Half of US Patents Issued Out of US For Second Year 90
netbuzz writes "According to a new report from IFI Patent Intelligence, 51% of patents issued by the United States in 2009 went to companies located overseas. While this marks the second consecutive year that a majority of US patents have landed abroad, an author of the report says: 'It's foolhardy to use this statistic to infer that American firms are losing ground to foreign competitors because with patents, it's important to consider quality, as well as quantity.' IBM was once again granted the most patents of any company, 4,914, followed by Samsung and Microsoft."
Oblig (Score:0, Funny)
Re:Oblig (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Imaginary Property (Score:3, Funny)
'Imaginary property' is strange derogatory term. The implication is that intellectual property is in some way less valid as a concept than physical property. Yet, it also seems to allude to their similarity.
The notion of property is imaginary itself, after all. My possessions have no physical quantity that affords me ownership over them. It's a mental state and social construct, made manifest only by our collective behaviour - the same as intellectual property.