Patent Reforms Could End Up Stifling Innovation

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office this week announced the opening of its first set of field offices, coming soon to Silicon Valley, Detroit, Denver, and Dallas. This move was mandated by the America Invents Act of 2011, the most important recent effort to overhaul the countryâ??s badly broken patent system. Unfortunately, both the new offices and the larger legislative framework reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of whatâ??s gone wrong with patents. The underlying assumption is that our major patent problem is that applications are processed too slowly. In fact, the problem is that weâ??re granting far too many patents, tying up vast swathes of industry in litigation and negotiation rather than innovation.