Metropolitan areas with population densities of about 4,000 people per square mile tend to produce the highest rate of patenting, according to a recent article in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology. In a study of U.S. metro areas over a ten-year period, the authors found that metro population density has a significant positive correlation with patenting rates.

International patent filings fell by 4.5 percent in 2009 with sharper than average declines experienced by some industrialized countries and growth in a number of East Asian countries, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization. With 45,790 applications, the U.S. filing rate dropped 11.4 percent in 2009, but maintained its top ranking by filing just under a third of all international applications.

President Barack Obama has authorized the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to spend an additional $129 million of the fees it will collect this year to improve operations and hire new patent examiners. The newly authorized funds represent fee collections that exceed earlier projections for the year, due to an improving economy and a streamlined review process. Despite that bump in productivity, a recent survey of the U.S. patent system found that entrepreneurs believe that the system is merely "muddling through" and does little to encourage innovation.

Two recent academic research articles found that innovation at institutions of higher education and domestic firms are significantly impacted by an increase in the immigration of skilled and qualified immigrants. An article from Stuen et al. found the quality of immigrant students was the determining factor in their contribution to the production of knowledge at academic science and engineering laboratories. In an unpublished article from Kerr et al., the authors examined the impact of skilled immigrants on the employment structures and innovation rates of U.S. firms.

In the face of the spiraling unemployment in Greece and Spain, the European Union (EU) received encouraging news regarding the economic recovery of firms across its 27-member states.

Growth in the number of patent assertions facing startup companies is hampering U.S. venture capital, according to a new survey of venture capitalists (VC) and venture-backed companies from the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and Robin Feldman, director of the Institute for Innovation Law at University of California Hastings. Eighty percent of VC respondents note that the number of patent assertions filed against portfolio companies have increased over the past five years, with half indicating these assertions were a major deterrent to investment.

In keeping with the commitment made in his State of the Union address to reform the American patent system, President Obama announced a series of executive actions to improve the quality and accessibility of the patenting process. White House officials also reiterated the call for more sweeping changes to the system from Congress and provided an update on the previous series of executive orders related to intellectual property issued in June of last year. At the same time, the U.S.

A new report from the Ohio Board of Regents proposes a statewide commercialization ecosystem to create jobs, promote economic growth and increase wealth in the state. According to the report, recent research suggesting that, when compared to other states, Ohio lags behind in the commercialization of technology. In The Condition of Higher Education in Ohio: Advancing Ohio's Innovation Economy, there are several recommendations to improve the state's technology transfer pipeline to turn academic research into market-ready products and services including:

The Obama administration recently announced two directives to accelerate the commercialization of research and provide small businesses with streamlined access to federal resources. In his announcement, President Obama tied the directives to his administration's recent jobs push, and noted the need to bypass Congress in order to quickly implement the changes.

In Technology Transfer in Southeast Wisconsin, a new report from the Public Policy Forum, researchers call for a "full-fledged collaborative infrastructure" that is adept at transferring technologies developed at the region's research institutions to entrepreneurs that will use them to create businesses and jobs in the region.

The European Union (EU) released its first competitiveness report on all 27 EU member nations and six associated countries — Innovation Union Competitiveness Report 2011. Providing a deeper perspective on European R&D intensity, the report is intended to monitor the progress towards EU and national R&D headline targets and provide economic evidence and analysis to underpin the development of EU and national innovation policies. Twelve key findings are highlighted within the report including:

Innovative companies involved in commercializing research with universities and federal agencies often cite complicated contracts and uncertainty surrounding the process as a barrier to bringing more technologies to the marketplace. In an effort to remove some of those hurdles, two new initiatives recently were announced from the University of Minnesota (UM) and the Department of Energy (DOE).

Ownership of intellectual property (IP) rights has become central to the strategies of innovating firms worldwide, according to The Changing Face of Innovation, a new report from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Researchers contend that rapidly growing global investments in innovation and the globalization of economic activities are key drivers of this trend. Between 1980 and 2009, global patents rose from 800,000 applications to 1.8 million.

For the first time in more than a decade, U.S. patent activity did not increase in 2008 over the previous year, according to IEEE Spectrum's Patent Power rankings. The annual report, which ranks companies, universities and research institutions by the quality of their U.S. patent portfolio, also finds that the number of U.S.-based organizations that placed within the top tier of IEEE's rankings-by-industry had fallen by 30 percent.

This week, the U.S. Senate passed the Leahy-Smith America Invest Act, representing a major overhaul of the U.S. patent system. The legislation would make a number of changes to the current patent regime, including the shift to a "first-to-file" system. Under this system, the right to a patent would be granted to the first party to file a patent application for the protection of their invention. In addition, the legislation would adjust the fee structure for the evaluation process and create a new fee category for low-income applicants.