Posted on 04/22/2011 6:39:34 AM PDT by technonerd
It is axiomatic that the struggling U.S. economy is slowly climbing out of its hole. President Obama and our elected representatives regularly wax eloquent about job growth, innovation and the opportunity and future for the once-great United States. But the recovery, critics say, given the depths of the worldwide economic melt-down of 2008, is far too anemic, and job growth too stunted, all because of cumbersome, growth-stifling laws and policies. It is also axiomatic that most, if not all, net job creation in the U.S. today comes from small, entrepreneurial companies less than five years old. As Kauffman Foundation economist Tim Kane, has said, "When it comes to U.S. job growth, start-up companies aren't everything. They're the only thing."
Receiving a disproportionate and unfair share of the blame for this economic malaise is the United States Patent and Trademark Office... The overwhelming consensus seems to be that the office is severely underfunded and dysfunctional, has too few examiners, has inferior outdated technology and is helplessly backlogged with over 800,000 unprocessed patent applications. The result, according to the critics, is that the U.S. is perpetually losing ground amidst the onslaught of foreign competition.
So, assuming small entrepreneurial companies are ground zero for new ideas, innovation and job growth, and ultimately instrumental in the recovery and competitiveness of the U.S. economy on the global stage, why must Congress habitually steal the PTO's resources and divert them for other purposes? In the last fifteen years Congress has divertedfor its own reasons nearly $1,000,000,000 in PTO fees, $100,000,000 in the last budgetary cycle alone. This from a job creating engine that receives no taxpayer dollars and is the sole self-funded government agency, supported 100 percent by the patent fees of individual inventors, universities and creative companies....
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.forbes.com ...
The siphoning off of PTO funds is a little-noticed but serious tax on innovation and job creation.
Erratum: Eric Savitz was the editor of this Forbes subsection; the author of the article is Paul Ryan (CEO of Acacia Research, not the Congressman).
Yep, they aught to keep the fees and hire a few more people that can sort out frivolous software patents.
Gah — missed the link-close tag, but the link still works.
The siphoning off of PTO funds is a little-noticed but serious tax on innovation and job creation.
If congresscritters want to do something useful about patents, they can get rid of the “business process” patents that gotten so out of control over the past couple of decades. That would go far towards clearing out that backlog of useless drivel.
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