Patent Law

Andy Grove likens patents to derivatives

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

If the government awards a patent -- granting a limited monopoly -- the onus should be on the owner to develop a product, Grove said.

?You should not grant a monopoly to people who don?t produce,? said Grove, 72. ?Patents have become derivatives of the invention and have a life of their own.?

Derivatives are financial instruments whose value is linked to another security, such as a share of a company, a bond or a mortgage. The spread of mortgage derivatives magnified losses for banks last year, leading to billions in writedowns and a federal bailout.

?I did not pay a whole lot of attention to derivatives before the roof fell in,? Grove said. ?You can tear apart this analogy in multiple ways, but I feel there is some similarity? to patents, he said.

**Also

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2009/05/testimony-on-patent-reform-on-30-april.html

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2008/04/frenkel-and-yen-cisco-kid-and-pancho-or.html

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2006/05/coalition-for-patent-fairness.html

Of Simon, from 4 CHI.-KENT J. INTELL. PROP. 108 :

The need to be "up to date" in Shepardizing cases is well recognized within the legal community.14 In the
present situation pertaining to patent grant rates, the impact of the first paper by Quillen and Webster,
which asserted a 97% patent grant rate, extended later in time than the second paper by Quillen and
Webster which withdrew the 97% patent grant rate and posited (among other numbers) an 85% patent grant
rate. Thus, the Harvard Law Review15and the chief patent counsel of Intel16 referred to the conclusions of
the first Quillen and Webster paper in the year 2003, after the conclusions had been modified in 2002.17

Full post as published by IPBiz on May 04, 2009 (boomark / email).