Business Practice Patents on the Downswing

On the final page of his best-selling book The World Is Flat, Thomas Friedman notes that in the modern networked economy, which he describes as a "flat earth," the "most important attribute you can have is creative imagination-the ability to be the first on your block to figure out how all these enabling tools can be put together in new and exciting ways to create products, communities, opportunities, and profits." But innovation has little value without intellectual property protection. The