from Hacker News

Mid-sized cities outperform major metros at turning economic growth into patents

by guardianbob on 6/24/25, 11:26 PM with 38 comments

• by keepamovin on 6/25/25, 1:38 AM

  Are patents (and trade secrets) the right model for protection?

  I've been wondering this. It seems that, they were the right model, back in The Day. Back then, what you had (in my model) was a few inventors, cash-strapped or with wealthy benefactors, and they wanted to protect their inventions. Poor inventors, in other words.

  I imagine that, back in the day, with smaller government and regulations, and everything 'cheaper' even 'litigating' the case would have been achievable for such poor inventors. In such a scenario, the patent could be a tool of the tiny against the behemoth exploiter (ye olde robbere barron). Ie, true protection.

  These days however? Not so much. To litigate takes years and millions, effectively denying the protection to those who could most benefit from it. The "high bar" to protect your protection creates an incentive where you see conglomerates emerge that use that cost to coerce settlements, and make a business out of it by purchasing many such supposedly 'protective amulets'.

  It's also a good model for the 'protective amulet forging guilt' (ie, lawyers). Who will often tell you, "Have you considered a patent? We can help if you choose to go that route."

  But is the patent, once so lauded, useful and genuine - really the right model for protection today? Could it be reformed? Or should it be relegated to the past? Like mint coin collections of yesteryear - now without real value, except for collectors and traders (ye olde patent trollus).

  I don't know. Thoughts, anyone? Especially valuable I think would be personal experience and the thoughts gained from that, as well as any big picture reflections.

• by daedrdev on 6/25/25, 1:14 AM

  I highly doubt patent numbers are very correlated with anything we care about. For example, its harder to get software patents, so what this might say is that mid sized metros have worse tech industries. O would expect relative economic or productivity growth to be much more in tune with a cities importance.

• by dfc on 6/25/25, 12:09 AM

  Was there an expectation that economic busts drove innovation? Am I naive to think booms not busts would be the engine for innovation?

• by bell-cot on 6/25/25, 1:25 AM

  Between patent trolls, and a few friends who had patents - I have extreme doubts about using patents as a metric for judging the success of Federal R&D spending policies.

• by JackYoustra on 6/25/25, 1:16 AM

  I don't know, this just seems like a sectoral analysis among o&g? We have pretty strong evidence that density leads to higher productivity, I'd be keen to see it replicated more broadly (one such study of many: https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff...).

• by 7e on 6/25/25, 2:18 AM

  Aren't patent lawyers, and thus patents, cheaper in mid-sized cities vs larger metros? If so, it would stand to reason more patents are filed in a cheaper city that suddenly receives extra disposable income via a boom. Those ideas were always there, they just lacked funding.

• by chatmasta on 6/25/25, 3:54 AM

  There are a lot of research institutions churning out patents in mid-sized cities…

• by kjkjadksj on 6/25/25, 3:29 PM

  It seems like a lot of patents come out of university research labs. And for a given mid size city often built around a state flagship university, that may very well be the major employer.

• by jumploops on 6/25/25, 2:09 AM

  I’ve long suspected that there’s an inverse correlation between novelty and population density (to a point).

  I remember reading a story about the early days of transistors (Walter Brattain, is described as being a "farm boy and a born tinkerer”), and first having this thought.

  My (probably wrong) tl;dr is that cities are great for spreading/growing products and technology, but that the monotony of suburbs is better suited for the exploration of unknown territory.

  I’d love to be wrong about this (building in SF atm), but it’s been a nagging thought in the back of my brain (move to Silicon Valley proper).

  What am I missing?

• by cyberax on 6/25/25, 3:56 AM

  I keep repeating that the modern urbanism ("war on cars", "bikes or gtfo", "a microapartment is good enough") is going to lead to the downfall of democracy.

  Smaller sparse cities are way more human-friendly compared to monstrosities like Manhattan. Childcare becomes easier (sorry, but "walkable neighborhoods" are children-hostile), commutes are much faster, and you don't have to deal with transit.