Which patents are we talking about? The US patent system allows both business and software patents, which tend not to be terribly innovative (but of which there are an awful lot). And the patent office doesn’t do much checking of filed patents, its not that hard to get a patent accepted (the trick is enforcing it legally). It used to be, but the patent office has changed its policy in the last ten to fifteen years. US companies also tend to be very aggressive about filing them, and use them far more aggressively than companies elsewhere – a patent arsenal I think its called. I’m sure you could make a case for innovation using issued patents, but it wouldn’t be easy. You’d need another metric, though I’m not sure what you’d use.
Of course size matters. The gross GDP of the US is vastly bigger than that of Switzerland. Does that mean Swiss individuals are poorer?
The US is still innovative in some areas with good R&D. In other areas its pretty marginal. However, its certainly not the world’s R&D lab as somebody was suggesting above. Germany and Japan are also both very innovative, and if we include among innovation making things that people want (i.e. design), rather than simply technologically new – Italy and Sweden both do pretty well.
