Our slow slide down continues, now our R&D is seeping away. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_52/b4161029131864.htm Has the U.S. lost its Yankee ingenuity? For the first time in 2009, non-Americans were granted more U.S. patents than resident inventors, accounting for 50.7% of new grants, according to recent data from the Patent & Trademark Office. Moreover, for only the second time in the last 25 years, patent applications fell overall in the year ended Sept. 30. The role reversal had been only a matter of time. Led by Japan and the likes of South Korea and China, other countries have been zigzagging their way higher in patent awards for decades, while the number granted to U.S. residents peaked in 2001. Still, the inflection point troubles American tech industry advocates and other analysts. "The U.S. is losing its innovation base," says Robert D. Atkinson, founder and president of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a Washington think tank. U.S. education gets rapped, too. India and China produce more scientists and engineers than the U.S., and international students who attend American universities generally must return home as soon as they've graduated. "We're forcing these people to do their productive work elsewhere," says Mark Chandler, general counsel of Cisco Systems (CSCO). "They should have a green card stapled to their admittance letter." The 2.3% drop in overall patent applications is likely a byproduct of the Great Recession, as companies slash R&D budgets to help maintain profits. The last decline was in 1996, when new global rules on the duration of patent protection went into effect, prompting applicants to hustle and file in 1995. The only other time over the past three decades that the number of patent seekers fell was in 1983, when the U.S. was emerging from a deep recession. As before, the slide in applications will likely last just a year. But 2008 could turn out to be the last time the U.S. won the patent race.
any chance it is related to this: My lazy American students âIâll do better,ââ my student told me, leaning forward in his chair. âI know Iâve gotten behind this semester, but Iâm going to turn things around. Would it be OK if I finished all my uncompleted work by Monday?ââ I sat silent for a moment. âYes. But itâs important that you catch up completely this weekend, so that youâre not just perpetually behind.ââ A few weeks later, I would conduct a nearly identical conversation with two other students. And, again, there would be no tangible result: No make-up papers. No change in effort. No improvement in time management. By the time students are in college, habits can be tough to change. If youâre used to playing video games like âModern Warfareââ or âHaloââ all night, how do you fit in four hours of homework? Or rest up for class? Teaching in college, especially one with a large international student population, has given me a stark - and unwelcome - illustration of how Americansâ work ethic often pales in comparison with their peers from overseas. My âC,ââ âD,ââ and âFââ students this semester are almost exclusively American, while my students from India, China, and Latin America have - despite language barriers - generally written solid papers, excelled on exams, and become valuable class participants. http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/e...rican_students/
I'm not sure this figure is meaningful, as (1) many of the "U.S." inventors are foreign nationals working here in the U.S.; and (2) many of the "foreign" inventors work for multinational companies with a heavy presence in the U.S. The number of U.S. patent applications from China is increasing rapidly, which is good for patent attorneys like me. I learned a few weeks ago, that China's stimulus package reimburses Chinese companies for filing patent applications abroad. Need to get me some of that Chinese government cheese.
Maybe some but not all. I think it's an issue of motivation. Why go into engineering or science if you can pick up a bullshit business major and have a good chance of making it. Those majors are more glorified looking at how a certain percentage of people in that segment do well and live it up. However many of those people are also pieces of shit, but yet we still glorify those lifestyles. What do you expect? You can probably put partial blame on the parents of those children as well. Look at the differences in the households, like two person income, no more stay at home parents. You can't just rely on the school system which is what many of those parents do.
Has the U.S. lost its Yankee ingenuity? ------------------------------- Perhaps. But as long as GS nabs a patent or two, doing Gods work, the US will kick ass when it comes to finance and money is the score card.
Congrads. I worked on one idea, during research someone else had recently received a patent and soon after died. This became a complicated mess for me to pursue with the results looking more and more like a money pit. (Maybe in some other lifetime......)