Patent News


Apr. 22, 2015

The American Spectator: Conservatives and Patent Reform Continued, by Rick Santorum

This post originally appeared in The American Spectator on April 22, 2015.


Comprehensive patent legislation is bad for small business and entrepreneurship in America, and conservatives should join me in supporting only targeted change to deal with abuse of the system. Gary Shapiro, whose organization represents giant technology companies, declares that H.R. 9, the so-called “Innovation Act,” would “protect small businesses and innovation… through transparency” in patent litigation. But Shapiro’s critique of my views misses the point entirely: H.R. 9 would have serious unintended implications for an entire innovation ecosystem in which small businesses and entrepreneurs thrive.

Patent rights are essential to innovators across our economy, from the garage inventor who creates the next generation bicycle, to engineers at research and development firms working on the future of wireless communications, to university professors and graduate students or small biotechnology firms developing cures for devastating diseases. The enormous resources these innovators spend on inventing can only be recouped by the promise of a strong patent right. Only with robust enforceable patents can the ideas generated by inventors today attract the investment to create the products and technologies of tomorrow.

The right of inventors to profit from their ideas has been a critical reason why the United States has led the world in innovation and creativity for centuries. Today, patent intensive industries in general contribute $9 trillion in value annually to the economy, with IP-based activity making up more than half of U.S. GDP. These industries support nearly 56 million jobs each year, more than a quarter of all jobs in the economy.

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