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Schwartz & Seaman (2013) also conducted a randomized survey experiment on 500 subjects and gave each subject one of three possible standards of proof: a preponderance standard, a clear and convincing standard, and a unique standard of proof called the i4i standard that is used only in patent invalidity challenges.52The mock case was based on a plaintiff claim that a golf ball patent should be invalidated [*139] on obviousness grounds.53The authors claim that this study was the first to alter the burden of proof in a civil-litigation experiment with a diverse, broadly representative group of jury-eligible citizens.54The results from the survey experiment suggest that jurors are more likely to find patents invalid under the preponderance standard than under the clear and convincing standard, and this difference was shown to be statistically significant.55While 38.3% of the 162 subjects receiving the preponderance standard invalidated the patent, only 27.1% of the 166 subjects receiving the clear and convincing standard invalidated the patent under the same fact pattern.56This represents roughly a 90% increase in invalidity findings by changing the standard of proof from clear and convincing to preponderance.

AIA post-grant proceedings use the "preponderance of the evidence" standard. 16 After several years, our experience proves that this evidentiary standard is too low. Patents covering important inventions are too easily invalidated. Congress should amend the statute so that the "clear and convincing" standard--the same used in district court proceedings--is used in AIA post-grant proceedings.

When the AIA was passed, a patent owner expected to have an opportunity to amend challenged claims. The procedure would in part resemble an examination of the claims, similar to what occurs in ex parte patent prosecution. Patent examination is an ex parte process, and using a too-high evidentiary standard would hamper the PTO examiner's ability to reject claims of questionable patentability. If a post-grant proceeding were, in fact, like patent examination, it would make sense to use the lower "preponderance of the evidence" standard when assessing the patentability of any given claim. 17

As an innovator, patents are crucial for protecting your ideas and paving the road for future success. Securing patents for your products and processes safeguards your inventions, protects your creations from theft, and helps drive your business forward, attract investors, and set you apart in a crowded marketplace. Understanding the role of patents and how they work can help ensure your valuable intellectual property is well protected.

