[crakenzak]

> leading to an estimated average increase of 17,000 to 29,000 more patents each year

Insane to me that they use this as a measure of innovation, when almost by definition it is the antithesis of innovation.

[adastra22]

What definition is that? Because the legal definition of patent I’m familiar with requires each patent to be a unique innovation.

[colinsane]

a patent is a legal restriction affecting what others are allowed to produce. a person/group hit by such a restriction may elect to not produce the (innovative) thing they otherwise would have.

so that's the viewpoint in which patents may be "the antithesis to innovation". i won't argue which one's correct, just providing it here since you requested.

[naasking]

That fewer patents are filed is not evidence that fewer innovations are taking place. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

[vkou]

What objective metric would you recommend they use, instead?

[ClumsyPilot]

Productivity improvement in a physical application - it now takes fewer people less time to build a house

It takes less resources to remedy a failed over bridge. You’d have to have a basket of measurement like how we measure CPI - current approach is lazy.

[NominalNews]

Without opining on the validity of the overall patent count as a measure of creativity, here's a cool paper I saw describing how to determine 'creative patents' - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aakashkalyani/WebsiteUploa...