DC Journal: Blundering Toward the Demise of American Innovation by Brian O’Shaughnessy
The American inventor is under attack, and it’s coming from our government. Lawmakers harp about patents as “monopolies” that purportedly prop up prices; the executive supports a grand technology giveaway as pandemic relief; and the judiciary has confused the concept of a “patent-eligible” invention and whittled away at the inventor’s exclusive right.
The U.S. patent system affords an exclusive right to inventors who bring forth new and useful discoveries — things that did not exist, and, were it not for our patent system, might never exist.
This market-based incentive, revolutionary at its inception and devised to preclude a grant of monopoly, has given rise to innumerable useful inventions and made ours the most innovative nation on earth.