FOR all America’s anxieties about its decline as a superpower, its deficits and its weak economy, it can still be proud of its strength as an innovator. Americans make four times as many patent applications per head as Europeans. Patents spur innovation and lay the foundations for future growth, by assuring inventors that they will reap the rewards of their effort and by publicising their discoveries.

But worries have grown that excessive patenting may now be having the opposite effect: businesses and other researchers may be discouraged from innovating in areas that depend heavily on prior discoveries, for fear of being sued for patent infringement. Besides making it too easy to bring patent lawsuits, it is argued, America hands out patents too readily: an often-quoted example is the one granted to Amazon for its “one-click” online-shopping button. Last year the Supreme Court restricted the scope of such business-process patents, but not by enough to satisfy critics.


Big technology companies complain of “patent trolls”—companies that buy lots of obscure patents and then bombard alleged infringers with lawsuits. (The “trolls” argue that by making patents valued they are helping to create a market in invention that will encourage inventors.) Surging patent activity has overwhelmed the US Patent Office, which is taking ever longer to process applications (see chart).

The Economist in an article entitled The spluttering invention machine repeats a number of lies associated with patent reform. For instance, they repeat the Patent Thicket theory for which there is absolutely no empirical evidence. You would expect that a magazine like the The Economist would at least do a little research on the topic. Here are some of the errors in the article. (See article)



PATENT REFORM: America Invents Act

The main problem with the US patent system is the long pendency time. This is a result of the underfunding (stealing of user fees) of the Patent Office. Suffice it to say that correcting this situation is not the major thrust of this legislation. The main point of this legislation is to weaken the US patent system, by the addition of oppositions and the weakening of the US grace period, so that it easier for large corporations to steal the inventions of startups and independent inventors.