"The World Intellectual Property Report 2011- The Changing Face of Innovation – a new WIPO publication – describes how ownership of intellectual property (IP) rights has become central to the strategies of innovating firms worldwide. With global demand for patents rising from 800,000 applications in the early 1980s to 1.8 million in 2009, the Report concludes that growing investments in innovation and the globalization of economic activities are key drivers of this trend.

As a result, IP policy has moved to the forefront of innovation policy. In a foreword to the Report, WIPO Director General Francis Gurry notes that “innovation growth is no longer the prerogative of high-income countries alone; the technological gap between richer and poorer countries is narrowing. Incremental and more local forms of innovation contribute to economic and social development, on a par with world-class technological innovations.”

The Report points to a number of implications of the growing demand for IP rights, namely:

• Knowledge markets based on IP rights are on the rise. Evidence suggests that firms trade and license IP rights more frequently. Internationally, royalty and licensing fee revenue increased from USD 2.8 billion in 1970 to USD 27 billion in 1990, and to approximately USD 180 billion in 2009 – outpacing growth in global GDP. New market intermediaries have emerged, such as IP clearinghouses and brokerages.

Evidence shows that knowledge markets enable firms to specialize, allowing them to be more innovative and efficient at the same time. In addition, they allow firms to control which knowledge to guard and which to share so as to maximize learning – a key element of modern open innovation strategies.

• Patenting has grown especially fast for so-called complex technologies – that is, technologies consisting of many separately patentable inventions where patent ownership is often widespread. This partly reflects technological change. For example, complex technologies include most information and communications technologies that have seen rapid advances over the past decades.

At the same time, some complex technology industries – notably, telecommunications, software, audiovisual technology, optics and, more recently, smartphones and tablet computers – have seen firms strategically build up large patent portfolios. As a result, there is concern that increasingly dense webs of overlapping patent rights slow cumulative innovation processes. Collaborative approaches, such as patent pools, can to some extent address such concerns. However, making sure that crowded patent landscapes do not hold back innovation and entrepreneurship demands careful attention by policymakers."

http://www.wipo.int/pressroom/en/articles/2011/article_0027.html

"While all of these efforts point to our country’s commitment to innovation, perhaps no one event of the year tells that story better than the USPTO’s issuance of Patent No. 8,000,000—a sight restoration tool that gives the blind greater independence in their daily lives. It took 75 years to get from patent No. 1 to patent 1 million, yet just over five years to go from patent 7 million to 8 million. So beyond aiding the blind, this remarkable milestone is a testament to the enduring American spirit of innovation—a spirit that continues to unleash new breakthroughs, new markets and new economic opportunities."  USPTO Director's Blog

USPTO Director’s Forum Blog

"The AIA also allows the USPTO to implement a fast-track examination option under which the patent examination process will be completed within 12 months. Getting a key patent can be critical to an entrepreneur hoping to raise capital and grow their business, with 76 percent of startups in the US reporting that venture capital investors consider patents when they make funding decisions. So with over 2,000 applications already submitted under the new acceleration program, many hundreds of office actions mailed and over 20 notices of allowance, businesses of all sizes are already leveraging the new tool to develop, grow and market their products and services with unprecedented swiftness, under the AIA."