Patents Protect Unique Ideas and Inventions

Patent protection promotes invention and discovery, and the formation of new businesses. Patents are often the principal asset in the start-up portfolio, and a reliable indicator of its ability to attract capital and investment. Patents are the currency of the innovation system. As with conventional currency, we must ensure that patents issued by the U.S. government are reliable, durable assets that can be utilized for many, diverse purposes. This is imperative if we are to keep the wheels of our innovation-based economy turning smoothly. Patents are critical to the growth and viability of any innovation-oriented start-up. The MIT Innovation Initiative recently reported that the likelihood of growth of start-up firms is thirty-five times greater for those that avail themselves of the patent system.[1] Similarly, a study from Harvard Business School and NYU’s Stern School of Business, reports: We find that patent approvals help startups create jobs, grow their sales, innovate, and reward their investors. Exogenous delays in the patent examination process significantly reduce firm growth, job creation, and innovation, even when a firm’s patent application is eventually approved. Our results suggest that patents act as a catalyst that sets startups on a growth path by facilitating their access to capital. Proposals for patent reform should consider these benefits of patents alongside their potential costs.[2] Forming a start-up is easy. The real challenge comes in turning it into a viable, scalable enterprise for the long-term. There are innumerable challenges following invention. The enterprise must convert the invention into a product, devise means and materials for manufacturing that product, and move the product through marketing and distribution to what is hoped to be a receptive customer base. In most cases, that involves considerable third-party investment. Investors look for durable assets likely to survive even if the enterprise itself fails. Patents provide those assets. Patents benefit society and individuals alike in fostering new markets and new products. Patents enhance specialization. Inventors need not morph into fully integrated manufacturing concerns to realize the commercial value of their inventions. They can use patent portfolios, per se, as assets; and derive revenue by selling or licensing those assets. We must preserve the value and liquidity of those assets if we are to realize the full potential of the public and private benefits of our patent system. If, for example, modest litigation reforms are found worthy, those reforms should be applied universally, not by imposing peculiar burdens on America’s inventors. Despite the meritorious role patents play in innovation and economic development, recent changes have diminished the patent right. Patent-related transactions are in decline, patent valuations are down, and patents continue to be struck down at alarming rates by the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board in Inter Partes Reviews. Our patent system is in trouble. An entire class of legal instruments, once lauded as worthy and essential elements in a free-market economy built upon innovation, has become suspect. What’s worse, these instruments are now susceptible to revocation – following grant – by the very agency that issued them, and by resort to the same standards by which the agency granted them in the first place. Imagine the effects on our economy if any other substantial legal instrument or property right – duly issued by the U.S. government – were so susceptible to challenge and revocation. This scenario is especially harmful to the small business, for whom IP is often its principal asset. Congress must restore public trust and confidence in our patent system, and in patents as a meaningful property right. It might well start by ensuring that the seal the USPTO affixes to an issued patent in the first instance is meaningful, durable, and worthy of investment. Congress can, and should, take at least four steps in restoring the health and vitality of our patent system: First, Congress should ensure that the patent grant is meaningful and valuable in the first instance. That is, when the USPTO issues a patent, it should stand behind its work, and it should be presumed to have done it competently. The current Inter Partes Review, and other post-grant review processes, undermine public confidence in that work, and puts the claims of a patent at risk of challenge, and ultimately, of revocation, almost as though the patent had never issued in the first place; and, in the case of IPR, for the duration of the patent. The patent owner thus never comes out from underneath that cloud. As described in my earlier testimony, the evidence shows that in the majority of cases, accused infringers are exploiting these post-grant proceedings to play out the clock with serial, duplicative proceedings in the USPTO, and then in court, and thereby delay a decision on infringement. It isn’t hard to imagine how these proceedings can be exploited to exhaust the meager resources of the small business or entrepreneur. This is still more problematic in view of the standard of review the USPTO applies in IPRs. During examination, the USPTO considers the terms of a claim according to “Broadest Reasonable Interpretation” (BRI). This is as it should be. In seeking valuable rights, applicants are obligated to spell out those rights with demanding specificity[3]; and the USPTO is obligated to fulfill its role in protecting the public interest by ensuring the applicant has met that standard. However, when the USPTO has examined, and ultimately issued, that patent, it should likewise be held to a demanding standard. Our precedent has long since held that, once issued, the claims of a patent are to be interpreted by Article III courts according to the ordinary and customary meaning of claim terms as per one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made. Phillips v. AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303 (Fed. Cir. 2005).The USPTO’s use of BRI in IPR proceedings means that claims that have been examined and issued are nonetheless interpreted by the USPTO almost as though examination had never taken place. Moreover, in an IPR, the patentee is not entitled to the presumption of validity to which an issued patent is otherwise entitled, and which would prevail before an Article III court.[4] The result is that the claims are interpreted broadly, without deference to prior examination, and without regard to the ordinary and customary meaning the terms would have to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made. Congress should clarify that an issued U.S. patent has value and merit, and that a challenger must prove it to be invalid according to the standard enunciated in Phillips v. AWH Corp., rather than under the BRI standard. Second, Congress should reaffirm the exclusive nature of the patent grant. In eBay[5], the Supreme Court held that patent cases must meet conventional requirements for injunctive relief. As a result, since eBay, injunctive relief in patent cases has become more difficult to obtain, and thus less likely to be requested and granted.[6] This outcome overlooks the fact that the patent right is, at its very essence, an exclusive right, i.e., the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing into the U.S., the claimed invention.[7] Congress should clarify that the patent right includes the right to exclude others, and should provide for injunctive relief under a specific standard consistent with that right. Third, Congress should clarify, and perhaps legislatively overrule, the cases addressing patent eligible subject matter, Alice, Mayo, and Myriad. While the Supreme Court was measured in its holdings, and sought to restrict the deleterious effect on patent eligible subject matter, lower courts and the USPTO have construed the cases broadly, and in a manner inconsistent with longstanding precedent (and, some say, inconsistent with Supreme Court precedent itself). Together, the lower courts and the USPTO have effectively written out of the language of both the Constitution and the statute an inventor’s right to his or her “discoveries.”[8] As a result, patent eligible subject matter in the U.S. is suddenly of dramatically reduced scope, and by such means that its remaining contours are highly uncertain. The lack of certainty as to patent eligible subject matter is harming the U.S. innovation ecosystem, and is driving research and development offshore. While our scope of patent eligible subject matter has traditionally been broad, inclusive, and predictable, most other patent regimes have been constrained and limited. On witnessing the impressive record of U.S. innovation, and the associated enhancements in public welfare and economic development, many industrialized nations have shifted patent eligible subject matter toward our more expansive view. Now, however, we are retreating from that expansive view, and ceding ground to foreign jurisdictions. As noted above, this has caused an increase in patent filings overseas, and particularly by U.S. companies. If U.S. companies continue to move their patent filings overseas, their research and development efforts and investments are sure to follow. Innovation is a skill, and, like any other, withers for want of use. As our innovation capital moves offshore, so too will the corresponding skill set. Our patent system has the potential to reverse that trend, and to restore America as the premiere destination for innovation. It is incumbent on us to realize that potential. Fourth, and finally, Congress should tread extremely carefully in the realm of so-called patent litigation reform. Amidst the many changes imposed by the AIA, the associated administrative proceedings in the USPTO, recent judicial precedent (and administrative interpretation thereof), and changes to the rules of civil procedure, the very nature and extent of the patent property right is up in the air, and its value has diminished. With that, the value of America’s core competency – innovation – is likewise diminished. Any further changes to our patent system should be directed to shoring up the patent property right, not further diminishing it. Thus, so-called reforms that would prejudice America’s patent holders relative to other rights holders, should be considered with a most critical eye.

