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Another Patent Myth Crumbles: The Idea that Patents are for the Little Guys: In Fact, Patents Granted to Small Entities are GREATLY in Decline

By Andis Kaulins

To get patent reform dialogue to a sane level it is absolutely imperative to get rid of a lot of the patent myths that otherwise pervade the discussion.

One of these myths is the popular Cinderella idea that patents are something for the "little man".

In fact, as Scott Shane writes at Small Business Trends, Patents Granted to Small Entities are in Decline. Look at the graph that Shane has at that web page.

Worse, as Shane observes, the USPTO classifies universities as "small entities" so that if these were to be filtered out of the equation, what is left? Virtually nothing.

Patents are a game for the "big players" and patent reform laws should be written with that important truth in mind.

Modern patent law has much more to do with corporate and academic warfare than with protecting the inventions of John Q. Citizen.

Full post as published by LawPundit on August 26, 2010 (boomark / email).