\n At the Republican Convention, Matt Yglesias catches a funny picture<\/a> of an AT&T poster touting the company’s enthusiasm for the patent system. It reads: “life, liberty, and the pursuit of more patents. AT&T: Averaging 2 patent applications per day. Proudly connecting political supporters in Minneapolis.”<\/p>\n \n Aside from the “companies like Vonage that are actually innovating” bit Timothy gets it right. Patents are not innovation. They are a construct designed to protect innovation, but sadly have become a business model unto themselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From Techdirt… this image was captured at the Republican National Convention. At the Republican Convention, Matt Yglesias catches a funny picture of an AT&T poster touting the company’s enthusiasm for the patent system. It reads: “life, liberty, and the pursuit of more patents. AT&T: Averaging 2 patent applications per day. Proudly connecting political supporters in… Continue reading and… Speaking of the Innovation Gap…<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[205],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogarchive.briantroy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogarchive.briantroy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogarchive.briantroy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogarchive.briantroy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogarchive.briantroy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogarchive.briantroy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogarchive.briantroy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogarchive.briantroy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogarchive.briantroy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"http:\/\/www.techdirt.com\/images\/posts\/patentreform.jpg\")
\n Photo by Matt Yglesias at Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport.<\/i>
\n
\n It’s interesting that AT&T is bragging about its pursuit of “more patents” rather than, say, more R&D spending or more innovation. AT&T isn’t exactly known for its record of high-tech innovation, so it’s a little surprising to see it hold itself out as a poster child for the patent system\u2014particularly when we remember that AT&T and other telco incumbents have used the patent system to extort tens of millions of dollars<\/a> from companies like Vonage that are actually<\/i> innovating.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n [From Life, Liberty And The Pursuit Of More Patents?<\/cite><\/a>]\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n