Comments on proposed rules relating to discretionary denials of parallel and serial petitions and petitions implicating prior art or arguments previously presented to the USPTO are due June 18 ALEXANDRIA - In light of robust, extensive feedback from a wide array of stakeholders and the Patent Trial and Appeal Board's (PTAB) experience in implementing the America Invents Act (AIA) for over a decade, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) seeking public input on proposals to codify many existing PTAB review policies and practices. These proposals would improve fairness, transparency, and efficiency in PTAB processes, further evolving and strengthening the proceedings of the USPTO's patents judicial Board, according to the official website of the Office. The proposals in the NPRM reflect public feedback starting with a 2020 Request for Comments that received more than 820 comments and a 2023 Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) that resulted in 14,500 comments, as well as comments received in other fora, expressing a preference that key policy changes be formalized through rulemaking. The proposed rules address a subset of topics from the ANPRM; other topics raised in the ANPRM are still under consideration. ; "The patent system works most efficiently and effectively when the USPTO issues and maintains robust and reliable patents upon which patent owners and the public can rely to invest in innovations and bring them to market, to commercialize ideas, to engage in technology transfer and licensing, and to enforce patent rights," said Under Secretary of Commerce and Director of the USPTO Kathi Vidal. "This NPRM is an important step towards ensuring an efficient and streamlined patent system that will strengthen patent quality while limiting counterproductive challenges and costs.

The PTO could take a similar approach by applying adjudicative standards for IPRs, including a presumption of validity and the district court claim construction standard, while retaining the broader examinational standards for PGRs. In principle, this would make patents harder to invalidate in IPR and would push more parties to request PGR. Logically, it seems reasonable for the Board and district courts to apply consistent standards for invalidity. Given that over eighty percent of IPR and CBMR involved patents that are concurrently litigated in court, 358Link to the text of the note IPRs might be better characterized as part of litigation than a redo of patent examination. Raising the invalidity standards for IPRs also gives patent owners greater certainty in their patent rights. As Justice Breyer noted in Oil States, there is a concern that the current AIA regime allows challenges to issued patents after patent owners have made significant investments in their inventions. 359Link to the text of the note Although this also happens when district courts invalidate patents, IPRs can be more problematic because of the lower burden of proof and broader claim construction. Under Director Iancu, the PTO has already taken steps to make IPRs more adjudicative by proposing to use the district court standard for claim construction instead of the broadest reasonable interpretation.

