Financial Times: US patent laws need updating for today’s budding industries by Gary Locke
Most Americans never give a passing thought to patent laws — intellectual property policies hardly make for riveting dinner table conversations. But they are very much a kitchen table issue. When I led the Department of Commerce, I saw first hand the impact of patent policies on our economy — and ordinary American workers.
Take, for example, the more than 4mn workers in the US automotive industry. Their livelihoods stem largely from a single patent: the motor carriage patented by Henry Ford in 1901, which paved the way for the famed Model T automobile in 1908 and the explosion of affordable consumer cars shortly afterward. Without the ability to protect his future inventions from theft or copying without fair compensation, Ford may never have taken the risk of moving from a small farm in Michigan to Detroit aged 16 to learn mechanical engineering.
Patents are as important for today’s transformative companies as they were for Ford. Entrepreneurs and start-ups in budding industries ranging from artificial intelligence to genetic medicine are toiling away on the technologies of tomorrow — and they need reliable protection for their intellectual property.