China had been rising for quite some time, long before it embraced patent maximalism

Summary: With the emergence of high-tech in Korea, China and Singapore (among other Asian states) it's simply unreasonable to blame US demise on patent reform; yet this is exactly what the patent maximalists are dishonestly doing this month

THERE is a strand of articles about number of patents, number of scientific papers and general indices that claim to have accurately ranked countries based on innovation, science and technology etc. In pretty much all of them the major takeaway is that the US is down and China is up. That in itself makes a 'good' (selling lots of ads through hits) headline.

We mentioned this last week because the patent microcosm is exploiting such reports to its own advantage; the patent extremists want policymakers to think that all this is attributable to changes in patent policy. That is of course nonsense, but it carries on unabated. I've already challenged or personally confronted such claims, but patent extremists still see this is a lobbying opportunity. They want politicians to believe that making trolls "great again" will magically restore US leadership.

"But they have an agenda to sell. They're therefore interjecting their own cause-and-effect or false correlations into figures."Perhaps a little belatedly, Watchtroll continues its ritualistic attacks on patent reform. It now piggybacks the above delusion, claiming that all US problems are due to or reducible to patent policy. It's amplified by other patent extremists, who love using "China!" as their excuse for anything bad and somehow believe that all the US has to offer is a pile of patents.

Thankfully, the CCIA's Josh Landau already wrote a quick rebuttal to that. To quote:

During 2017 we saw the 5 year anniversary of the America Invents Act and 7 years of post-Bilski jurisprudence (including Mayo, Myriad, and Alice). And there are also reports that innovation in the U.S. is falling. That makes it a good time to look at the real world impacts of these changes on innovation. The evidence is in, and the evidence shows that the state of U.S. innovation is strong.

[...]

In other words, U.S. industries continue to be leaders in a wide range of technologies. Changes in patent law have not hurt their ability to compete or to innovate.

IAM has taken things further so as to speak about Brexit in the context of these indices. "Note how many EU member states are ranked above the Brits," it wrote. However, we have not even left the EU (at least not yet), so leaping to the conclusion that it is the fault of "Brexit" is also too superficial a judgment. But they have an agenda to sell. They're therefore interjecting their own cause-and-effect or false correlations into figures. ⬆