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."
Re:Stick a fork in it, the US is done (Score:4, Interesting)
Neither did Somalia, for all practical purposes. Didn't stop the U.S. from helping. Rwanda just got really unlucky in their timing, with the whole genocide happening just a month after the U.S. pulled out of Somalia, which was something of a disaster. And Rwaanda was basically exactly the same situation as Somalia---a civil war between warring factions. The U.S. and the U.N. had just failed miserably at stabilizing the first situation, and were still licking their wounds. Had they failed to learn from that experience and turned right around and made the same mistake, one could rightly have called them insane beyond all hope.
What happened in Rwanda was tragic. Knowing about it and being able to realistically stop it, however, are two different things. In the history of the world, attempts to interfere in a civil war have almost invariably ended badly, usually very badly. That's something that would be good for future political leaders to remember.
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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'.
The yolk of tyranny? You, sir, have egg on your face.
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And what about Zimbabwe?
There's no money to be made in Zimbabwe, so there's no lobbyists who will pressure Congresscritters to send in troops because there's nothing they want.
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It's not a zero sum game. The more produced, the wealthier the world becomes as a whole. Of course this only goes to an extent due to limited natural resources.
In fact this is a good thing, I mean honestly do you expect 6% of the population to produce 50+% of the worlds intellectual property?
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And more to that point, many companies now a days start to be multinationals and for tax or legal purposes registered offshore. It could still be an "US company" or do majority of its business in US. Even Google plays that tax game [softpedia.com]
At those levels, the taxes the company pays for its operations are also significant, so much that choosing the right country to pay those taxes for its international revenue can save it several hundred million pounds a year
Outside of its US operations, the UK market is the biggest revenue earner for Google, yet the company doesn't pay any taxes whatsoever in the country. Instead it reports all revenue from the UK, from all over Europe in fact, in Ireland where the company has its headquarters for the continent. Thanks to the much lower corporation tax levels, Google can avoid paying as much as £450 million in the UK alone. And the savings can be significant, taxes are as two to three times lower in Ireland.
The company is, by far, not the only one doing this, all large corporations, even smaller ones with an international presence, will try to find the market with the most flexible tax system to set up shop. The practice in itself isn't illegal, but it certainly isn't viewed very well, especially with the economy being what it is.
I'm actually surprised they haven't moved their US operations.
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... am I the only one disturbed by companies playing at this tax game?
They use us down to nothing and don't give shit back in taxes. That's fair.
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No, you're not the only one, but you probably won't get a lot of sympathy here. Got to protect the shareholders, don'tchyer know.
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I mean honestly do you expect 6% of the population to produce 50+% of the worlds intellectual property?
Well I don't think that was the idea exactly. The idea was that by having the most obnoxiously expansive patent system in the world, and granting obvious patents for a number of things, the USA would have an economic advantage over its neighbors, where patent laws are saner. The USA corporations could attack foreign corporations using this stupid laws and this would give the USA a competitive advantage.
In other words, it wouldn't mean that 6% of the population produces 50+% of the worlds intellectual proper
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As a foreigner i see this a a huge win for the US.
Just think, the US patent system has attracted the cash of thousands of foreign companies. Sure, it might just be because the US is the only country allowing things such as the "do some every day task but on the internet" type patents, but whatever the reason, you have foreigners paying money into the US patent system. The filing fee for a software patent can be ~$10,000 according to Google.
I wish my country had a stupid patent system raking in the dough lik
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I don't get it.. File a US patent in the US, and you can sue anyone violating that patent anywhere in the world? Then what is the point of having patents tied to nation? Can I patent something here in Norway that isn't already covered by a Norwegian patent, then go sue someone in the US for patent infringement and/or theft of IP? That is after all, the way they do it in the US..
Yeah, that makes about as much sense as if a huge US corporation pressured, say, the Swedish government to pass a new law weeks bef
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You may want to check your local extradition laws. Not all countries are as servile to the US as we are.
Not even going to bother. The Norwegian officials are well known to lick the proverbial Presidential Posterior. To the best of my knowledge, there has yet to be a case where RIAA/MPAA and associates have managed to actually do anything over here (unlike in Sweden), and our ISP's have dead refused to give over logs and such on suspected piracy etc.
