Patents: The Missing Piece for Industry Clusters
On January 19, 2011, the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C. public policy institute, reported on
industry clusters — regional groups of related enterprises and institutions that promote innovation, new companies and job creation in a particular business sector. While the idea of regional industry clusters may have merit, it is missing one piece that any strategy needs to jump-start innovation: make it easier to get patents for their discoveries.
Two days later, at a forum in Washington, D.C. hosted by Innovation Alliance, prospects for adding easier patent acquisition to regional industry clusters came into focus. At the forum, David Kappos, director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), discussed that agency’s plans for opening regional offices, with its first satellite operation announced for Detroit, Michigan.
Grouping businesses together and around universities, particularly those based on science and technology, is hardly a new idea. You only need to look to Silicon V
alley in the shadow of UC-Berkeley and Stanford. These companies, often starting as small enterprises by faculty and ex-students, commercialize research findings and grow from there; Google is one notable example.
Beyond Silicon Valley
The Brookings report highlighted the way some states built their own regional industry clusters, and recommended that other states adopt a similar strategy. Regional clusters, says Brookings, not only build on the commercialized results from academic institutions, they develop synergies and efficiencies just from their close physical proximity. The report also noted that while the strategy requires some modest spending, it is often less expensive and disruptive than trying to entice established companies in other states to relocate.
New inventions from these innovative hothouses still need to get their discoveries patent-protected, since investors want some assurance that the companies developing products from those discoveries can become profitable. Right now, inventors in the U.S. must file their patent applications at the USPTO in Alexandria, Virginia, next to Washington, D.C. In December, however, the agency announced plans to move that process closer to the inventors, with its first satellite office in Detroit.
While Detroit may not conjure up images of a high-tech powerhouse like Palo Alto, the Brookings report described how Michigan has emerged as an R&D center for advanced batteries, e.g. in electric cars. An economic analysis last summer also examined the impact of Michigan’s
three main research universities on development of advanced manufacturing technologies and their positive economic effects.
At the Innovation Alliance meeting, Kappos would not make any commitments about adding USPTO satellite offices in other locations, but he did call the Detroit experience “an experiment” that would help guide decisions about other regional offices. If Detroit works out, there’s a life science cluster in Indiana and a collection of nanotechnology companies around Albany, New York, among several others, ready to take advantage of them.
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