Intelligent observers of the epic battles being fought by technology companies in US courtrooms concluded long ago that the country’s patent system is no longer fit for its constitutionally enshrined purpose of promoting “the progress of science and useful arts”.
President Barack Obama, who has wielded his veto to lift a ban on importing some Apple products into the US, appears to have some sympathy for the critics, even if such extrajudicial action is unlikely to have been their preferred fix. The intervention, which reverses the only significant legal defeat that Apple had suffered in the US to its arch-rival Samsung , inevitably aroused suspicions about the president’s motives. The terse rationale offered by Michael Froman, US trade representative, did little to allay those concerns.
This is not the first time that the objectivity of the US patent system has been called into doubt. In a patent trial against Samsung last year, the sympathies of a Californian jury were widely felt to have handed Apple an advantage. The impression that the US uses its patent system as an instrument of trade protection threatens to undermine international efforts to enforce intellectual property rights – something the US economy, which earns its jam by developing technology at home and exploiting it overseas, can ill-afford.