Tag: innovation
Founders On Patents: Jefferson On A Farm Patent
Last week, I covered a newly digitized letter from John Q. Adams, describing the concern the PTO’s first Commissioner had regarding whether the patents he was issuing were really valid and the harms...
Cisco, Google, MIT, and USPTO Team Up To Create Prior Art Archive
One of the biggest problems in patent examination is actually finding prior art. When it comes to patents and patent applications, that’s relatively easy—examiners have access to databases of al...
Yet More Evidence That NPEs Are Harmful To Innovation
Profs. Cohen, Gurun, and Kominers first published a paper collecting evidence of the impacts of NPEs on innovation in 2014. Recently, they updated the paper, incorporating additional evidence and re...
CCIA, ACT File Amicus Brief In FTC v. Qualcomm
Yesterday, CCIA and ACT filed an amicus brief in the FTC’s case against Qualcomm in the Northern District of California. As explained in the brief, the FRAND obligation which patent owners volunta...
USPTO Strategic Plan Focuses On Patent Owners, Ignores Public
Last week, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) posted a draft of its 2018-2022 Strategic Plan. While many of the goals set out in the plan are important—for example, improving the ability...
The Inventor Protection Act Would Actually Harm U.S. Innovation
Yesterday, I went through the serious defects in the findings Rep. Rohrabacher based his Inventor Protection Act on. Today, I’ll discuss the problems with the legal changes the bill seeks to make....
SUCCESS Act Is A Good Start—But Could Be Improved
Last week, Rep. Comstock (R-VA), along with 7 other cosponsors, introduced H.R. 6390, the “Study of Underrepresented Classes Chasing Engineering and Science Success Act of 2018” (SUCCESS) Act. T...
More Evidence Is In—Alice Has Been Good For R&D
Tuesday marked one milestone—utility patent number 10,000,000. But it also marked a far more important milestone—the 4-year anniversary of the Alice decision. Looking back on those 4 y...
To Promote The Progress
Today, the ten millionth utility patent issued.[1. Technically speaking, patent 10,000,000 isn’t the ten millionth patent, or even the ten millionth utility patent. There are around 700,000 desi...