“The High Tech Inventors Alliance (HTIA) is pleased to see that the US Chamber’s Annual International Intellectual Property Rankings has, since its inception in 2012, once again ranked the United States as #1 in Innovation."
“However, the Chamber’s analysis fails to acknowledge the contribution of both the Court and the Patent Office in ensuring patent quality.
“From the point of view of the high tech industry, the Supreme Court decision to eliminate non-technological patents from the system and the PTO IPR process, which has efficiently weeded out patents that should have never issued in the first place, have strengthened the US patent system and its ability to support innovation.
Since the 2011 America Invents Act and the Supreme Courts Alice decision, innovation has increased. For example:
R&D spending in the United States has risen significantly since 2012. The fifty U.S. companies with the highest R&D spends—which includes leading companies in high tech, pharmaceutical, automobile, and aerospace industries—collectively invested $217.6 billion in R&D in FY 2017[i]—a 45% increase from 2012 levels.
Venture capital funding in the United States has increased dramatically since 2012. The total of venture capital investment has risen consistently over the last 15 years and nearly doubled from 2012 to 2016, from $32.8 billion to $61 billion—an 86% increase.[ii] Venture capital funding in the year following the Alice decision was at its highest in the past 15 years.
In the past five years, the United States climbed from 10th to 4th in the rankings of the Global Innovation Index (created by Cornell University, INSEAD, and the World Intellectual Property Organization, an agency of the United Nations) which measures the innovation performance of 127 countries.
An empirical study by law Professor Brian Love of Santa Clara University released this week concludes, “that inter partes review is, as Congress intended, eliminating patents that appear to be of relatively low quality.”
The High Tech Inventors Alliance is comprised of eight technology companies: Adobe, Amazon, Cisco, Dell, Google, Intel, Oracle and Salesforce. These companies have over 447,000 employees in the United States, have invested $62.9 billion in research and development in the past year and hold a total of over 115,000 U.S. patents.
Press Contact Eileen Doherty White House Writers Group, Inc. edoherty@whwg.com 202-295-2315
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[i] Annual R&D spends are reported for fiscal years ending June 30. See PwC Global Innovation 1000 Methodology (available at https://www.strategyand.pwc.com/innovation1000#Methodology).
[ii] PwC / CBInsights MoneyTree™ data explorer (available at http://www.pwc.com/moneytree).