Other than that, I think we (in principle and by law) extradite criminals, but Mullah Krekar has remained here despite the fact that several countries, including t
Re:Stick a fork in it, the US is done (Score:4, Interesting)
Er?
Slashdot really needs a "+/- 1, Incoherent" moderation.
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Re:What's funny is... (Score:3, Insightful)
They're probably US companies with offshore interests. You know, the kind of interest that substantially reduces a company's US tax burden.
Imaginary Property (Score:5, Insightful)
Kind of goes along with the huge valuation given to IP assets for US companies compared to their real assets.
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'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.
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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.
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What the hell are you talking about? I have a mug of coffee in front of me.
Well I didn't. Thus you must suffer my early-morning navel-gazing. :)
In fact, I agree with you. The practical implications are obviously way different for both.
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May the coffee gods grace you in the future then. You've paid for your lack of caffeination. :)
Coincidence? (Score:4, Informative)
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That's IBM, through and through. They finally come up with a good short pronouncable brand name like "WebSphere" and proceed to adorn it with products like "WebSphere ILOG Rule Solutions for Office" and "WebSphere Development
Re:Coincidence? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you think patents from other companies aren't as trivial as those, you haven't looked hard enough. Or read Slashdot for long.
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If you think traditional hardware patents cannot be as trivial as those, you are in for a surprise. The biggest problem on software patents is not so much their triviality, but their generality. A trivial hardware patent protects a very specific instantiation of the invention, software patents protect all such instantiations in any language, with any algorithm regardless of efficiency. Think one-click buy patent.
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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].
You know how I know you didn't actually read any of those patents, just the inaccurate Slashdot summaries?
US != 50% of world (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't there more overseas companies than US companies? And if so, why should this be surprising in the slightest?
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Re:US != 50% of world (Score:4, Interesting)
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What you're ignoring is the trend - the majority of US patents being for foreign companies is a new thing. It indicates US economic dominance is in decline.
Does it? It may instead indicate that cross-border economic activity is on the increase. While this may (arguably) show a relative decrease in US dominance of the domestic trade, it doesn't preclude the possibility of an increase in the US dominance of global trade.
HAL.
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Not necessarily. The percentage of patents being granted to residents of a country doesn't tell the whole story. For example, Japan has an extremely high percentage [gwu.edu]... but recently, so has Armenia. [gwu.edu] You can't therefore conclude that both Japan and Armenia are economically dominant. What this percentage best shows you is the attractiveness of patenting a product in that domestic market. In that sense, to a certain degree the more foreigners who want to patent in the U.S., the more attractive our market is to
Wrong (Score:2)
Think in Nexus One with multitouch only in the european models, or al the diplomacy behind US trying to push their patents in all the world (having or not something similar being patented there previously). That facing that all the world want to patent in US too is just reasonable, what is not is that only count
when is enough? (Score:1, Interesting)
now thats just the USA, to get an international patent is about $10k+ (only including the most popular countries) so that would be $49,140,000 in international patent fees for about 10 years
now my question is, is it worth is spending so much on a patent that wont generate enough money to cover the cost of the patent?
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Well if they file for a patent, they obviously think its worth the cost. You can't always directly measure the return either, since you don't know if you holding the patent lowers competition.
Also remember that because the system is like this, companies that aren't patent trolls still need to file for the patents if they want to defend their technology. Blame the system, not those who have to play by its rules.
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The answer is theoretically "no" but of course it's impossible to accurately predict what will generate money in the future. As with so many things in the real world, there is no such thing as perfect future information.
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In practice maintaining a 20 year international patent will burn about $100k of your companies assets.
Or so our CFO told us...
Surprise? (Score:5, Insightful)
FTA:
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
Ah, except the patent office isn't exactly concerned with quality. A patent is a patent, regardless of quality, and granting more of them is in the interest of anyone in the system (as the actual cost of the economic burden it imposes isn't accounted for by the granters, legislators or recipients).
While American companies continue to add patents, IFI Patent Intelligence says foreign firms are also working to win patents at a "frenetic pace," which could be considered a good thing for the U.S. economy overall.
