{"id":73511,"date":"2009-12-09T18:22:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-09T23:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/articles\/20091208\/1003197249.shtml"},"modified":"2009-12-09T18:22:00","modified_gmt":"2009-12-09T23:22:00","slug":"patent-office-decides-to-rush-on-green-tech-patents-rather-than-give-them-scrutiny-they-deserve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/73511","title":{"rendered":"Patent Office Decides To Rush On Green Tech Patents, Rather Than Give Them Scrutiny They Deserve"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jaewon alerts us to the news that the US Patent Office has agreed to fast track “green tech” patents<\/a> to get them through the process much faster. This is the opposite<\/i> of what should be done. One of the biggest problems is that examiners don’t have nearly enough time to thoroughly examine a patent to make sure that it’s really patentworthy (i.e., that it’s both new and non-obvious to those skilled in the art). Speeding up the process seems like a recipe for a lot more bad patents — which doesn’t help the green technology space, it’ll cause significant harm. We’ll end up with more patent thickets, and a huge waste of money on legal battles, rather than actual innovation.<\/p>\n

Yet, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke supported the plan by announcing:<\/p>\n


\n“American competitiveness depends on innovation and innovation depends on creative Americans developing new technology,” Locke said in a statement. “Every day an important green tech innovation is hindered from coming to market is another day we harm our planet and another day lost in creating green businesses and green jobs.”
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This statement makes a bunch of assumptions that simply are not supported by any evidence at all. First, innovation isn’t just about new technology, but about successfully bringing the technology to market. Second, over and over again, studies have shown no causal effect between more patents and greater innovation. It’s amazing that Locke can claim this as if it’s fact when there’s no evidence to support it. Third, there is no hindrance in job creation from a slower patent approval process. Companies can still bring their products to market and can still hire and grow whether or not they have the patent. There are plenty of “patent pending” products on the market. The idea that fast tracking green tech patents creates more jobs is pure fantasy. Apparently, when it comes to intellectual property, the policy of our federal government is entirely faith-based.<\/p>\n

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Jaewon alerts us to the news that the US Patent Office has agreed to fast track “green tech” patents to get them through the process much faster. This is the opposite of what should be done. One of the biggest problems is that examiners don’t have nearly enough time to thoroughly examine a patent to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73511\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}