Innovation deferred

Opinion: June 5, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: The United States is leaving billions of dollars in potential economic growth on the table every year because of the massive backlogs at the Patent and Trademark Office. The estimated $6.4 billion loss, calculated by London Economics, a British research group, dwarfs that of other nations and for the first time puts the problem into perspective.

A Milwaukee Journal Sentinel series last year by reporters John Schmid and Ben Poston found a patent office overwhelmed by a backlog of 1.2 million patent applications. By its own standards, a patent examination should take an average 18 months, but the patent office hasn’t met that standard in a generation.

The reason has much to do with money. Repeated congressional raids of Patent Office fees have left the agency crippled. Schmid and Poston found that from 1992 to 2004, Congress skimmed off $752 million, which prevented the agency from hiring enough help to keep up with its workload. In the current fiscal year, Congress took an additional $100 million.

Innovation

The London Economics study illustrates why this matters. Patents protect innovation. Without that protection, companies are unable to realize the full potential of their discoveries. The study said that the $6.4 billion in annual forgone innovation is enough to fund 1,000 start-up companies with venture capital.

Congress should quit raiding patent office fees and give the patent office a budget boost to help it clear the backlog.