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WORLD PATENT RIGHTS |
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New Product Development Today and Tomorrow
The commissioner of the US Patent Office claimed in 1899 that "everything that can be invented has been invented." Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, correctly forecast in 1965 that the power of a silicon chip would double every 18 months. Today’s Ford Taurus car contains more computing power than the Apollo space program’s mainframe computers. BP Amoco now uses explorative technology to prospect for oil, cutting oil exploration costs from $10 a barrel in 1991 to $1 today. In 2010 the typical computer may have 10m times the processing power of a computer in 1975. Inventions utilizing this computer power will have unbelievably creative applications. The Institute for the Future, World Patent Rights, both in California, believe the e-business revolution only just began in terms of inventions. Hewlett Packard advertises the single provocative word "invent" next to their company name. New and better inventions are the life beat in the New Economy. Corporate America’s R&D (research & development) increased by an annual averaging 11% over the past five years, suggesting that inventing will continue. In the 1940's Thomas Watson chairman of IBM said the market for computers were only five. There are now maybe 300m computers in the world. 90% of all scientists who ever lived are alive today. A gauge of technological change is the rate of decline in the cost of new technology. The real price of computer power has fallen by 99.99% over the past 30 years. Greater computer power affordability helps different forms of electronics to merge. For example telecommunications and computers have merged. Computers have or will find themselves in all types of imaginable inventions, providing exceptional possibilities. 70 years ago a three minute call from New York to London was $300 in today’s prices, today its 20 cents due to high tech innovations. New tools in the New Economy speeds the time it takes to design inventions. Alan Greenspan and the majority of the world’s leading economists concludes that the electronic revolution is a key factor behind America’s economic growth, though a small minority of economists beg to differ. Lock up your Patent Rights now. The profits and exclusiveness from patent rights can well outweigh the advantages of ordinary dot com start-up inventions. Will Europe and Japan Continue To Lag Behind? Europe and Japan spend less on IT as a share of their economy than America but are catching up. Europe is over taxed. It is worried about losing taxes via the internet. It proposed that American companies pay VAT (sales tax) on all services downloaded from the internet. This is probably impossible to enforce. In 1831 British Parliament asked Michael Faraday, a pioneer of electrical theory the use of his discovery. He did not know, but claimed the government would find a way to tax it. The internet is harder to tax, but someone in Europe may find a way to tax it before the U.S. (C) World Patent Rights 2001 |