In his State of the Union address in late January, President Barak Obama identified the nation's urgent need for innovation as "our generation's Sputnik moment". Is this political rhetoric? A first volley in budget negotiations? Or, is it a wake-up call for researchers and the organizations that fund their work? "The first step in winning the future is encouraging American innovation," the president said. "In America, innovation doesn't just change our lives. It is how we make our living." A recent report on worldwide patent activity indicates that the U.S. research community has some work to do. The 2010 Innovation Report: Twelve Key Technology Areas and Their States of Innovation tracks patent activity in key technology areas between 2009 and 2010 using the Thomson Reuters Derwent World Patents Index database.
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