Why President Obama Has The 'Jobs' Equation Backwards; Supporting Patent Reform That Limits Jobs

Patents

from the major-mistake dept

The President has been talking up how Congress now needs to get focused on “job creation.” That certainly sounds like a good thing, but it seems pretty clear he’s going about it the wrong way. In a recent address, President Obama said that a key component to his job creation strategy was to get the patent reform bill that’s bouncing around Congress to his desk, because he wants a bill that would make it easier for entrepreneurs to patent a new product or idea.

He’s wrong. His reasoning is also wrong. He claims that making it easier to get patents is important “because we can?t give innovators in other countries a big leg up when it comes to opening new businesses and creating new jobs.” But that’s ridiculous, for a variety of reasons. First, it assumes that only one person in the US could come up with a particular invention (and, Mr. President, patents cover inventions, not “products or ideas”) and that the only one person who comes up with an invention is also the only one who can build jobs around it. As for innovators in other countries — what the US patent system does has no impact on their ability to open a new business or create new jobs elsewhere. The logic makes no sense.

But, more importantly, as we’ve been arguing for years, but which the mainstream press is finally waking up to, the very problem of our patent system is that it’s way too easy to get patents, and that limits job creation and is costing companies billions. The way to create more jobs is to have fewer bad patents, to allow for an independent invention defense and to stop thinking that more patents mean more innovation.

Mark Cuban has jumped into the discussion as well, highlighting how the patent system is a significant cost of doing business for all of his companies, and he’d be able to hire a lot more people if all of his companies weren’t getting slammed with bogus patent infringement lawsuits.

Every technology company I have is getting hit by patent lawsuits that are the biggest bunch of bullshit ever. Every week it seems like a new one comes up. Between having to pay our lawyers a lot of money to review each, to increasing insurance rates and settlement costs because we can?t afford to pay to fight the nonsense, it?s an enormous expense. So much so that money that would have gone to new hires to improve and sell the product has to be saved to pay to deal with this bullshit.

I?m not talking about a new company that had an idea that someone beat us to. No sir. I?m talking about companies that have been doing business the same way for years that are getting hit by patent trolls. These aren?t operating companies that are trying to protect their business. These are companies that aggregate patents and raise capital for the sole purpose of suing companies and extorting money from them.

And yet, despite this widespread outrage over a completely broken patent system, no one in Congress has made any move to fix it. Instead, they’re still debating a useless bill that fixes none of the problems, and makes other problems worse. Patent reform has become a lobbyist’s delight, rather than a real fight to help encourage innovation, and it’s too bad that the President seems to be leaning in the direction of holding back innovation and destroying jobs by making the system even worse.

Filed Under: jobs, patents, president obama