innovation

Our Current Policy is to Beg

Our Current Policy is to Beg - Ralph Gomory

Gomory is referring to the United States response to the mercantile trade practices of China. In the piece, The Innovation Delusion, Gomory exposes the absurdity the United States can create intellectual property, advanced R&D and innovate it's way out of the trade deficit. Gomory also calls out Thomas Flat Brain Friedman, one of my favorite things to see. (I have yet to figure out how such nonsense even gets published never mind on the best sellers' list!)

Now this is thinking outside of the box - online auction for patents

Now this is thinking outside the box. An online auction for patents.

The world can be a rough place for independent inventors. They can often find themselves in court, battling big corporations, spending piles of money on lawyers and leaving it up to judges and juries to determine the value of their hard-won patents.

That could be changing. Wrangling over patents is beginning to move out of the courtroom and into the marketplace. A flurry of new companies and investment groups has sprung up to buy, sell, broker, license and auction patents. And venture capital and private equity is starting to pour into the field.

The arrival of these new business-minded players, according to patent experts and economists, could lead to a robust marketplace for patents, where value is determined not so much by court judgments but by buyers and sellers, perhaps, someday, like eBay.