Talk-Polywell.org

The large mufti-national companies are not where new jobs come from. These companies will usually spread any increase in their work forces throughout the world with only a small fraction allocated to the US. So government incentives that are targeted to advantage this corporate category is not productive or cost effective.

The engine that truly drives the growth of jobs in the US economy is innovation and its handmaiden, new small company establishment and growth.

The underfunding of the US patent system during the last decade has nearly crippled commercialization of new ideas in the US which in tern has led to a increasing erosion of the US jobs base.

This last Thursday, the House of representatives voted to rewrite the 60-year-old patent law to give inventors a better shot of obtaining patents in a timely manner and bringing the U.S. patent system in line with those of other industrialized nations.

The legislation also takes steps to help the underfunded U.S. Patent and Trademark Office deal with a backlog that forces inventors to wait three years to get a decision on patent applications and has swamped the agency with some 1.2 million pending applications.

Another drag on innovation and associated American prosperity is the restrictions placed on immigration that have been set in place since the 9/11 attack. The worlds best and brightest have been largely excluded from setting up new companies that would exploit their innovative ideas.

During the Clinton administration, new small company formation mostly in the high tech and internet areas was instrumental in the production of 20,000,000 jobs. The anti-innovation policies set in place by government during the 2000's was one cause in a great reduction in the formation of small companies and the jobs that spring from them.

Easing the patent process is one big step that will help the jobs problem in the US.

The change from "first to invent" to "first to file" does little to improve patent quality, but should reduce the overhead associated with who would get the patent. But it really shouldn't make much difference if patents were subjected to proper standards. Multiple patent applications for the same technology at about the same time should be taken as evidence that the technology isn't novel enough to get a patent anyway. The biggest problem I see with the patent system isn't who gets the patent, but all the patents that should never have been granted in the first place.

hanelyp wrote:The biggest problem I see with the patent system isn't who gets the patent, but all the patents that should never have been granted in the first place.

Yep, especially in software and medicine sector there are patents so vague that even watching a monitor or breathing could be an infringement on someone else patent.

Fixing that should really be their first priority.

true. 'down with that sorta thing. mind how you go now'

it is well known that all inventions originate in the 'aether', thus they are mere discoveries, and 'human kind' should gain all and any rights. ( individuals and organisations may only take a very small percentage - from the idea itself - what they can make by 'applying' the idea, is up to them).

an economy based on mad scrambles. (bit like the gold rush, or a'la Rossi).

i propose.

I think that currently patents are granted way to easily in the US, especially related to software.
Generally the amount of patent trolls and the jungle of patents granted for the most basic crap that never should have been patentable in the first place is a horror for small companies. Large corporations have their own departments that deal with patent and licensing issues and they can afford fighting a nonsense patent. Small companies dont have such a luxury. So again it is the large corporations that win.
Generally we have entered a culture of sueing everyone about everything and it sometimes seems that people make more money from suing people than from actually inventing something new. This slows progress and it plays into the hands of countries like China who dont give a darn about patents.