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Innovation For Economy
Innovation is an area where America can move forward to improve our economy. Our founding fathers thought small inventors were of such importance, it addressed them in the Constitution. Small entity inventors, those with less than 500 employees, are the creators of America’s breakthroughs and pioneering technologies. But once again, multinational corporations and foreign countries have worked in concert to undermine our small inventors.
The rest of the world relies on large, corporate driven systems which stifle individual creativity for their innovations. Large multinational corporations based in America prefer modest product improvements for their existing products, rather than breakthroughs. Think of Windows 7 versus Google. Windows 7 is just another incremental improvement of dated software, while Google was a bold breakthrough by a couple of guys in a garage in Silicon Valley.
Assault of Patent Laws
So how do the large corporations in America and foreign nations weaken our small inventors? They seek to “harmonize” our patent law with international law. They have whittled away at our patent laws in a number of ways. Congress changed the length of patents and required all patents to be published at eighteen months from filing under the Clinton administration. Since the Patent office is taking thirty-three months now to process patents, this gives infringers a sneak peak at the application before it receives full protection. This effort was led in Congress by Howard Coble who is for harmonization of our patent laws with the rest of the world. It’s very interesting that a conservative republican and the Clinton administration were so much in agreement on this issue.
The assault continues on our patent laws today, and Howard wants to be Chairman of the Intellectual Property subcommittee if reelected. The large entity innovators and foreign governments want to change our patent award process from first to invent to first to file, create a new process to allow post grant opposition to issued patents, among other changes that are all anti-small entity inventor. We need to keep our small inventor system strong, not harmonize it.
Properly Fund the Patent Office
I would also propose we properly fund the US Patent Office. Since 1992, Congress has diverted more than $750 Million from the patent office. There is a backlog of 1.2 million patents, half of which haven’t received a first review. I believe we should provide the Patent Office with $1 Billion of immediate funding to clear the backlog, restore the Patent Office to full functionality and pass legislation to end the diversion of funds from the Patent Office. By clearing this backlog we could possibly gain 1.5 million new jobs from new inventions at an average cost to the taxpayer of about $660 per job.
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North Carolina's 6th Congressional District.