If the PTO adopts district court standards for IPRs, this would provide a stronger justification for a strict approach to motions to amend. As discussed in Section III, the Board's ability to independently examine claims is limited, so the PTO initially placed the burden of proof for validity on patent owners to prevent unexamined claims from issuing. 360Link to the text of the note However, recent experience shows how this [*200] practice can result in denial for the vast majority of motions to amend. 361Link to the text of the note This is problematic because, as one critic of IPRs noted, "[t]he reality for Patent Owners is that their opponents get the benefit of significantly lower standards than in district court litigation, but Patent Owners do not get the corresponding benefit of an ability to amend their claims in response to the unpatentability assertions." 362Link to the text of the note By making the standards for IPR more adjudicative and consistent with district court litigation, opponents would no longer benefit from broader claim construction or lower validity standards. Accordingly, the PTO could maintain a strict standard for motions to amend without skewing IPR proceedings in favor of petitioners.

Problem: When validity of a patent is challenged in district court, "clear and convincing" evidence is needed to invalidate the patent. But at the PTAB, a petitioner need only show invalidity by a "preponderance of the evidence" standard. Further, until recently, the PTAB interpreted patent claims under a different standard than the district court. These differences often lead to inconsistent results between the two tribunals.

Solution: Harmonize PTAB claim interpretation and burden of proof with federal district court. The PREVAIL Act requires the PTAB to find a patent invalid by "clear and convincing" evidence and requires the PTAB to interpret claims using the same "plain and ordinary meaning" standard used in federal district court.

Another way of looking at the data is to consider the percentage of challenged claims that have been invalidated by the PTAB. Out of a total of 1,962 claims before the Board, 1,572 or 81% were found to be invalid. This is a staggering rate, especially considering that the only issues the Board is allowed to consider are novelty and obviousness. By comparison, in district court litigation, claims are invalidated for obviousness or lack of novelty about one third of the time, (i.e., at less than half the PTAB rate). 44Similarly, academic studies suggest that when properly examined, only about 30% of issued patents are actually invalid for reasons of obviousness or lack of novelty. 45That the PTAB invalidates patents at more than double these rates may indicate that it is giving short shrift to the vested patent rights of inventors.

The CBMR data is even less encouraging for patent holders. Admittedly, the data is significantly more sparse, because only a small subset of patents are eligible for CBMR. Nonetheless, the trends are fairly evident. As of November 2014, the PTO received 255 CBMR petitions, and processed 149 of them to determine whether to institute a full-blown trial. The Board chose to institute trial in 76% of all cases it considered. Of the cases that have gone to trial, the Board issued a final decision in 17 cases covering over 339 claims. 46In no case did the Board uphold all challenged claims, and in only two cases did the PTAB find any of the challenged claims to be valid. The total claim invalidation rate in CBMR tops 96%.

The most persistent structural reason for duplicative litigation in the PTAB is its weaker burden of proof. Petitioners must prove claims of unpatentability by a preponderance of the evidence. 120This is in contrast to the more stringent burden of clear and convincing evidence that a litigant must meet to overcome the statutory presumption of patent validity 121and prove unpatentability, both in the U.S. district courts 122and in the ITC. 123The doctrinal effect of this disparity is significant, as it permits open disregard by administrative patent judges not only to disregard the decisions of Article III judges even with respect to the same patents but also to reach altogether conflicting judgments of their own in the PTAB (though the conflict in underlying standards themselves means that these contrary judgments are not inconsistent in the legal sense). Meanwhile, the origins of this disparity in the legislative history and in the underlying assumptions of the AIA have also been a point of considerable confusion. It is useful to consider these issues separately.

