Consumers understand IP is the key to innovation

• Author: Don Rosenberg
• Position: Legal Counsel, Qualcomm Corp., USA
• Pages: 8-10

p. 8 2014 | 6

Consumers understand IP is

THE KEY TO

I N NOVA T ION By Don Rosenberg,

Legal Counsel ,

Qualcomm Cor p., USA

The state of innovation in our global eco nomy is strong. For now.

Around the world, everyone loves a nd praises innovation. Corporations an d govern-

ments, marketers and educators, promote it as th e key to survival and prosperit y.

For consumers, it is the catal yst for individual product purch ases that in total add

up to swings in the gross domestic prod uct of one economy or another. It is the key

ingredient driving the following questions : is this product or service new-and-improved

enough to make my life better or easie r? Is it superior to rival products or s ervices?

Is it worth more of my money?

Cars, home appliances, information and entertainment electronics, business equip-

ment, clothing – name almost any ind ustrial sector and you will nd rivals tr ying to

out-innovate each other and repeatedly of fering accolades to the power of “innovation.”

But some kinds of innovation af fect human lives more than others.

A dynamic the consume r rarely thinks about but that governments must conside r is

that the most exceptional kind of innovation, the res ult of inspiration and hard work

and signicant investments of time, mon ey or both, can earn what is sometimes

considered a more venerated n ame : invention.

WHAT IT TAKES TO INCENTIVIZE I NVENTION

Yet far too many policymakers have forgotten what it takes to ince ntivize the hard work,

investment and creativit y that bring new inventions to life. Even as we celebrate the

merits of innovation and laud the growin g signicance of a knowledge-based e conomy,

it has become too easy to take for granted the le gal and economic frameworks that

made the technological wonders of modern life possible.

Take the mobile phone, which was found to be the most useful invention of all

time by more than 70 percent of respondents to a rece nt global poll published in

TIME magazine. Today’s smartphone, in fact, is not just one invention but the product

of hundreds if not thousands of the m. Every week, it seems, new smartpho nes appear

that have their own unique features that we, as con sumers, value. And the marketplace

is the metric we use to measure which fe ature is most preferred or which manufacture r

does a nicer job desig ning it. Sometimes a new function wins consume rs’ hearts, and

sometimes it’s an original form – the lo ok, the feel, the buttons – and sometimes it’s

a combination of the two. We base our decisions on these distinctions.

But what about the scien ce and engineering that make sma rtphones possible in

the rst place, that allow hundreds of mil lions of people at any given moment to

converse with friends lo cated anywhere in the world or to call up key bus iness