Did I Hear President Obama Utter the Word “Patent?”

By Tracy Mitrano. I don’t think I have ever heard a term of intellectual property in a State of the Union speech before!  How exciting!    And why?  May I recommend Jaffe and Lerner’s book, “Innovation and Its Discontents” for an early, solid treatment of the problems in this area that journalists on occasion have followed up on.  (See link, for example.) 
Why would the President raise this issue to high level of a State of Union address?  I assume because it has become clear to just about everyone, major corporations not least, that the system as revised in the early 1990’s is so flawed as to be serving almost no one except the filing attorneys in the favored state of Texas.  In short, there is a growing consensus that innovation is suffering for the failure to address the unintended consequences of the most recent round of legislative patent revisions. Read more...