Half of US Patents Issued Out of US For Second Year

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."

Coincidence?

[magsol]

Hard to beat out IBM when it's submitting applications for LOL [slashdot.org], regex for SSN verification [slashdot.org], changing the color of email text [slashdot.org], and 40 minute meetings [slashdot.org].

The economic argument is getting worse

[H4x0r Jim Duggan]

I can only speak for the domain of software development, but there was a period from 1996-2008 when the USA was disproportionately feeling the rewards of software patenting. The rewards were always severly outweighed by the costs ($11 billion in 2008 [swpat.org]), but there were always people pointing at these rewards.

Now that the companies of the USA's economy will increasingly become the targets of software patents instead of the users, those rewards will diminishing.

Patent policy for other domains can be considered while only looking at the economic effects. For software, the social effects have to be considered too because software development is something that individuals can do and participate in - like writing a book, reporting news, or writing music. So, it makes sense to have economic studies [swpat.org] to make our point, but we also have to remember to have other arguments [swpat.org] and to point out that these other issues exist.

The good news is that there's the Bilski case [swpat.org] which might solve the problem, and there are also initiatives in other countries [swpat.org], most notably Israel [swpat.org], New_Zealand [swpat.org], the EU [swpat.org], Australia [swpat.org], and something starting in [swpat.org]. Help sought.

Re:Stick a fork in it, the US is done

[riT-k0MA]

And what about Zimbabwe? There is tangible evidence (Photos, videos, witness accounts, missing opposition leaders and members, etc) of tyranny, oppression and gross human rights violations but the US is not helping them. If Zimbabwe suddenly discovered oil reserves within their borders, the US would invade them in an instant under the guise of 'removing the yolk of tyranny and oppression from the people of Zimbabe'.

Key to consider patent quality as well as quantity

[D4C5CE]

because with patents, it's important to consider quality, as well as quantity

Erm, doesn't the law say those of low quality shouldn't even issue? http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/usc_sec_35_00000103----000-.html [cornell.edu]

Re:Imaginary Property

[apoc.famine]

What the hell are you talking about? I have a mug of coffee in front of me. It is mine. It has a couple of unique physical qualities that make it "property":
 
a) I can put my hands on it, and fight anyone who tries to take it.
b) It can't be duplicated easily.
 
Imaginary property has neither of those qualities. There is no physical thing to hold on. It's either in your mind, or it's in the world. Once an *idea* gets out, it's nearly effortless to reproduce it, copy it, and spread it around.
 
The term "Imaginary Property" was coined for just such a reason - we have constructed a legal framework to give *ideas* the same two properties that real, tangible, solid items have. It's stupid, because in reality, ideas don't have those properties, thus the derogatory usage of the term.