America is full of good ideas.
In fact, Americans have so many good ideas that they created a record backlog of patent applications at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, presenting both an opportunity and a serious problem for our economy.
Experts say that a single patent can create between three and 10 new jobs, but businesses whose growth depends on the granting of patents for their inventions are being forced to wait over two years before a patent examiner might even pick up their applications. They must wait another year for a final determination to be made.
The pace of American innovation far exceeds the pace of American bureaucracy.
Tasked with ending the logjam, PTO Commissioner David Kappos unveiled an innovative idea: the "Track One" expedited patent examination pilot program.
Businesses with inventions critical to obtaining capital investment and creating jobs would be given the option to skip the line and get an up-or-down determination on their applications within one year. The privilege would cost an additional $4,000 per application -- enough to pay examiners' overtime and hire more staff.
The solution was simple and fair. Inventors with time-sensitive applications could obtain faster consideration without slowing down the processing of applications on the normal track. It would have expedited as many as 10,000 patent applications this year and brought in an additional $40 million in fees.
After working for eight years at a manufacturing company where patents were the lifeblood of our business, I know that Track One would have made a real impact on our economic recovery and the workforce-in-waiting of engineers, tradespeople, laborers, and others ready to get to work.
The program would have started this week if Congress hadn't gotten in the way.
Although PTO finances its operations using the fees it collects on patent applications, PTO must ask Congress for a budget equivalent of what it thinks it will collect in fees that year. Most years, Congress allows PTO to expend up to that amount of money so long as that money comes in. But when PTO takes in more money than it planned for in its budget request, that money gets diverted to the Treasury, preventing PTO from increasing its competency and capacity, slowing down the patent-approval process.
That means, for an innovative program like Track One, PTO had to request a Fiscal Year 2011 budget that already included that $40 million in order to implement the program as it had planned to launch this week. Though it did just that, the continuing resolution passed by Congress last month only funded PTO to its Fiscal Year 2010 level, shortchanging the agency by $85 to $100 million and forcing Commissioner Kappos to pull the plug on the Track One program last week.
If you were looking for ways to limit economic recovery, stifling PTO's ability to grant patents would be pretty high on the list. Fee diversion is effectively a tax on innovation, punishing the very people we ought to be empowering. Congress has indulged in this practice for far too long.
The America Invents Act, which I co-sponsored and which passed the Senate in March by an overwhelming 95-5 vote, would end fee diversion and give PTO the ability to reduce the 700,000-long backlog of patent applications awaiting consideration.
Now America is waiting for the House to pass its own version of the measure, H.R. 1249, which cleared the House Judiciary Committee last month.
Congress' delay in ending patent-fee diversion is costing America jobs at a time when we desperately need to be getting more Americans back to work.
We need to move more good ideas from the PTO's inbox to the marketplace.
I hope Speaker Boehner moves quickly to bring H.R. 1249 up for a vote on the House floor. Every day we fail to act is another day that hundreds of thousands of innovations - and the millions of jobs they can create - remain nothing more than unread good ideas on paper in someone's inbox.
The loss of Track One is proof of that.
Chris Coons is a United States Senator for Delaware.
Follow Sen. Chris Coons on Twitter: www.twitter.com/chriscoons
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-lauder/patently-absurd-or-how-to_b_832703.html?view=print
For even more detail on its problems, see the links from that.
-GML
I support your efforts to stabilize our civilization by allowing the patent system to get better. Thanks.
Patents and the ability to get patents should not be seen as a way to innovate and create jobs, rather they have become a way to disinsentivize innovation. This has especially been the case with software patents. Patents are not what is stopping innovation you have heard to much from lobbyists. A big problem with innovation is run away patent lawsuits from patent holding companies and major tech firms. We don't need more patents, we need less. Patents do not generate jobs, people do.
The congressional logjam is the Republicans giving priority to their social issues, to keep their ignorant base in line so that R's can get reelected. The R's are rabid to stay on their gravy train of bribery, destruction, and obstruction for cash from any source, especially Koch cash.
They have taken no action to encourage job creation. They continue to ply us with the lie that untaxing the wealthy will create jobs. They could not care less whether middle class families are able to pay their bills or have health care or decent education.
We have a patent office to make sure someone claiming an invention is really the inventor. If they are, then they get exclusive rights to their invention for a while (17 years). That gives them an incentive to make this new idea available to the public.
We also honor copyrights for people who create music, books, or movies. All they have to do is write "I made this" on their creation, and they get instant ownership of it for the rest of their life (and more) unless someone else can prove *they* actually created it first.
Why not treat patents and copyright identically?
Artists should have to submit their copyright applications to the Patent and Copyright Office, together with the fees required, so the clerks can ensure that artist really did create the thing. They wait their turn in the same line patent applicants have to wait in. Once their application is approved, they're allowed to claim ownership.
That's fair, isn't it? And artists can still take comfort in knowing that, unlike someone who creates something USEFUL, they will own their creation forever. A hundred years from now, ungrateful descendants they never even met will still be making money from their cleverness.
I'll bet if we made Walt Disney wait two years to release its next film, a ton of money would be thrown into the Patent Office right away to reduce the wait.
Thomas Paine was right. Government is at best a necessary evil. Did you bother to ask inventors what they think about the PTO plan? NO! Did you bother to ask inventors what they thought about the patent bill? NO!
The bill is improperly named. It should be titled the “America Kills Inventors Act”.
Just because they call it “reform” doesn’t mean it is. Patent reform is a fraud on America. This bill will not do what they claim it will. What it will do is help large multinational corporations maintain their monopolies by robbing and killing their small entity and startup competitors and with them the jobs they would have created. According to recent studies by the Kauffman Foundation and economists at the U.S. Census Bureau, “startups aren’t everything when it comes to job growth. They’re the only thing.” This bill is a wholesale slaughter of US jobs. Those wishing to help in the fight to defeat this bill should contact us as below.
Small entities and inventors have been given far too little voice on this bill when one considers that they rely far more heavily on the patent system than do large firms who can control their markets by their size alone. The smaller the firm, the more they rely on patents -especially startups and individual inventors.
Please see http://truereform.piausa.org/ for a different/opposing view on patent reform.
http://docs.piausa.org/
Without some sort of overseas enforcement, the U.S. patent system is nothing more than a method for advertising and transferring technology overseas.