Completed
Regional focus
North America
Topics
The U.S. patent system is in an accelerating race with human ingenuity and investments in innovation. In response to weaknesses including questionable patent quality, rising transaction costs, impediments to the dissemination of information through patents, and international inconsistencies, a National Academies committee—in its report, A Patent System for the 21st Century—urged major changes to the way the U.S. patent system operates and informed legislation to that effect.
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Consensus
·2004
The U.S. patent system is in an accelerating race with human ingenuity and investments in innovation. In many respects the system has responded with admirable flexibility, but the strain of continual technological change and the greater importance ascribed to patents in a knowledge economy are expos...
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Description
The Science, Technology and Economic Policy Board (STEP) is undertaking a 33-month project in two phases to provide answers to guide policy on intellectual property rights (IPR) over the next decade and beyond. In the first phase, the Board convened East and West Coast workshops of economists, legal scholars and a few practitioners to identify where there may be problems of inadequate or over-protection of IPRs that need attention. In the second phase, an expert study committee will be appointed to commission analyses and some short-term empirical research on the issues identified in Phase One, primarily with respect to the operation of the patent system and enforcement of trade secret protection and their effects on new technologies or newly-patented technologies (biotechnology, software, and to a lesser extent semiconductors). The committee will consider the results of this work along with previous research and the experiences of committee members and others, develop consensus findings and recommendations, and issue a report.
Contributors
Committee
Richard C. Levin
Co-Chair
Mark B. Myers
Co-Chair
John H. Barton
Member
Robert P. Blackburn
Member
Wesley M. Cohen
Member
Frank Collins
Member
Kenneth W. Dam
Member
William Davidow
Member
Rochelle C. Dreyfuss
Member
Bronwyn H. Hall
Member
Joel Klein
Member
Dan McCurdy
Member
Rob Merges
Member
Gerald Mossinghoff
Member
Gail K. Naughton
Member
Richard R. Nelson
Member
Jim Pooley
Member
William J. Raduchel
Member
Pamela Samuelson
Member
Stephen A. Merrill
Staff Officer
Sponsors
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Department of Commerce
Merck & Co., Inc.
NASA
Procter & Gamble Company
Staff
David Dierksheide
Lead