The doctrinal effect of these divergent standards became clear immediately. After the AIA trial proceedings went online in September 2012 and as the earliest final written decisions began to issue in June 2013, the PTAB observed in SAP America, Inc. v. Versata Development Group, Inc. that neither the statutory presumption of validity nor the burden of clear and convincing evidence applied to petitioners in the PTAB. 124The PTAB in Google, Inc. v. Whitserve LLC put it even more clearly, explaining that "[g]iven these differing evidentiary standards, the same evidence that the jury found insufficient could meet the burden of proof in an inter partes review." 125The PTAB further observed that even conclusions that the Federal Circuit [*80] reached about patent validity under the clear and convincing evidence standard would not foreclose a contrary PTAB conclusion about the same patent under the preponderance standard. 126

Unlike juries and most District Court judges, the administrative patent judges (APJs) at the PTAB have both technical and legal training along with many years of patent litigation and/or prosecution experience. As such, the APJs can more readily understand the technology at issue and reach decisions related to prior art faster. The parties to IPR proceedings can also make more advanced technical arguments at the PTAB than would be practical in a jury trial.

The burden of proof on patent challengers in PTAB proceedings is more favorable than that of District Court. In District Court, there is a statutory presumption of validity, and each patent claim must be shown to be invalid by 'clear and convincing' evidence. At the PTAB, there is no presumption of validity, and the petitioner need only establish that a claim is unpatentable by a 'preponderance of the evidence' -- a much lower standard than 'clear and convincing' evidence.

In 2021, Fintiv1 continued to be one of the hottest and most controversial issues facing the patent bar.2 The USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board's (PTAB) precedential Fintiv decision enumerated factors that the PTAB applies when evaluating whether to exercise its discretion to deny instituting an inter partes review (IPR) or post-grant review (PGR) in light of parallel district court or US International Trade Commission (ITC) litigation involving the same patent.3 Because Fintiv can deprive parties—who file otherwise meritorious petitions—of review, some stakeholders criticize Fintiv as contrary to the Congressional intent of the America Invents Act (AIA) and seek to defang or eliminate Fintiv altogether. Others argue that Fintiv is rooted in sound policy that avoids duplicative and expensive litigation and increases the value of patents. Regardless of where one stands, Fintiv remains a key issue that must be analyzed by any party faced with the prospect of parallel patent litigation at the PTAB and any other trial tribunal.

Analyzing over 400 PTAB decisions, this article presents a data-driven analysis of the following key developments that emerged in 2021 with respect to the PTAB's evaluation and application of the Fintiv framework:

So there's two thoughts right now. So what the district courts sometimes are doing is they're staying the case to prevent that duplication and the PTAB has also adopted policies where they will discretionary deny if they feel that the district court is going to hear the issue. First and a jury will decide validity.

But both of these approaches are not implemented systematically and they've been very controversial. I mean, nobody's really happy with any of this. So the proposed amendment in the bill to section 315 which provides that if the IPR is instituted, a party can't maintain the same challenge in another proceeding that would absolutely reduce that duplicative litigation cost.

