Introduction  (Page 11/20)

“Patents are a recently rediscovered corporate weapon.” For most of this century," says Rivette and Kline, "intellectual property played only a minimal role in shaping the commercial and strategic fortunes of American business. Patents were for the most part used defensively, if at all and few companies outside the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, or certain other sectors ever thought of them as strategic assets" (Rivette 2000).

The knowledge economy is all about the commercial exploitation of new ideas. It is essential that in any organisation or company have a carefully planned strategy for the management of it intellectual property. Indeed copyright is now one of the biggest US exports (International Intellectual Property Alliance 2002).

During the research it was found that there exists an uneven playing field regarding intellectual property management and protection that lends itself to the US patent system giving its citizens, universities and companies a significant advantage over its UK counterparts.

• The first being the first to invent. The US system is first to invent and the EU and UK systems are first to file. This is particularly useful to academics that can seek protection from the priority date on which the concept is invented. The second advantage is that a US inventor can make a public disclosure though still be protected in the US market. However the US inventor has sacrificed any Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) application.
• The US patent system also has a Provisional Patent System. This Provisional Patent filing requires a superficial document containing claims only, not the specific details as required by UK patents. This allows greater flexibility in developing the technology and drafting the application.
• The patenting process itself is a cheaper process. US universities and companies enjoy a cost advantage when it comes to obtaining IP protection, along with the economies of a large domestic market and other beneficial idiosyncrasies of the US patent system. For example first 2 year protection of IP costs in the US can be $500, to the UK $5000, offering the same level of IP protection.
• Another key advantage is efficiency of the patent process and its time to grant. US patents can be granted in 18 months to 2 years, whereas the European system can take significantly longer. This is borne out by the work under progress at the University of Wales Swansea, investigating the patenting in universities.

[link] shows national output of granted patents over a period of 11 years, clearly showing the US far ahead of the UK in the race for granted patents. Overall, the UK has a strong science base, but lags in patenting and commercialisation. Also, the UK’s strength in the life sciences masks lower performance in other areas of science and technology. Current levels of UK innovation are insufficient to drive UK productivity growth and close the UK productivity gap versus key competitors (DTI 2003).