?
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
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
Making content free will probably not be a good idea. But it would still beat the current situation.
But either extreme is bad. We have to get back to an IP law that follows the idea behind them: To give people an incentive to create and to create a balance between those that create and those that want to enjoy that creation.
Right now, the IP law fails in every of these aspects. It does not promote creation, since it allows an author to milk his success forever. Not only that, but also his heirs to do just the same. And please don't come with the "but a true artist will create even if he is rich already" argument. The same argument can be fielded for abolishing IP laws altogether.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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 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.
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!
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
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.
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.
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.
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.