Last September, our esteemed leaders in Washington passed a law reforming America's patent system called the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act. At the time, the promise from every politician in support of the Act was that it would create jobs. They swore that if we just passed patent reform, it would unleash an avalanche of new businesses that would hire more Americans. "Patent reform equals jobs" was the unmistakable guarantee our politicians made to us.
President Obama's re-election website states:
President Obama signed the America Invents Act, historic patent reform legislation that will help American entrepreneurs bring inventions to market sooner, helping to create new businesses and new jobs.
The America Invents Act's cosponsor, Sen. Patrick Leahy, said: "It should ensure our moving forward to make the changes needed to unleash American innovation and create jobs."
Charles Schumer said: "The America Invents Act is fundamentally a jobs bill."
President Obama's Director of the Patent Office, David Kappos, said: "The America Invents Act is tremendous down payment on the aggressive jobs agenda President Obama has laid out for our country."
But President Obama and other Democrats weren't the only ones making these promises to the American people. Republicans were making the same claims.
The America Invents Act's cosponsor, Lamar Smith, said: "H.R. 1249 improves the patent system, ensuring the protection and promotion of intellectual property that spurs economic growth and generates jobs."
Bob Goodlatte said: "This will allow independent inventors, as well as small-, medium- and large-sized enterprises to grow our economy and create jobs."
Ben Quayle said: "As part of the Republican Conference's overall effort to spur job creation and economic growth, I urge passage of this important legislation."
But these politicians were in large part just parroting the lines fed to them by lobbyists. Lamar Smith admitted as much when he said: "To quote the Chamber of Commerce: 'This legislation is crucial for American economic growth, jobs, and the future of U.S. competitiveness.'"
If you didn't know already, the Chamber of Commerce is the largest lobbing entity in America and nothing but an unashamed front for corporate America. See this Economist article for more about how powerful they are in Washington.
Lobbyists were even able to get another part of the America Invents Act to include a provision letting corporations that had lied to the American people off the hook for their actions. How that's supposed to create jobs is a mystery to me. Call me a radical, but I think allowing corporations to lie to the American people is not a good thing.
Despite all the promises about patent reform creating jobs, nine months later we have yet to see any increase in American jobs as a result of the America Invents Act. May's dismal jobs report of only 69,000 new jobs was even worse than April's report of 77,000 jobs, which was pretty miserable itself, and the absolute worst jobs report since passage of the America Invents Act.
One is left to ask, when will we get all these new jobs the politicians promised us during the patent reform process? As I wrote last month, I fear we never will, that the America Invents Act will actually harm American businesses and cause a net loss of jobs for Americans. I'd love to be proven wrong, but sadly doubt I ever will. Maybe next time we shouldn't be so fast to believe what our politicians promise us.
Daniel B. Ravicher: Is Obama's Patent Reform Hurting American Small Businesses
Karin Kamp: Number of Women Patent Holders Surge
Daniel B. Ravicher: The Patent Pollution Problem: Its Causes, Effects and Solutions
1. Intellectual Capital i.e.Strong property rights. AIA weakens property rights in many ways, foremost the change from Inventor to First to file. This benefits large multi-nationals who historically are not the big job producers.
2. Financial Capital. The passage of Sarbanes Oxley dried up venture capital in this country for startups. Companies going public are almost non-existent compared to a decade ago before it passed.
3. Human Capital. Accounting rule changes inhibit stock options-used to attract talent to new companies.
All studies show that 97% of net new jobs are created by startups and small business. Of that 97%, the vast majority of creation is due to disruptive, technological industries. These types of companies are based on strong R&D. The AIA has destroyed strong property rights and regulations have crippled the ability of new technology companies to grow at rates we saw at the beginning of the last decade.
It's amazing how so many people to continue to believe that businesses or entrepreneurs are "job creators." More amazing is some people continue to believe government can create jobs - they can only buy jobs. Obama's latest jobs plan spends $500 billion mostly preserving existing jobs and has the hope of 1 million new jobs. With 15 million unemployed and another 15 million underemployed, 1 million new jobs is totally insignificant. If it was true that government could create jobs, why not create 20-30 million of them?
I believe solving our most challenging problems with economically-viable solutions will enable existing demand to create new jobs. My work is here:
http://www.solutioneur.com
We need to end the dishonest conversation about "job creators." It is only demand. If you want to know where the next jobs come from, look for demand. It's there.
As with most political hay making, this proved not to be true. Had even one of his advisers looked into this, it would have been obvious.
Please see http://truereform.piausa.org/default.html for a different/opposing view on patent reform.
http://docs.piausa.org/
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. Congress tinkering with patent law while gagging inventors is like a surgeon operating before examining the patient.
"patent reform"...America Invents Act, vers 2.0, 3.0...
“This is not a patent reform bill” Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) complained, despite other democrats praising the overhaul. “This is a big corporation patent giveaway that tramples on the right of small inventors.”
Senator Cantwell is right. Just because they call it “reform” doesn’t mean it is. The agents of banks, huge multinationals, and China are at it again trying to brain wash and bankrupt America.
They should have called these bills the America STOPS Inventing Act or ASIA, because that’s where they’re sending all our jobs.
The patent bill (vers 2, 3, etc) is nothing less than another monumental federal giveaway for banks, huge multinationals, and China and an off shoring job killing nightmare for America. Even the leading patent expert in China has stated the bill will help them steal our inventions. Who are the supporters of this bill working for??