The number of American patent applications keeps rising. Yet increasingly divorced from the scientific advances on which technological progress ultimately rests, the patenting rush looks less and less like fundamental innovation.
The R&D of publicly held companies increased to 2 percent of sales in 2007 from 1 percent of sales in 1980. The share of businesses holding patents increased to just less than 30 percent from 20 percent during the period. Yet the share of companies whose researchers published in scientific journals shrank. Publishing original research took a much-diminished role in corporations’ overall R&D efforts.
Source: American Innovation Lies on Weak Foundation – NYTimes.com