For some reason, I can't seem to be able to locate the December 2004 report "Innovate America" at the "Council on Competitiveness" website.
It is still available at the Wayback Machine here.
On page 15 they talk about intellectual property and claim that 85 percent of the market value of S&P 500 companies are intangible assets. One more reason to pay attention to this field.
They also say that there is a need to discuss special rules for the IT area, citing the need for interoperability and open standards. From the report at page 15:
"No single organization has the scale to build today's complicated systems, but a single entity can inhibit or block access to IT networks through control of patent portfolios and prohibitive rents."
This leads to the recommendation of promoting open standards and interoperability on page 44.
They also note on page 19 that international student applications to the US have dropped by about a third in 2004 and America now for the first time faces the possibility of a reverse brain drain, as a consequence of "new immigration controls".
This report had some influence (just as the resounding rejection of software patents in Europe last summer) on the recent discussion about limiting the harmful effects of software patents in Japan.
Posted by Karl-Friedrich Lenz at January 6, 2006 02:38 PM