Opportunism: How to Change the World- One Idea at a Time - Levi Shapiro

The US patent system is failing Developed 231 years ago by the first US Patent Examiner Thomas Jefferson there is now a backlog of 12 million applications Of these almost 750000 have never even been opened Similarly the number of pending Board of Patent Appeals exparte cases grew from 742 in 2005 to over 20000 today In fact according to a study by the London School of Economics the US leads the world in the cost of forgone innovation employers and jobs that don39t exist because of the inability to obtain a patentSeeking to remedy the situation the Obama Administration doubled the number of patent reviewers and championed the Patent Reform Act of 2011 However these actions simply modify a failed system In the new book quotOpportunity How to Change the World One Idea at a Timequot Israeli property attorney Shraga Biran advocates a completely different approach toward intellectual property law Biran would stimulate more economic opportunity for the creative scientific and artistic classes by recognizing and protecting nascent IDEAS as an asset rather than simply the finished product He proposes a quotright of opportunityquot as an alternative to patent law enabling individual members of society to more directly profit from the exploitation of their ideasCurrently the startup community perceives patents as a tool to inhibit innovation That was the conclusion of a 2009 research study from UC Berkeley Today less than one quarter of software startups even bother to file a patent Instead the patent system is used by large companies to extort license fees from competitors Pam Samuelson one of the Berkeley report coauthors concludes the beneficiaries of the patent system are not entrepreneursThe economy today is dominated by intangible wealth According to a 2010 World Bank report by Susana Ferreira and Kirk Hamilton 6080 of the world39s wealth is based on intangible assets Despite this legal frameworks ignore the contribution of intangible human social and institutional capital while ascribing a premium to physical assets For example in the last quarter of the twentieth century the patent system enabled drug companies to raise prices by 1267 while simultaneously reducing headcount The fantastic wealth accumulation and 40 gross margins the industry enjoyed did not accrue to individual scientists university research labs or even the greater humanity it went to patent holders and patent trollsCiting the internet as an example of social privatization Biran puts forth a theory of opportunity as a dynamic and inclusive concept He advocates a Registry of Ideas and Public Market to facilitate free exchange through open access Idea owners should be able to enjoy the economic benefits of their efforts in a system that remunerates the broad exchange of ideas Biran39s system rejects neoliberalism in favor of new property frameworks and social privatization quotThe new Opportunism can bring about a Renaissance in applied knowledge and a more stable societyquot While Biran39s proposal is unlikely to be adopted in the shortterm most of us would agree that real fundamental change is required In the words of Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz maintaining the current system is like quotgiving a massive blood transfusion to a patient that has been suffering from internal hemorrhagequotLevi Shapiro is a Partner at TMT Strategic Advisors a research and strategy firm focusing on the technology media and telecom sectors He can be reached at levitmtstratcom or via twitter levshapiroRead all Levi39s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at Unleavened MediaCheck us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggerscomFollow our Twitter updates MediaBizBloggerMediaBizBloggers is an openthought leadership blog platform for media marketing and advertising professionals companies and organizations To contribute contact Jackmediadvisorygroupcom The opinions expressed in MediaBizBloggerscom are not those of Media Advisory Group its employees or other MediaBizBloggerscom contributors Media Advisory Group accepts no responsibility for the views of MediaBizBloggers authors

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Opportunism: How to Change the World- One Idea at a Time - Levi Shapiro

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