Posts Tagged: "innovation"

Flash forward to the present and it’s easy to see that NASA is experiencing a lot of activity in some very interesting areas. Mars has been the subject of fascination for scientists over the course of centuries, inspiring many people other than David Bowie to question whether there is life on it. Just last week NASA released a report indicating that there are atmospheric conditions that would allow liquid brine to form on the surface of the Gale Crater; the data came from one years’ worth of temperature and humidity measurements collected by NASA’s Curiosity rover. Detecting the presence of water in any formulation on the surface of Mars is a giant leap for mankind, and it’s not the only development that NASA is currently pursuing.

The vast majority of the assets developed and owned by technology companies are intangible assets, i.e. they reside in their internal information and employees’ brain (Intellectual Capital or “IC”) and the output thereof (Intellectual Property or “IP”). It is estimated that in excess of 85% of the valuation of the NASDAQ Index companies (and of the new global wealth being created) lies in intangible assets. With smaller technology companies, this percentage is sometimes close to 100%. Nowadays, most technology based companies eventually fail or succeed in large part because of the way they handle their intellectual capital assets and convert those into strategic intellectual property assets.

Fundamentally, patents facilitate access to VC financing, market entry and job creation. Without patents and an effective IP environment, the process stalls and, in some cases, firms may never emerge. Without adequate IP protection, innovators are unable to attract investments, business creation is slowed and jobs lost. Evidence suggests that this same story plays out, albeit with differing dynamics, across all sorts of firms and all nations. Economic prosperity relies on job growth, and it is clear that strong, effective IP rights have a role to play in creating both.

This year we’re placing our focus on the rapid pace of development in autonomous vehicles and self-driving car technologies here on IPWatchdog. We’re still a fair ways off from the entrance of a self-driving vehicle into the consumer marketplace; some with a knowledge of the industry believe that the debut for autonomous vehicles won’t be experienced until 2020, with widespread…

Now more than ever succeeding is all about making better products and offering new and improved services quicker and more reliably than your competitors. Surprisingly, at a time when many major technology corporations are struggling to innovate, we see utter disdain for patent owners. Void from the discussion is any perspective on the real problems facing American companies – namely innovating to obtain a competitive advantage and set themselves apart from the competitors they have today and the competitors they will surely have tomorrow. Increased patent licensing, or outright acquisition of patents, will not only help, but will likely become essential for those companies who understand the importance of continually squeezing out innovation as fast and efficiently as possible.

If a weak patent system were the answer you would expect countries that have a weak patent system, or no patent system at all, to have run away innovation. What you see, however, is the exact opposite. Those that want to dismantle the patent system or further weaken patent rights should bear a heavy burden to demonstrate the veracity of their claims. They should be required to prove that innovation at current levels will at a minimum be guaranteed to maintain at current levels if we are to take a leap of faith and disregard what history, common sense and the law of economics predicts will happen.

There’s almost no limit to the range of practical items that could be created through 3D printing equipment. A team of chemical researchers working at the University of Illinois have created a 3D printer capable of creating small molecules less than 900 daltons in molecular weight for the manufacture of pharmaceutical agents. A similar project at Glasgow University in Scotland resulted in the development of a 3D printing process for creating a series of precise reacting chambers which could be injected with chemical reagent “inks,” also performed by the printer, for making complex molecules. Specialized 3D printing equipment has been created for fabricating dental devices such as permanent crowns and denture frames. There’s even a 3D printer designed to use filaments of graphene, an incredibly hyped substance which is essentially a two-dimensional lattice form of carbon.

Universities are dependent upon the U.S. patent system and the capacity of that system to protect the legitimate intellectual property rights of individual university inventors and large companies alike. This system drives U.S. innovation and our economic competitiveness in the world. Patents provide universities with the means to ensure that many discoveries resulting from research are transferred to the private sector where those discoveries can be turned into innovative products and processes that power our economy, create jobs, and improve quality of life.

Fortunately, a new study showing that academic patent licensing contributed more than $1 trillion to the U.S. economy over eighteen years blows the stuffing right out of that straw man. We can only hope Congress gets the message before it turns the patent system into a weapon to squash inventors.

It’s impossible to actually support the idea that patents harm smartphone innovation because there is no consumer product that has changed so much over the past decade thanks to innovation. And if patents would get in the way of anything, it would definitely get in the way of an industry which accounted for one out of every six active patents. But more smartphones are being sold than ever before and new improvements continue to be developed, from curved touchscreens to waterproof phones to dual-screen phones.

Large companies can steal your patented technology, make a great deal of money, ignore you all together, and then have the resources, the vast resources in most cases, to delay your enforcement actions or actually destroy your patents by any means necessary. So the only recourse left for me and others like me is to bring suite to protect my invention – my intellectual property rights. However, the loser pay clause in HR 9 would be a showstopper for me. Bringing a suit against a patent infringer would be too much of a risk for me and my family now and I’ve already used my life savings and family inheritance and hard work for over 15 years plus the untold impact on my family just to develop and maintain my patents. I just do not believe the independent inventor is the problem.

There is no credible evidence behind proposals to make the drastic changes embodied in the Innovation Act, the removal of discretion from judges to judge each case on an individual basis with mandatory stays and fee shifting, and new rules for pleading and discovery that would undermine the ability of legitimate inventors and patent holders from enforcing their rights against infringers.

The pursuit of pi, the numerical constant which represents the ratio of a circle’s diameter to its circumference, is a subject which has driven mathematicians to extremes. The date 3/14/15 coincides with pi calculated to five digits (3.1415). The next time this will occur will be 100 years from now, making this year’s Pi Day a once in a century event.

Earlier today 40 economists and law professors wrote to Senate and House Judiciary leaders explaining that the data it that keeps being cited to justify HR 9, otherwise known as the Innovation Act, is “flawed, unreliable and incomplete.” The professors caution Congress to proceed cautiously, particularly given the numerous misleading and flawed studies that “highly exaggerated claims regarding patent trolls.”

Carly Fiorina: ‘[W]atch carefully who is supporting that [the Innovation Act]. It’s not the small it’s the big. It’s the big companies whose ongoing economic benefit depends upon their ability to acquire innovations and patents at a lower cost.”