Restore Patent Funding to Create Jobs
Last Updated on Friday, 6 August 2010 09:36
Written by dbhalling Friday, 6 August 2010 09:36 |
A NY times op-ed piece suggests that a relatively minor investment of $1 billion in the US Patent Office would create 1.5 million jobs for a cost of $660 per job. Note that the $1 billion in funding would actual be repayment of user fees that Congress has stolen from the Patent
Office over the last two decades. The conclusion of the authors is:
So our guess is that restoring the patent office to full functionality would create, over the next three years, at least 675,000 and as many as 2.25 million jobs. Assuming a mid-range figure of 1.5 million, the price would be roughly $660 per job — and that would be 525 times more cost effective than the 2.5 million jobs created by the government’s $787 billion stimulus plan.
To encourage still more entrepreneurship, Congress should also offer small businesses a tax credit of up to $19,000 for every patent they receive, enabling them to recoup half of the average $38,000 in patent office and lawyers’ fees spent to obtain a patent. Cost, after all, is the No. 1 deterrent to patent-seeking, the patent survey found.
For the average 30,000 patents issued to small businesses each year, a $19,000 innovation tax credit would mean a loss of about $570 million in tax revenue in a year. But if it led to the issuance of even one additional patent per small business, it would create 90,000 to 300,000 jobs.
Please read the full article.
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[...] Congress has stolen about $2B in user fees from the US Patent Office over the last two decades. This has hurt innovation, job growth, and the economy. See Restore Patent Funding to Create Jobs. [...]