Microsoft Corp. Official Warns on US Technology

The United States is falling behind in technology in part because the government has failed to adequately support research, Microsoft’s top attorney said in a speech at Harvard Law School yesterday evening.

In his talk, “The Future of Software, the Internet, and Innovation,” Microsoft Senior Vice President and General Counsel Brad Smith said that technology research has declined since 2000 because the current administration is not focused on supporting basic research in the sciences.

“Most of our company’s best innovations started out as basic research in our nation’s research universities,” Smith said.

At the same time, Smith said, other countries are superseding the U.S. in technology growth because they have learned from American advances.

The speech, held in Ames Courtroom, was co-sponsored by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society and the Journal of Law and Technology.

Smith said that technological growth is hampered by the “relative dearth of scientists, mathematicians and engineers that we are producing in the U.S.” He noted that in recent years the U.S. has fallen from being the third-largest bestower of degrees in these disciplines to the 17th-largest.

Smith said the government has exacerbated this problem by discouraging many of those who graduate with these degrees, some of the “brightest international students,” from staying in the United States to pursue their careers.

“Today the message from Washington is that these people should go home,” said Smith. He added that immigration laws have been tightened and “the shortage of visas is striking.”

According to Smith, the current outdated patent system is also thwarting growth. In recent years the number of patent applications has tripled, and “we run a big risk of quality being harmed by the increase in quantity,” he said.

Colin Maclay, managing director at the Berkman Center, added in an interview after the speech that “addressing the challenge of new technologies and understanding which ones warrant a patent” is particularly difficult in the area of computer software.

During the speech, Smith also said that the technology industry faces the challenge of making the Internet more secure from identity theft.

“We have patchy legislation about privacy,” said Smith, who wants uniform federal laws. “We need to recognize that our ability to grow depends on consumers having confidence in the technology.”

Smith also said he wants to see increased collaboration, both between companies in the U.S. and across national borders, to create a more uniform computer technology for consumers.

Smith’s speech was followed by a question-and-answer period in which audience members, many of them law students or graduate students in computer science, asked about topics ranging from patents to Microsoft’s practices.

In response to a question about women’s role in technology advancement, Smith said that more females should be encouraged to enter technical fields.

“We are discussing steps that we can take as an industry to encourage women to pursue these careers and stay in them,” he said.