The culture of openness in the patent reform debate

Bob Park on March 9, 2007 wrote: Science owes its success to a culture of openness in which Nature is "The Decider." (...) The commitment of physicists to the principle of openness was tested this very morning in Denver at the APS March meeting, as it has been every year for 108 years. Roy Masters, author of "God Science and Free Energy from Gravity," was to deliver "Electricity from Gravity" at 9:36 a.m. Anyone can deliver a paper at the March Meeting.

IPBiz notes that there has been a similar culture of openness in the patent reform debate. Just about anyone can publish his opinions (unless one is trying to criticize Jaffe/Lerner in either the Harvard Business Review or IDEA). The only difference is that in patent reform, the guys pushing "free energy" (i.e., a patent grant rate in excess of 100%) are the ones with the ear of Congress.

See also

Lessons to be learned from the use of false data

More on patent grant rate in law review literature