Thomas Edison had a favorite economic theory. He felt that the rapid development of inventions and new technology created most of the wealth of nations. Benjamin Franklin felt the same way. That’s why he promoted the concept of the U.S. Patent Office geared to give a short term monopoly to an inventor in exchange for full public disclosure of all the details and "secrets" of the invention.
Most other nations of the world followed suite, setting up their own patent offices, but with slightly less democratic motives and principles. On the surface it would appear there is little difference between the U.S. Patent Office and those of other countries. For the most part they are just a bit more expensive, and charge fees for the patent’s maintenance. Even the U.S. has done that to a limited degree. Yet the evidence is that the majority of radically new inventions, basic patents starting new businesses, still come from the United States.
We make the argument that a nation cannot afford ANY hindrances to the filing and maintenance of a patent. If the relatively small differences between the U.S. and Europe can so skew the ratio of patent filings on the most important class of patents (that is, basic patents that found new industries), then the removal of the relatively large existing fees and legal barriers to patents would create a tremendous outflow of inventive productivity.
Lawmakers argue, "what is a thousand dollars in patent fees to a corporation that will make millions off of a patent?" But that is a severely flawed argument. If ONLY corporations can afford patenting, the 99.9% of Americans who are not engineers employed by a corporation are left out in the cold. And it belies another problem. Legal fees boost the cost to $5000 to $10,000 per invention.
Another lawmaker will argue, "But in today’s economy it isn’t unreasonable for an individual to invest $5000 in his invention." But this is five thousand dollars of wasted capital. This is the very money that should have been spent setting up a production line in his garage.
And that is only the tip of the iceberg. How many inventors are there like us? At last count we have over 5000 patentable inventions sitting in our notebooks, waiting for the $25,000,000 it would cost to patent the lot of them. The way it is, we will pick and choose, patenting one here and there; burying the rest uselessly in our notebooks. Edison patented 1040 inventions in his lifetime. But the burden involved in getting a patent is greater today. If we spent every minute of the rest of our life in patent attorney’s offices we doubt if we could ever equal Edison’s output. In fact, we firmly expect the number of inventions languishing in our notebooks will increase, for the rest of our life, at a rate higher than we could ever patent. That ought not to be.
We would be willing to bet that somewhere in some inventors hidden notebook lies the secret to boosting automotive fuel efficiency by 20%. That could keep us from crumbling in the next war or fuel crisis. That somewhere there lurks an idea for a better fabric, for a faster printer, for a cheaper photograph, for a faster computer. We would also bet that all of the money collected in patent fees and patent attorney fees and patent court cases is peanuts compared to the money that would pour into the economy from the development of any one of these ideas. And these ideas are minor improvements on existing technologies. History records the greatest economic impact from new technologies, things that did not exist twenty years ago. And history records that those are the ideas least likely to come from the R&D department of a major corporation.
Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and many other economists over the last several centuries have tried to pinpoint the source of the "Wealth of Nations". Is it labor? Is it capital? Does it have its origin in the sweat of the risk taker or the ditch digger? Edison was (rightly) convinced that the efficient and rapid development of new technologies caused a leapfrogging of national wealth. That if the United States was a nation with a million inventors that we would soon leave Europe and the rest of the world in the dust.
Today the fees charged by the patent office, the difficulty of doing effective on-line patent searches, the strict requirements of patent drawings, and the exorbitant fees charged by patent attorneys who know how to navigate the system effectively block 99% of those million inventors from ever filing a patent.
It has been argued that the number of U.S. patent filings has been increasing each year. That there is no problem, and that the fees and paperwork are not barriers. That is, at best a half-truth. If you examine where the inventions are coming from, and who owns them, you will see a disturbing trend. A major corporation comes up with a new idea. Then their engineers and attorneys file dozens or even hundreds of patents to cover every conceivable variation and separate component part.
These are not "basic patents", ideas that create new industries. Maybe idea qualifies, and the rest are tag on afterthoughts to satisfy the lawyers of the unbreakable nature of the central patent. Corporations are filing more and more patents on smaller and smaller components and making more and more mass filings to cover every aspect of one particular good idea. It’s good business. It’s not wrong. But it greatly distorts the statistical picture of U.S. technology coming out of the patent office.
We are inventors, the originator of most of the ideas of Invention Concepts. We definitely have a vested interest in the patent issue. If there were simple practical and streamlined means of applying for a patent, doing much of it online and allowing for a little more amateur practice it would be possible once again for individuals to file their own patent applications. While we are by nature a fiscal and political conservative, we believe Edison right; that this is one area where the government should lay out a hefty subsidy to private enterprise and creativity. Perhaps there could even be a day when you could E-mail a rough sketch and description and a government patent agent could E-mail you back with suggestions, evaluations, and possible infringing patents.
Perhaps we need cheaper patents, fewer issued, and confined to more basic concepts. We are looking for the light bulb, the gasoline engine, the transistor, and the laser. Anyone who invents such should be rewarded and not in any way hindered or discouraged. In fact, we would like to see the best and brightest, the most original and the most profound inventions to be able to be patented by anyone, and essentially for free. Our national wealth depends on it.
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