Two headlines in the first week of this month said a lot about the United States as an “innovative” nation right now. One story announced that the first driverless semi-trucks are on the highway covering normal long-haul routes, and the second reported that the final shipments of pre-tariff goods from China were arriving at U.S. ports. Leave it to contemporary ...
A few posts ago, I reported that the major lobbying muscle in the Internet industry backs a patent “reform” bill (HR 9) called the Innovation Act. I argued in that post that while this reform claims to eliminate nuisance “patent trolls” from clogging up the system with dubious claims, what it really does is eliminate competition from the market. Because, ...
Google remains the third largest corporate lobbyist in the country, spending a reported $4.62 million in the second quarter in Washington, with Amazon, Facebook, and Apple spending a combined $6.07 million in the same period. Naturally, each company has its own interests—Facebook would like more skilled immigrants in the U.S. and Amazon wants to deliver goods by drone—but all of ...