Right. As IPR is macro-economically equivalent to taxation, that's the same thing as saying 'more taxes are a good thing for the economy overall'. As a general rule, I don't actually think that's an accepted theory within any economic branch; even the most tax friendly theories usually prefer a somewhat efficient use of the taxation burden.
"The silver lining may be that the high priority foreign firms place on U.S. patents is a confirmation of the value and importance that the U.S. market represents."
The question is why wouldn't a foreign company be interested in obtaining taxation rights to the US economy? There's nothing as lucrative as having government enforced rights to take money without doing anything.
Of course it utterly screws those paying for the system, but it certainly is nice for those who can skim the pot. Eventually it falls apart of course, as the burdens on industry and workers mean they simply cannot compete and when the ability to borrow to keep going is lost one ends up without industrial base, in deep debt and with significant legal risks to any industry trying to operate within the economy.
The economic argument is getting worse (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Duh? (Score:2)
You're pretty much right... I've produced graphs (Score:2)
I actually calculated the percentage for about 150 countries using all available data from WIPO, and you do find some interesting patterns. What you've said is pretty much right... the U.S. has a strong patent system, and huge internal market, so it's no surprise foreigners want to patent their inventions here.
GDP per capita plays a big role in this percentage, as does the total population of the country, and the strength of the patent system. I'm not going to upload all my images, but here are a few intere
More graphs, if anyone is interested (Score:2)
These graphs [gwu.edu] show the total number of patents granted for all available years with data.
These show [gwu.edu] the percentage granted to residents of the country for all years with data.
The end of the Patent System (Score:1, Interesting)
If other countries began to win with this rules, is time to change the rules.
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You do realize that is symptomatic of a totalitarian government, right?
Judge rules in quantity vs. quality case (Score:4, Insightful)
...it's [slashdot.org] important [slashdot.org] to [slashdot.org] consider [slashdot.org] quality [slashdot.org], as [slashdot.org] well [slashdot.org] as [slashdot.org] quantity [slashdot.org].
To name a few.
Trends probably understated (Score:5, Interesting)
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
If we do make that consideration, then it's probably worse. Keep in mind that a) we have a thriving patent troll industry in the US, and b) anyone outside the US who bothers to patent in the US probably is more likely to have something worth patenting.
Worth patenting (Score:2)
What's the reason to assume that because a patent comes from a foreign company, it's less likely to be a troll? Patent trolling in the U.S. is clearly a proven means of making money so maybe the prevalence of foreign applications for U.S. patents simply means foreign trolls have figured out the U.S. is the best place to ply their trade.
The quality/quantity argument is specious IMO because there is no objective measurement of patent quality. In fact I wonder how bad a patent application has to be in order
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What's the reason to assume that because a patent comes from a foreign company, it's less likely to be a troll?
There's a larger barrier to entry. If I as a US citizen want to play the game, I need a small legal staff and some patents. That's about it. A good portion of the work is just filing stuff on time so that the legal machinery keeps turning. Someone overseas would need to establish a local presence first. That's going to vastly cut down the field of contenders. Since there's more work for a foreign firm to issue US patents, my view is that they'll be a bit less likely to bother with patents that are more or l
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Key to consider patent quality as well as quantity (Score:3, Informative)
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]
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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]
Define "quality", please. You linked to 35 USC 103, so you may interpret low quality as "obvious", but not all would agree. Many would define low quality as lacking much utility, or low quality as lacking sufficient written description. In fact, I can think of many low quality patents that are not obvious. Your definition seems to be much narrower than anyone else would reasonably use.
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Re:Incase we needed *yet another* wakeup call (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason is simple: We need to stop letting the government make life difficult for American buisiness. The government already destroyed the credit market by subsidizing high risk loans and now we're facing a huge debt problem, not personal debt but government debt. Regulations have become crippling. It's choking American enterprise.
The large percentage of the sub prime loans weren't subsidized. Simple regulations/requirements on loan prudence, capital reserves and transparency for financial instruments like the infamous CDS would've saved the economy far more than changing subsidies. In fact, countries with more tightly regulated financial systems (such as Australia) did much better in the recent crisis than those that didn't.
