90 Percent of Businesses Say IP Is "Not Important" 185
langelgjm writes "In 2009, the National Science Foundation teamed up with the Census Bureau to ask U.S. businesses how important intellectual property was to them. Now, after three years of surveys, the results are in. Astonishingly, it turns out that when asked, 90 percent of businesses say intellectual property is 'not important'. While some very large businesses and specific sectors indicate that patents, copyrights, and trademarks are important, overall, the figures are shockingly low. What's more, the survey's results have received hardly any press. It appears that formal intellectual property protection is far less important to the vast majority of U.S. businesses than some federal agencies, such as the patent office, are willing to admit."
Survey specifically targets businesses doing R& (Score:5, Informative)
The problem with this logic is that the survey specifically targets businesses performing R&D. From TFA:
"The target population for BRDIS consists of all for-profit companies that have five or more employees and that perform R&D in the United States.”
Re:Shockingly? (Score:5, Informative)
Patents/patent applications are open source knowledge before the term open source was coined. You are free to build on those ideas (and are free to take a patent on any non-obvious improvement, if you want that or not if you don't want that). Patent databases are freely accessible (as in beer); they may even have free machine translators so you can read the information in a language you don't speak. Want to know how something can be made, alternative ways of solving problems? Patent documents are your friend. No books to buy. No subscriptions needed. The documents are well-organized, in a standard format and can be searched using keywords from the comfort of your home. (You don't need to register and sell your soul to get the information you want.).
The information in patents becomes freely available to the public in on average about 7 years (drugs take longer, other stuff shorter). No shitty near-infinite term like copyright.
The applicant paid quite a bit to put an accurate description of the invention into words, and it becomes public after 18 months. That may be before the actual product hits the market. You couldn't have know about it otherwise.
Bert
Patent attorney (oh, and patents on software? Yes, I agree. They're a bad and unnecessary thing)
The realities of patents (Score:5, Informative)
I've recently been involved with the patenting process, at it applies in the US and Europe.
In some respects, I was pleasantly surprised. The patent lawyer genuinely seemed to want to use the system as it was intended, do a good job of writing everything up, and secure some real protection for the inventors of something genuinely new and useful.
In other respects, I was disappointed. I think the biggest downer for me was when we were formally advised that reading other patents in the field was potentially dangerous. Clearly the reality is that a patent lawsuit in the US is a very uncertain proposition for all concerned, particularly if the patent itself is of the broad-but-possible-not-enforceable variety and/or if the parties involved have substantially different resources to spend on the case. We were warned that having read anyone else's patents would mean if we were ever found to have infringed them in one of those uncertain lawsuits, that infringement would incur greater penalties as it would then be considered wilful.
That seemingly minor detail did more to damage my belief that at least the principle of various kinds of IP is worth having than any arguments about awarding trivial patents for nonsense inventions with vague descriptions ever have. Perversely, the very people who would most benefit from being aware of inventions -- those working in the same industry, who might want to license them or otherwise collaborate with other inventors -- appear to have a substantial incentive not to actually explore the disclosed knowledge the system is designed to share.
Re:The realities of patents (Score:4, Informative)
In other respects, I was disappointed. I think the biggest downer for me was when we were formally advised that reading other patents in the field was potentially dangerous.
IMO, the way to test whether or not the patent system is accomplishing its constitutional goal is to look at how much time practitioners spend looking through the patent library to find solutions to their problems, or ideas they can build upon, with the idea that it's better/faster/cheaper to find a developed patent and license it rather than do the hard work of inventing it yourself. If the patent database is heavily used as a research library, then it has accomplished its goal of contributing to the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Your comment is exactly what corporate attorneys have told me as well, and the fact that it's good advice proves that the system utterly and completely fails the test.