The economist explains the state of the US patent system like this:
At a time when our future affluence depends so heavily on innovation, we have drifted toward a patent regime that not only fails to fulfill its justifying function, to incentivise innovation, but actively impedes innovation. We rarely directly confront the effects of this immense waste of resources and brainpower and the attendant retardation of the pace of discovery, but it affect us all the same. It makes us all poorer and helps keep us stuck in the great stagnation.
Congress is in the process of passing a "first-to-file system". It's hard to see this as anything but a gift to big corporations. Writing in Foreign Policy, Clyde Prestowitz calls the Americans Invent act, "...a bill likely to cut the heart out of our innovative, entrepreneurial culture...". Even the pro-patent group American Innovators for patent reform says,
American Innovators for Patent Reform is opposed to the America Invents Act and we urge the House of Representatives to draft an entirely new law that truly addresses what needs to be reformed. The America Invents Act was crafted by lobbyists for the large corporations that are notorious infringers of patents!
...and...
Canada made the switch to first-to-file in 1989, and a 2009 study from researchers at Canada’s McGill University’s Department of Economics found that the change “failed to stimulate Canadian R&D efforts” and “skewed the ownership structure of patented inventions towards large corporations, away from independent inventors and small businesses.
It looks like the US patent system is about to become even more screwed up.
Nice work as usual, congress.
BTW, Mimi & Eunice is a work of genius
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