Everywhere you look these days, there seems to be bad climate news — whether it’s another record broken for the hottest year, flowers blooming in Antarctica, or simply the unseasonably warm weather outside your window. In 2015, 196 countries signed the Paris Agreement, committing to cutting emissions by 45% by 2030 to limit global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees. We’re just six years away from the deadline, yet both emissions and global temperatures hit record highs in 2023, and experts warn that a 42% reduction is still required to cap warming at 1.5 degrees. The doom and gloom is enough to make anyone despair, so today, we’re beaming a ray of hope through the (geoengineered) clouds and shining it on ten climate tech companies that are fighting the good fight. Take a look for a hit of climate optimism. 1. Ripple Energy Founded: 2017 Location: London What it does: Ripple is an innovative energy company that empowers individuals and businesses to co-own renewable energy projects, such as wind farms, in an effort to make green electricity more accessible and affordable for its members, while also contributing to a reduction in carbon emissions. Through this model, Ripple Energy aims to democratize energy ownership, ensuring that consumers can play an active role in the green energy revolution and enjoy the greenest and cheapest electricity in the UK. According to Ripple, this solution is 62% cheaper than rooftop solar power and protects consumers from price spikes. 2. Sourceful Founded: 2018 Location: Manchester What it does: Sourceful makes it easier for businesses to source the most sustainable packaging for their products. It achieves this through a platform that combines deep industry knowledge with data-driven, custom packaging solutions, enabling brands to create unforgettable customer experiences while prioritizing sustainability. Sourceful’s dynamic carbon footprint data allows businesses to evaluate their carbon footprint, choose the most sustainable packaging option, and offset the rest with carbon credits. 3. Climate X Founded: 2020 Location: London What it does: Climate X provides a comprehensive climate risk analytics solution named Spectra, supports businesses in understanding and addressing the financial impacts of climate change on their assets, portfolios, and overall operations. It offers location-specific risk ratings and loss estimates for extreme weather events linked to climate change, aiding sectors like banking, real estate, insurance, and government institutions in building climate resilience and adaptation strategies. 4. Octopus Energy Founded: 2015 Location: London What it does: Octopus Energy is a forward-thinking energy provider that specializes in supplying renewable electricity and gas to homes and businesses. It uses technology to ensure fair and agile pricing, which allows customers to benefit from lower prices during off-peak hours, making energy usage smarter and more efficient. With a strong focus on customer satisfaction and environmental responsibility, Octopus Energy aims to drive the transition towards a greener, more sustainable energy future. 5. Connect Earth Founded: 2021 Location: London What it does: Connect Earth is an environmental data company that aims to make sustainability data easily accessible to empower eco-conscious decisions in finance so that emissions management is more approachable, comprehensive, and scalable. It offers API-driven tools that enable financial institutions and their customers to understand and reduce the carbon footprint of their financial transactions, aiming to bridge the gap between intent and action towards sustainable practices​. Connect Earth’s carbon intelligence platform empowers businesses and consumers to integrate carbon management into their everyday financial products in their journey towards decarbonization. 6. Hoxton Farms Founded: 2020 Location: London What it does: Hoxton Farms develops cultivated animal fats to use in plant-based meats — without the animals. Founded by a synthetic biologist and a mathematician, the company uses cell biology and mathematical modeling to produce cultivated fat that can be used as an alternative ingredient to plant oils in plant-based meat. There are several advantages to using cultivated animal fat over oils — including better flavor, greater stability in manufacturing, cooking, and storing, and being more sustainable. Whereas plant oils cause deforestation and pollution, cultivated fat requires less land, water, and energy to produce. 7. Airex Founded: 2016 Location: London What it does: Airex specializes in smart ventilation control, offering the world’s first smart air brick designed to reduce energy bills and combat fuel poverty through a simple building retrofit. Its technology optimizes airflow in naturally ventilated homes with air bricks, making them more sustainable and energy efficient. This innovative solution not only improves home thermal efficiency with minimal disruption but is also cost-effective, addressing heat loss and contributing to the decarbonization of existing housing stock. 8. FlexSea Founded: 2020 Location: London What it does: FlexSea innovates with a truly home compostable biopolymer material made from seaweed and other sustainably sourced natural products aimed at replacing plastic film packaging. The material is designed to be biodegradable, edible for wildlife and humans, and supports coastal communities by using red macroalgae. This positions FlexSea as a sustainable alternative in the fight against ocean pollution and plastic waste, with benefits for the environment and society. 9. Clean Power Research Founded: 1998 Location: California What it does: Clean Power Research provides cloud-based solutions to advance the energy transformation, offering utilities and the solar industry tools for interconnection management, renewable energy, transportation, and building electrification. Its products include PowerClerk® for process automation, SolarAnywhere® for solar resource assessment, and other utilities aimed at reducing CO2 emissions and promoting sustainability. 10. Furbnow Location: London What it does: Furbnow specializes in enhancing home energy efficiency through a comprehensive service that includes an initial home survey by a qualified assessor, personalized retrofit planning, and management of energy efficiency upgrades. It aims to simplify the retrofit process for homeowners, offering end-to-end project management or support, to ensure homes are warmer, more energy-efficient, and environmentally friendly. Reasons to be hopeful The weather outside may be frightful, but these ten climate tech startups are proving what’s possible when humans step up for the planet.

