mark_15
08-07-2007, 03:41 PM
Mother of invention
From Economist.com
WHEN it comes to being awarded patents, the Japanese are world champions. Japan has more than 1,200 patents per million people—more than twice as many as Switzerland, the next most prolific country (with 500 patents per million), and more than three times as many as third-ranking America (with 350 patents per million). Does that make Japan the most innovative country in the world? Difficult to say. But something rather exceptional is at work in Japan that encourages its scientists, engineers, workers and even housewives to seek fame and fortune by patenting their brainwaves.
There’s a problem, of course, with using patents as an index of national performance. Patents are awarded for something that is novel, useful and non-obvious. As such, they measure success in discovering or inventing new things. They do not measure innovation, nor the economic activity that ensues.
Read on... (http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?sto ry_id=9586589)
From Economist.com
WHEN it comes to being awarded patents, the Japanese are world champions. Japan has more than 1,200 patents per million people—more than twice as many as Switzerland, the next most prolific country (with 500 patents per million), and more than three times as many as third-ranking America (with 350 patents per million). Does that make Japan the most innovative country in the world? Difficult to say. But something rather exceptional is at work in Japan that encourages its scientists, engineers, workers and even housewives to seek fame and fortune by patenting their brainwaves.
There’s a problem, of course, with using patents as an index of national performance. Patents are awarded for something that is novel, useful and non-obvious. As such, they measure success in discovering or inventing new things. They do not measure innovation, nor the economic activity that ensues.
Read on... (http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?sto ry_id=9586589)