The Biggest Job Creator You Never Heard Of: The Patent Office [View All]

As the U.S. President and Congress desperately search for ways to regain the 8.4 million jobs lost during the current recession, the greatest opportunity of all to spur job growth in our stalled economy may ironically lie right under their noses: in the Patent Office.

For all its obscurity within the bowels of the federal bureaucracy, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) may be the single greatest facilitator of private sector job creation and economic growth in America. It is this agency, after all, that issues the patents that small businesses — especially technology startups — need to attract venture capital investment, develop new products and services, and serve their historic role as the primary source of almost all new net job growth in America. According to one recent study, 76 percent of startup executives say that patents are essential to their funding efforts.

Unfortunately, the diversion of hundreds of millions of dollars in USPTO fees over the years and inadequate funding levels have left the patent office with an unprecedented backlog of 1.2 million patent applications waiting to be examined. The result, says David Kappos, the new USPTO director, has been catastrophic.

"Hundreds of thousands of groundbreaking innovations are sitting on the shelf literally waiting to be examined," he told an audience at a biotechnology industry conference this week. " jobs not being created, life-saving drugs not going to the marketplace, companies not being funded, businesses not being formed."

How many jobs are not being created because of the patent backlog?

"Millions," said Kappos. Millions of jobs!
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http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/05/the_biggest_job_creator_you_ne.html