"USPTO’s report was released in March 2012, and received a lot of attention. Yet just one month prior, the National Science Foundation (NSF) released the findings of a survey on business use of intellectual property....
- "In 2010, 87.2% of businesses reported that trademarks were “not important” to them.
- "90.1% of businesses reported that copyrights were “not important” to them.
- "96.2% of businesses reported that patents were “not important” to them."
When asked, vast majority of businesses say IP is not important (To Promote the Progress?)
Last year, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office released a widely cited report entitled “Intellectual Property and the U.S. Economy: Industries in Focus.” This report played up the importance of IP, claiming “the entire U.S. economy relies on some form of IP,” and estimated that “IP-intensive industries” accounted for 40 million American jobs and 35% of the U.S. GDP in 2010.
While many pro-IP groups hailed the report as demonstrating the importance of IP to the American economy, the report was panned by critics who pointed out that the definition of “IP-intensive industries” was so broad as to be meaningless. Indeed, according to the report, the number one IP-intensive industry by employment in the United States was… grocery stores. Furthermore, although supporters of stricter IP regulation and enforcement continue to rely on the report to justify policies relating to copyrights and patents, the vast majority of the report’s purported economic benefits were attributed to trademarks.