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Patents in sentence

242 examples of Patents in a sentence

But, whatever the merits of the claim that genetic patents benefit research and treatment, that is a practical, rather than a legal, argument.
In order to gain legal “standing” to sue Myriad Genetics, critics of genetic patents – including the American Medical Association, the American Society of Human Genetics, and the American Civil Liberties Union – had to find an issue that could be adjudicated on a constitutional basis.
Their innovative strategy is to draw on the First Amendment, which protects freedoms such as speech and religion, to argue that patents restrict patients’ freedom of access to information that might enable us to take action to protect our health.
In 2011, for example, the government established a set of ambitious targets for the production of patents.
A half-dozen northern European countries can compete with the US when it comes to research and development spending and patents granted, but the south and east of Europe lag far behind.
A 1% increase in the number of immigrant college graduates leads to a 6% increase in patents per capita.
Though China is issuing more patents than ever, few represent groundbreaking inventions.
For every Apple and Google – explorers par excellence – count the energy companies with their cozy tax deals, the defense contractors that live off government budgets, and the pharmaceutical companies that buy their innovations and price what the market will bear, thanks to patents that governments grant, but without policing their holders.
In fact, recent studies by Petra Moser and Heidi Williams, among others, find little evidence that patents boost innovation.
Patents also invite considerable lobbying and rent-seeking.
A majority of patents are used not to produce commercial value, but to create defensive legal thickets that can keep potential competitors at bay.
Other reforms concern the patents themselves, and include shortening patent terms, introducing use-it-or lose-it provisions, and instituting stricter criteria that limit patents to truly meaningful inventions.
Patents typically carry terms of 20 years (copyright protections run for 70-plus years).
Of course, if regulators do decide to tailor patents to different types of innovations, they must take care not to complicate patent regimes excessively.
Patents, however, are not the only important element of the innovation ecosystem.
Patent reform could complement such reforms, say, by prohibiting patents from government-supported research, which should be available to all market participants.
It’s not just that today’s trade agreements extend to many other policy areas, such as health and safety regulations, patents and copyrights, capital-account regulations, and investor rights.
In other words, the larger the city, the higher the average wage, productivity level, number of patents per person, crime rate, prevalence of anxiety, and incidence of HIV.
“For an economy like the United States – where our biggest competitive advantage is our knowledge, our innovation, our patents, our copyrights – for us not to get the kind of protection we need in a large marketplace like China is not acceptable,” Obama observed.
While rich countries account for around 16% of the world's population, and around 60% of the world's purchasing power, they account for around 99% of the patents for new inventions granted by the United States and Europe in recent years.
Of the 163,000 patents issued by the United States in 1998, 90,000 were issued to U.S. inventors and 72,000 to foreign inventors.
Of the foreign inventors, Japanese inventors received 32,000 patents, German inventors 9,500 patents, and another 28,000 among the next 15 countries, all of which are developed economies.
The combined patents coming from developing countries and transition (post-communist) economies in 1998 amount to less than 1 percent of the U.S. total patents last year.
Tropical countries, almost all of which are poor, had virtually zero share of the total patents (Singapore being the only notable exception).
Of the 25 companies granted the most US patents in 2006, only eight were American; 12 were Japanese.
Patents and the PoorCAMBRIDGE: Debates over drug pricing and intellectual property rights are raging.
Many life-saving drugs, notably those used to fight AIDS, are produced under patents mainly by US and European pharmaceutical companies.
To assure that, profits – protected by patents – are needed.
During the recent court fights over AIDS drugs in South Africa, patents received a black eye.
Some opponents of patents argue that government-sponsored research is enough to develop new drugs, but history shows that, although government-sponsored research is good at basic science, the profit-based private sector is best at developing and introducing new products.
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