Word: patents
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...Take up a sport that is not associated with a country club. Anything that can be played in the backyard goes down well. The Kennedys still own the patent on touch football, and Bush expropriated horseshoes. Badminton or volleyball might do nicely. And keep running, as long as you look funny in the shorts. Beware of Lycra. Caveat jogger: pin to your locker a picture of the ashen-faced Jimmy Carter collapsing near Camp David to remind yourself that you have moved to the tropics and that running in the heat should be kept at a stately pace...
WHETHER YOU THINK GENES were invented by God or by Nature, it seems the height of arrogance -- and absurdity -- to seek patents on the DNA that lies within human cells. Yet absurdity was not the reason the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office gave for turning down the National Institutes of Health in its bid to do just that. Instead, it was that the genes failed to meet the standards of novelty, usefulness and nonobviousness required if an invention is to be protected. Among other things, said the patent office, the descriptions of the genes had been published before, so they...
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...