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June 11, 2009

Why You Should Care about the Patent Office

Marc Tracy

bizbox.slate.com

Summary

The AP  takes note  of one little-reported consequence of the credit crash, the recession, and the rest that helps more fully fles

 The AP takes note of one little-reported consequence of the credit crash, the recession, and the rest that helps more fully flesh out their implications. Namely, applications for patents are down. The article blames the recession for this trend: it has driven down both big corporations' R&D budgets as well as venture capital funding for smaller, more entrepreneur-type innovational efforts. Even "basement inventors"--people who invent stuff alone in their basement--whose normal ways of accessing credit have been shut off and whose discretionary income is likely to have shrunk have been filing fewer patent applications.


And that is bad not just for innovators but for everyone else, too. As the head of the patent examiners' union puts it, "Innovation is the way America generally gets out of downturns." Indeed, innovational entrepreneurship is also the natural thing for people to turn to during recessions.



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