Q&A: Patent attorney says innovation drives growth

As a patent attorney specializing in high-tech companies, Dale B. Halling was used to working with start-ups trying to change the world.

In the 1990s, he says, entrepreneurs would come to his office with plans for businesses that held the potential to completely redefine a market. But with the technology downturn of 2000-2001, Halling saw a change. Business plans by start-up companies were less aggressive, less groundbreaking.

“Instead of trying to change a whole area of a technology and go public, these companies were looking to develop incremental changes in technology and be bought out by an existing company,” he said. And that remained the same through the decade.

What, he wondered, had changed? He began to compare the two decades, and his observations led him to write and publish a book, “The Decline and Fall of the American Entrepreneur” (available at Amazon.com for $21.95).
Halling’s practice is in the Colorado Springs Technology Incubator. Halling, 49, is married to Kaila Geary Halling, who is the marketing director for ECOsight, a start-up that does technology research in recycling. They have two children.

Question: Your book asserts that the 1990s were more innovative than the most recent decade. What do you base that on? In other words, how do you measure innovation?

Answer: Innovation is difficult to measure, however we know that real per capita income and GDP only increase because of innovation. Since both of these increased more in the ’90s than this decade, we know that the ’90s were more innovative.

On a more practical level, I conducted informal surveys centered around the question of whether this past decade (2000-2009) was as innovative as the ’90s. While I would say that most people I surveyed felt this decade was not as innovative, there were people who disagreed. My surveys were confirmed by an Intel survey that found most people believed the ’90s was the most innovative of the last four decades.

The dissenters in my informal poll pointed to the iPod, the tremendous amount of money Intel was spending to build their next microprocessor plant and the social media industry. While these are certainly innovative, these innovations did not drive the whole economy like the Internet of the ’90s. The growth of the Internet during the ’90s affected almost every business in the U.S. For instance, it drove PC sales, retail, electronics, telecommunications, professional businesses, marketing, newspapers, etc. It also redefined whole areas of life: with e-mail, online shopping, online advertising.

Q: The subtitle of your book — “How Little Known Laws and Regulations are Killing Innovation” — makes it clear what you think is the cause of this fall in innovation. What laws and regulations have inhibited innovation?

A: The incredible innovation of the ’90s was based on technology start-up companies built on intellectual, financial and human capital. All three of these foundations have been under attack since 2000. Our patent laws have been weakened, reducing the value of intellectual capital. Sarbanes-Oxley (passed by Congress in 2002 in reaction to corporate and accounting scandals) has made it impossible to go public, reducing financial capital for start-ups, and the FASB (Financial Accounting Standards Board) rules on stock options have made it harder to attract human capital to start-ups.

Q: You say innovation is key to economic growth. In what way?

A: Assume that technology has not changed since 1700. Would we be any wealthier? We would not live any longer than our ancestors, since we would have the same medicine. We would not be any stronger, since we would have the same nutrition as our ancestors. We would not be any smarter, since that is implied in having the same technology as our ancestors.

If we want to be wealthier tomorrow than we are today, we have to innovate. Other countries that are not technological leaders can grow by just adopting technologies developed elsewhere. The U.S. does not have that choice. We have to invent new technologies and implement them in order to grow economically.

Q: How did you end up as a patent attorney? Was this an area you were particularly interested in while in law school, or did this interest develop later?

A: A patent attorney has to have an undergraduate degree in engineering or science. My background is a B.S. in electrical engineering and a M.S. in physics. I worked as an engineer for McDonnell Douglas and Tektronix. But I wanted to work with many technologies, not just as an expert in one narrow area. I was also looking for a path where I could work for myself. I started law school with the idea that I would be a patent attorney.

Q: You’re a founder and owner in a fishing-products company. What’s the company? How did it come about?

A: The company is Fishing Science and we sell products through Sportsman’s Warehouse and Cabela’s. As a patent attorney, I come into contact with many inventors. In this case, I came to know the other two founders through inventor organizations. The company actually started by producing promotional products and morphed into a fishing company.

Q: You’re also a member of the board of FalconWorks. What is that?

A: FalconWorks is a nonprofit “innovation hub,” bringing together the necessary resources to design and build technology-based solutions for disabled individuals and our community. We focus our efforts on projects that require significant creativity, innovation, and design work and help improve the lives of many people in our community.

FalconWorks coordinates with the U.S. Air Force Academy’s academic departments to establish integrated teams for each project. Operating under the direction of the academy’s world-class faculty, these teams will consist of cadets who earn credit as part of their senior capstone courses.
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Answers were edited for brevity and clarity. Contact the writer at 636-0272.