Public Policy—Patents Issued: A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by the U.S. go...

Public Policy—Patents Issued: A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by the U.S. government to an inventor for a limited period of time in exchange for a public disclosure of an invention and is often used as a yardstick to measure both the innovativeness and entrepreneurial climate of the country. The number of patents issued in the United States annually from 1990 to 2010 can be modeled by

where x represents the number of years since 1990 and f(x) represents the number of patents issued, measured in thousands. (Source: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.)

(a) Determine f′(x).

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(b) Use part (a) to determine the rate that the issuance of patents was increasing in 2007.