Among all modern dictatorships, communist totalitarian regimes have cast the longest and darkest shadow on the future. One reason is their greater longevity relative to other types of dictatorships. While fascist totalitarian regimes such as Nazi Germany and Benito Mussolini’s Italy were also horribly brutal and repressive, their comparatively quick demise in a global war prevented them from totally transforming [End Page 8] their societies and consolidating totalitarian institutions. By contrast, in communist regimes that rose from internal social revolutions (rather than being imposed from without on a country), classic totalitarian rule lasted decades. In the USSR, the totalitarian era stretched from 1917 to 1953, the year Josef Stalin died. In China, the equivalent period was almost thirty years, from 1949 to the beginning of economic reform in 1978. Even in the post-totalitarian period, as terror declined, communist ideology eroded, and one-man rule ended, communist regimes in the USSR, Central and Eastern Europe, China, and Vietnam continued to rely on such core totalitarian institutions as the Leninist party-state, the state-run economy, censors, and secret police to maintain power.

Even when socioeconomic modernization comes to such countries, the legacies of totalitarianism make democratization much harder. In their unmatched brutality, communist totalitarian regimes systematically destroyed alternative centers of power and social capital.8 In China, Maoist campaigns had since the 1950s decimated religious groups, secret societies, rural elites, the urban middle classes, and the intelligentsia.9 A well-organized Leninist party-state with mass economic resources, a skilled and ruthless repressive apparat, and a wrecked civil society—all ubiquitous legacies of totalitarianism—stunt the prospects of democratization in post-totalitarian regimes.

During the twentieth century, many nations – including Russia, Germany, and China – lived under extraordinarily brutal and oppressive governments. Over 100 million civilians died at the hands of these governments, but only a small fraction of their brutality and oppression was necessary to retain power. The main function of the brutality and oppression, rather, was to radically change human behaviour, to transform normal human beings with their selfish concerns into willing servants of their rulers. The goals and methods of these governments were so extreme that they were often described – by friend and foe alike – as ‘total’ or ‘totalitarian’ (Gregor, 2000). The connection between totalitarian goals and totalitarian methods is straightforward. People do not want to radically change their behaviour. To make them change requires credible threats of harsh punishment – and the main way to make such threats credible is to carry them out on a massive scale. Furthermore, even if people believe your threats, some will resist anyway or seem likely to foment resistance later on. Indeed, some are simply unable to change. An aristocrat cannot choose to have proletarian origins, or a Jew to be an Aryan. To handle these recalcitrant problems requires special prisons to isolate dangerous elements, or mass murder to eliminate them. Totalitarian regimes have many structural characteristics in common. Richard Pipes gives a standard inventory: ‘[A]n official all-embracing ideology; a single party of the elect headed by a “leader” and dominating the state; police terror; the ruling party’s control of the means of communication and the armed forces; central command of the economy’. All of these naturally flow from the goal of remaking human nature. The official ideology is the rationale for radical change. It must be ‘all-embracing’ – that is, suppress competing ideologies and values – to prevent people from being side-tracked by conflicting goals. The leader is necessary to create and interpret the official ideology, and control of the means of communication to disseminate it. The party is comprised of the ‘early-adopters’ – the people who claim to have ‘seen the light’ and want to make it a reality.

