Microsoft called for an overhaul of the patent system to create a unified global patent office that will promote innovation, encourage competition and drive economic global growth.

“Over 3.5 million patent applications are pending around the world, including over 750,000 in the U.S. Pendency periods [the time during which a patent is "pending"] are extending to three, four or in some cases five years before final patents are issued,” Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft deputy general counsel, said in a blog post Tuesday: Improving Global Patents: Think Locally, Act Globally.

What that means is that obtaining and enforcing a patent for a product sold internationally quickly becomes prohibitively expensive.

“The cost of this workload to patent applicants and patent offices is too high, and the delays in securing patents are too long for entrepreneurs and large enterprises alike,” Gutierrez said in his post on Microsoft’s On the Issues blog.

Read more here.

Related resource:

United States Patent and Trademark Office

An idea can change the world …
~ from “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid”

C.K. Prahalad, the business world’s great global influencer and co-author of another one of my all-time favorite business books, “Competing For the Future,” also wrote global bestseller business book, “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits.“

“The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid” has been talked about everywhere for its portrayal of a revolutionary way to do business in developing countries: Build a profitable business while fighting poverty and reducing human misery.

The reason I am bringing this book to your attention now — five years after the fact — is because it has been revised and updated for a special 5th anniversary edition by Wharton School Publishing.

The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid offers a blueprint for driving the radical innovation you’ll need to profit in emerging markets–and using those innovations to become more competitive everywhere. This new paperback edition includes eleven concise, fast-paced success stories from India, Peru, Mexico, Brazil, and Venezuela–ranging from salt to soap, banking to cellphones, healthcare to housing.

Simply put, this book is about making a revolution: building profitable “bottom of the pyramid” markets, reducing poverty, and creating an inclusive capitalism that works for everyone.

Don’t miss out on the opportunity to capture the world’s fastest growing market — the bottom of the pyramid — where billions of poor people have enormous untapped buying power.

Buy the e-book version immediately here, check out Wharton School Publishing here or pre-order (available October, 2009) the hard copy edition here.

Read a sample: The Market at the Bottom of the Pyramid
Read online now: Safari Books Online

More about Prahalad:

CK Prahalad is Paul and Ruth McCracken Distinguished University Professor of Strategy at the Ross School of Business, The University of Michigan. He is a globally recognized management thinker. Times of London and Suntop Media elected him as the most influential management thinker alive today in 2007. He is coauthor of bestsellers in Management such as Competing for the Future, The Future of Competition and The New Age of Innovation. He has won the McKinsey Prize for the best article four times. He has received several honorary doctorates including one from the University of London and the Stevens School of Technology. He has worked with CEOs and senior management at many of the world’s top companies. He is also member of the Board of NCR corporation, Pearson plc., Hindustan Unilever ltd., World Resources Institute, and the Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE).

Books by C.K. Prahalad

Here’s another American Express OPEN Forum contribution, “11 Tips to Help You Thrive After Losing Your Biggest Client.“

And your biggest client can be local or global.

Here’s my latest contribution over at the new American Express OPEN Forum under their Innovation: Idea Hub.

Business Resilience Weathering Economic Storms