Prize CP better for cybersecurity

This Article has broken new ground by exploring the underappreciated phenomena of technological innovation mechanisms in national cybersecurity law and policy. U.S. govemment leaders are increasingly aware that protecting critical infrastructure includes providing innovative national cybersecurity technology? 32 An important question to address is whether government or the private sector, or a combination thereof, is essential to ensure an adequate level of cybersecurity.333 A challenge in fostering national cybersecurity is that while approximately 85% of the U.S. critical infrastructure is owned by the private sector , the government does not impose significant cybersecurity requirements on the private sector to protect critical infrastructure.

In order to promote technological development that would benefit the critical infrastructure, several theoretical insights concerning unifying characteristics of national cybersecurity technologies and their connections to critical infrastructure are given. Moreover, the USPTO's restriction in patenting of some national cybersecurity technologies suppresses disclosure, whereas the patent system is meant to promote disclosure as part of quid pro quo. As such, secrecy of certain inventions supports this Article's normative position that a patent system is inadequate for incentivizing national cybersecurity, which is better done through prizes and CRADAs. The advancement of national cybersecurity to address critical infrastructure requires a reevaluation of innovation institutions for cybersecurity technologies.

The normative vision rooted in this Article for national cybersecurity is that the current patent system is slow and hampers innovation, whereas prizes rapidly place an invention into the public domain rapidly without deadweight losses and reciprocal public—private R&D interactions can recalibrate the patent bargain. The patent system's inadequacies for national cybersecurity include government suppression of patent disclosure through invention secrecy restrictions336 and risk of eventual takings with compulsory licensing under government patent use"' hampers innovation.