Innovative Trends
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued their Annual List of Top 10 Organizations Receiving Most U.S. Patents this week, with the byline "American Innovation Continues to Top the Field" [Link].
The USPTO director, Jon Dudas (who looks like a slimmer, younger version of Kahlifornia's Gubernator), declares that "America's technological and economic strength is the result of its tremendous ingenuity"(!)
Looking at the USPTO's Annual Report [Link], we find that the "World's Best Patent Office" has a Patent Allowance Error Rate Target of 4%. They granted 165,485 patents last year - that's 6620 patents planned to be incorrect. And their actual performance was even lower, at 4.6%! Given their annual budget of $1.5 Billion and a staff of 4,258 full-time patent examiners, this seems a tad high. Not exactly Six Sigma. The last 4 years haven't been much better, with performances of 5.4%, 4.2%, 4.4% and 5.3% [Link]. On average, they take 29 months to issue a patent, 21 months of which are spend waiting to begin processing the application.
I could get on a tirade about the US losing its IP superiority, creating restrictive immigration policies, the declining number of foreign students entering the US, American students shying away from research and computer science etc. But let me save that for another day.
1 IBM CorporationI counted 4 American companies here - hardly "Topping the field". This list has not changed much from the last few years [2004, 2003, 2002] either. That statement is as disingenuous as the Big 3 Auto Manufacturers calling themselves American [Link].
2 Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
3 HP
4 Matsushita Electric
5 Samsung Electronics
6 Micron Technology
7 Intel Corporation
8 Hitachi
9 Toshiba Corporation
10 Fujitsu Limited
BURLINGTON, Iowa - Terris Cooper ... sells baked goods from behind his white Toyota Avalon. The farmers, he says, feel compelled to buy American cars out of a misplaced solidarity with blue-collar autoworkers. "They think you're hurting the working man by driving a foreign car." But his car was made in Kentucky, he argues. "Who am I hurting?" [Link]
The USPTO director, Jon Dudas (who looks like a slimmer, younger version of Kahlifornia's Gubernator), declares that "America's technological and economic strength is the result of its tremendous ingenuity"(!) Looking at the USPTO's Annual Report [Link], we find that the "World's Best Patent Office" has a Patent Allowance Error Rate Target of 4%. They granted 165,485 patents last year - that's 6620 patents planned to be incorrect. And their actual performance was even lower, at 4.6%! Given their annual budget of $1.5 Billion and a staff of 4,258 full-time patent examiners, this seems a tad high. Not exactly Six Sigma. The last 4 years haven't been much better, with performances of 5.4%, 4.2%, 4.4% and 5.3% [Link]. On average, they take 29 months to issue a patent, 21 months of which are spend waiting to begin processing the application.
I could get on a tirade about the US losing its IP superiority, creating restrictive immigration policies, the declining number of foreign students entering the US, American students shying away from research and computer science etc. But let me save that for another day.
[Original story from Kottke].