Sure, the government is at fault (as are the businesses themselves for making imprudent investments), but blaming over-regulation and too much government interaction is just an ideological kneejerk. Sometimes regulations are good, sometimes they're bad but the important thing is you get them right instead of focusing on some narrow ideology.
I've personally always wanted to be in buisiness for myself, but recently it's become all but impossible due to the taxes, regulations and so on. You know what it takes to hire a single employee? Payroll tax, record keeping regulations, insurance, OSHA compliance, registration, W-40, workers comp insurance. I can't do it! It's gotten so bad no matter how bad I want to expand, I can't do it. The current administration has made it so much worse.
Half of the things you mentioned are there for your benefit, in particular when you get sued (just see what happens if you don't have insurance and you haven't kept proper records) or need to take a trip to the accountant. The other half are for the employee's benefit, in that they should be able to work for you without risking serious injury or at least being fairly compensated if they do. Really, it sounds awfully like you want a free ride here; employees are an investment, you have to pay money to make money. They may not be instantly profitable, but if you can't afford to pay for them, it's your business model that's wrong, not the government. As a business owner myself, you have to realize that the benefits of having a business come with a whole bunch of responsibility and risk.
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What the government does to companies is makes it harder for them to compete with each other and harder for them to compete with countries outside of the United States. It also allows them to fuck consumers hard and fast. If we stop letting them fuck consumers, it will cost them money. If we make it to where they can compete, it will cost them money. If we make them more able to compete, it'll give them some money, but we'll be drinking concentrated sulfuric acid out of our drinking wells.
So what can we
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Ah yes, the evil government is stopping you from being an entrepreneur. Of course. The US must be like an even more restrictive version of the USSR if it is impossible to practise capit
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I love simple reasons. Really. They're almost always accurate.
Because fuck knows it wasn't the companies who asked for money to prop up their failing business models with, it was the government's fault for being captured and giving in.
All that's happened in the past 20 years is people lobbying to get more freedoms for a select few companies, the government granting that because of no adequate oversight a
quality doesn't matter (Score:1, Insightful)
Quality doesn't really matter.
When you have enough patents you can always find one that suits your needs.
The U.S. has foolishly decided that it could give up producing any tangible goods and live by simply creating "Intellectual Property". ...)
Well you know what? Other countries can and have always been creating as much "Intellectual Property" as the U.S. all along, but they haven't given up the other productions (Germany, China, India,
Given recent restriction on brain importations imposed by a recent genia
Corporate But Not Corporal (Score:2)
No, we're not losing ground.... nope! (Score:2)
'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.'
Riiiighhht. Just because we used to out-engineer the world by a long shot, and now the world has not only reached parity, but has done so on our own soil, doesn't mean that our position is weakened any! No, not that. Never mind that we train fewer engineers (as a percentage) than ever before. Never mind that we don't pay ou
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Yet another whining, fear-mongering article (Score:1)
When was the exact moment that Slashdot changed from being about devices and tech to trying to make us fear just about everything?
Be afraid:
- Half of US Patents go to external companies!
- Wikileaks are dying! [slashdot.org]
- China is hacking Google! [slashdot.org]
- Hackers take down search engines! [slashdot.org]
Even a tech announcement about Google able to host any file type is focused on how it will be used for malware and bring more vulnerabilities [slashdot.org].
There is only one positive article on the front page: Tech downturn is over [slashdot.org]. Even that is attempted t
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I think your comment would have been much more effective if you'd have disproved any of those stories you quoted. A willingness to ignore the cumulative load of small facts brings the analogy of the ostrich to my mind.
But perhaps that is just me, seeing that the story's line "because with patents, it's important to consider quality, as well as quantity" reminds me of the fact that not too many military people are killed by having a 130mm artillery shell land squarely on their noggin, but lots die from tiny
Quality of patents? (Score:2)
Since when did quality of patent matter ? The significant numbers of patent trolls out there is proof enough that it doesn't much.
Watch out if you care about your future (Score:2)
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But at the cost of their sanity...
Consider quality? (Score:2)
it's important to consider quality, as well as quantity
If the companies with the largest portfolios of new patents in the US include Microsoft, and given a few of the Microsoft patents highlighted in Slashdot over the year... I think the US is worse off than the numbers make it sound.