Word: patentable
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Smith grew excited. An engineer and refrigeration expert who had installed systems for factories and ice-skating rinks, he had the engineering skills to produce such a clean fuel on an operating scale. "Let's get a patent," Keller suggested. "Start a company...
Smith and Keller adopted the Iroquois word otisca, meaning "water that has gone away," as a name for their process and their company. They worked nights in a garage on a back road southeast of town, won the patent rights and sold the idea to local investors who shared their conviction that a clean-burning, coal-based fuel was potentially an economic gold mine. They interested possible customers -- big customers like Florida Power & Light, American Electric Power, General Electric, General Motors -- and they raised nearly $8 million through a sale of preferred stock...
...become more complicated, less nimble. In capitalism's grand struggle between risk and reward, the forces of caution and liability have subtly, sadly, gained the upper hand. It is not enough just to have a good idea. These days one must know the intricacies of corporate finance, government regulation, patent protection, pricing strategy and sophisticated marketing. And even then, in the utility industry anyway, resistance to change, hardened under multiple layers of bureaucracy and regulation, is likely to stop even a great idea dead in its tracks. The tale of Otisca Industries is instructive and ultimately disturbing...
...there is something about the Otisca story that is more troubling than mere missed chances and bad timing. Statistically, Americans are not as inventive as they used to be. And foreigners are taking a greater share of U.S. patents -- up from less than 20% in 1963 to nearly half in recent years. In 1990 the top four American patent winners were Japanese companies. Innovation is also stifled by investment bankers and venture capitalists, who all too often view start-up companies not for the long-term potential of their new products but as products themselves to be sold quickly...
...treaties contained provisions for reducing emissions of global warming gases and protecting endangered species. In their original form, these provisions would have undercut American patent laws and further restricted the development of industry and technology, making America even less able to compete in the world market. Moreover, Bush objected to provisions requiring America to donate billions of dollars to aid Third World countries in developing environmentally safe technology...