Patent System's Self-Destruction Risks US Losing Edge to China

America has dominated the post-World War II globe through constant innovation, with the nation's Patent System protecting and encouraging a succession of inventors and entrepreneurs – but a 2011 law is allowing entrenched interests in Silicon Valley and elsewhere to repeatedly challenge patents, leading innovators to file in countries such as China and ceding a crucial advantage for the United States.

There is a lesson for modern America in the toppling of Constantinople several centuries ago. When the historic capital city fell in 1453, there actually wasn't much left of the Byzantine Empire. I often joked in inter-agency meetings at the White House that when the Ottoman forces breached Constantinople's final inner walls, the only thing they found was the Chief Information Officer and the unsecured servers of the Byzantine Data Center.