I have fall upon something passing strange about San Francisco . It has to do with how many patents the city has produced in the past 25 years .
One of the most fascinating things about urban life story today is that urban center populations are growing to historically unprecedented sizes . Basically we ’re at a stage in urban evolution that is something our coinage has never feel before . So a wad of us are wondering about the unintended consequences as our metropolis populations go on to grow .
Two researchers who study networked systems at the Santa Fe Institute , Luis Bettincourt and Geoffrey West , fare up with an intriguing answer . They print a paper in 2007about a few interesting side - effects of urban population growth . One is that rates of offense grow faster than the pace of population growth . But another affair that grows more quickly than population is the charge per unit of origination , which is partially measured by how many patents are granted to hoi polloi in that metropolis .
Out of oddment , Ichecked the US Patent and Trademark databasefor my home urban center , San Francisco . I look for for how many patent had been issued to people in the city , or to chemical group that admit at least one individual with a San Francisco computer address . As you may see , our pace of patent invention has rocket far beyond our pace of population growing over the preceding 25 years . Indeed , it ’s far beyond the sort of growth that Bettencourt and West ’s enquiry would predict .
There are some oddities to account for here . partially due to anti - development laws , the population of San Francisco has been ineffectual to grow much over the past few decades . Also , San Francisco ’s late economic boom comes from tech and biotech industry that run to bank heavily on patents . It made me wonder whether patent rates have taken off in every wealthy or tech - centrical city in the United States . So I checked .
Here you may see San Francisco ’s patent of invention rate compared to those of New York and Boston . There is a universal up trend , and you’re able to see a apportion dip there during the downturn in the late noughts . But San Francisco ’s number are utmost even compare to rich New York and techie Boston .
So what ’s go on in San Francisco ?
permit ’s look at some other interesting statistic for my comely metropolis . First of all , you may see that family incomes are also grow . Given that our population has remained steady , the combination of income and universe line represent what ’s call gentrification . rich people are displacing poorer multitude . Of naturally , there are still plenty of working class and low - income people in the urban center . There are just few of them .
Now have ’s look at crime , which Bettencourt and West ’s research suggests will rise quicker than population rates . That ’s the red line up there in the graphical record . So first of all , I ’ve separated out property crime here — so the crimes reflected in this trend admit only crimes like robbery , auto theft , burglary . In the U.S.,we’ve had a national downward trend in crime charge per unit more often than not . Like the internal average , San Francisco attribute criminal offence rates sank for about twenty years .
But in the preceding few yr , place offense rate in San Francisco have start to rise again . This goes back to the gentrification lines I discussed in the beginning . Recently San Francisco world defenderJeff Adachi remarkedthat the rise in property crimes in San Francisco is fundamentally a function of gentrification . It ’s a crime directly have-to doe with to poorness . As the division between haves and have - nots grow broad , people at the bottom of the economic ladder get more desperate and engage in more thefts . In San Francisco , most of these are auto thefts .
Still , even when you factor in that abbreviated uptick , San Francisco ’s story is a huge aberration . Our crime charge per unit are not come up at the rate that you ’d expect from Bettencourt and West ’s piece of work on other cities . And our innovation , again mensurate in patent of invention , is right smart out of proportion to our universe ontogenesis . So what ’s making SF so freakish ?
There ’s a dim-witted result , and a more complicated one . Let ’s start with the easy stuff first . You ’ll acknowledge that we see the patent charge per unit begin rising around 1997 , a few years after Bruce Lehman was name commissioner of the USPTO . Before he strike that job , he was a lobbyist for the computer software publishing industry . During his tenure at USPTO , he decided to implementrecent court decision about letters patent lawvery enthusiastically , and decree that most kinds of software could qualify for patents . And San Francisco is basically prime zero for software package patents . So this could explain part of the huge patent of invention capitulum we see in San Francisco .
But there ’s another possibility , which is that San Francisco is n’t so aberrant after all . Maybe our design and crime rates are rise at a rather normal time , but we ca n’t see it because we ’re so used to understand patents as a proxy for innovation , rather than a procurator for property crime .
What I ’m suggest is that this giant spike in patent rate is excogitate the compounding of innovation and theft . regard that many patents are used by the wealthier classes as a way to bilk people out of money . There ’s the obvious case wherepatent trolls purchase up overbroad patent — often in software package — and threaten people with lawsuits until they give to license a dubitable patent from the round . But patents also leave big companies to block small businesses from introduce , by charge astronomical cost to licence really canonic idea or software functions . Especially in Silicon Valley , patents are often a game played by wealthy businesses , to the detriment of diminished - time enterpriser and team of inventor .
So when you look at this jump in rate of patents , I want you to consider the possibility that we ’re not looking at evidence that San Francisco is a city of innovators . Maybe it ’s a metropolis of thief .
Annalee Newitz is editor in chief - in - honcho of Gizmodo and this is her column . She does not own any patents . You might also be interested in her book about surviving mass extinguishing , calledScatter , Adapt and Remember : How man Will Survive A Mass Extinction .
inquiry for this column was supported in part by my participation in theGray Area Center for the Arts ethnical incubator programin San Francisco . Through Gray Area , I was able to collaborate with data designer Mikko Järvenpää and his companyInfogr.am . Many thanks , Gray Area !
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