In this paper, we present theory and evidence for the unique role of startups in the innovation ecosystem. We begin with vignettes of prominent startups: Moderna, BioNTech, Commonwealth Fusion, and Sublime Systems demonstrate the tendency for startups to pursue novel, high-upside technologies, while Sublime Systems offers an example of a startup aiming to displace existing technologies in an industry dominated by powerful incumbents. We also present evidence from university licensing that startups have taken an increasing share of the technology transfer ecosystem since 2000, reaching nearly 30% of all licenses in 2019 while displacing large firms. Next, combining and extending the insights of AH and ADS, we argue that there are two specific channels through which theory predicts startups will have an advantage in multi-stage research lines. First, startups will have private information on the value of their ideas, and this asymmetry is likely to be highest in novel and high-upside technologies, leading them to be developed internally rather than transferred to an outside party. Second, startups do not face the threat of cannibalization, and are more likely to pursue disruptive technologies that would undermine the competitive advantages of existing incumbents.

We evaluate the above predictions using a dataset of all patents granted within the regional innovation ecosystems centered on the top 25 US research universities from 2000 to 2015. Our results suggest that there is a clear startup advantage in terms of both the average and the right tail of innovation value, as measured by forward citations, relative to both academic and incumbent patents. We then show that startup inventions are both more original and more general than those of other institutions, and conclude by highlighting how former startups, or “scale-ups,” have overtaken pre-existing incumbents in their citation-weighted inventions in the space of just fifteen years. Taken together, our findings highlight that startups produce inventions that are both more valuable and more disruptive and novel than those pursued by either private-sector incumbents or academic institutions.

One of the most universal trends in science and technology today is the growth of large teams in all areas, as solitary researchers and small teams diminish in prevalence1-3. Increases in team size have been attributed to the specialization of scientific activities3, improvements in communication technology4,5, or the complexity of modern problems that require interdisciplinary solutions6-8. This shift in team size raises the question of whether and how the character of the science and technology produced by large teams differs from that of small teams. Here we analyse more than 65 million papers, patents and software products that span the period 1954-2014, and demonstrate that across this period smaller teams have tended to disrupt science and technology with new ideas and opportunities, whereas larger teams have tended to develop existing ones. Work from larger teams builds on more-recent and popular developments, and attention to their work comes immediately. By contrast, contributions by smaller teams search more deeply into the past, are viewed as disruptive to science and technology and succeed further into the future-if at all. Observed differences between small and large teams are magnified for higher-impact work, with small teams known for disruptive work and large teams for developing work. Differences in topic and research design account for a small part of the relationship between team size and disruption; most of the effect occurs at the level of the individual, as people move between smaller and larger teams. These results demonstrate that both small and large teams are essential to a flourishing ecology of science and technology, and suggest that, to achieve this, science policies should aim to support a diversity of team sizes.

Thus the implementation of the AIA has made it easy to invalidate bad patents but has not provided a means for securing good patents. In particular, no provision has been made for the disproportionate harm caused to inventors who rely on patents to develop and commercialize their inventions.

Large corporations and patent assertion entities can absorb the expense and risk of PTAB trials as a cost of doing business. They have access to billions of dollars in capital and portfolios of hundreds or thousands of patents. They need only factor in the cost and risk of PTAB invalidation in their budget and business plans.

In 91.8% of petitions, PTAB management did not assign three APJs with the correct educational background and experience to panels. That is an incredible number and shows that the PTAB has no expertise at all, let alone the agency expertise of the USPTO. Matal’s testimony is nonsense. The agency expertise he attempts to apply to the PTAB is exclusive to the USPTO patent examiner corps.

If Not The PTAB, Who?

This month, the White House disclosed that China has rejected American proposals to limit the use of artificial intelligence for controlling the launch of nuclear weapons.

Beijing’s quick rejection, occurring in talks in Geneva in May between U.S. and Chinese officials, is a setback for Washington’s efforts to find areas of agreement with China. President Biden raised this issue with Xi Jinping in California last November and announced that AI was one of the areas where the two countries would hold further discussions.