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"Joseph Swan, a British inventor, obtained the first patent for the same light bulb in Britain one year prior to Edison's patent date. Swan even publicly unveiled his carbon filament light bulb in New Castle, England a minimum of 10 years before Edison shocked the world with the announcement that he invented the first light bulb. Edison's light bulb, in fact, was a carbon copy of Swan's light bulb".

To be clear: patents are to stiffle or hinder or prohibit the competition from making the same prodiuct to you will have a monopoly on that product. (like the lightbulb)
Next to it is copyright, which does the same, but for things you create and not so much products. (e.g. the decleration)
Then there also is trademark, which protects your brand. (e.g. Linux)

Where it went terribly wrong was that these three expanded untill something extremely unreasonable.

Talking about the invention of the lightbulb: It was Swan

The danger is further not only with the patent trolls. Take e.g. IBM who have so many patents that if they decide to build a Dyson like vacuum cleaner, Dyson could sue them, but the counter sue would prevent him from doing any business anywhere in the world. So he can either give in a give IBM the rights to buil a likewise machine, which goes in against what patents are intended are for or he is not really proteced by his patent a shmans see it (not the law)

Even if patents, copyrights and trademarks are made by the best intentions, we see that they NOW do not work anymore as they were intended.

The least that should happen is to go back to the original state. Copyright 14 years. Patent only on machines for 14 years. Trademarks only on company names and product names in production.

Please list the ten biggest examples of innovators[tm] whose efforts wilted because of copying.

To be clear: I want ten examples of failure not because the inventor threw his toys out of the pram ("I'm not writing any more music until u guise stop downloading pirated MP3s I'm entitled to more money!!!") but because their efforts became genuinely financially unsustainable.

Easy...

Eli Whitney was driven to ruin after rampant copying of his patented cotton gin. He did not continue inventing.
http://inventors.about.com/od/cstartinventions/a/cotton_gin.htm

Edison slavishly copied Swans patented carbon filament light bulb slavishly.
http://www.coolquiz.com/trivia/explain/docs/edison.asp

Elisha Gray filed his patent on the telephone before Alexander Graham bell.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisha_Gray_and_Alexander_Bell_telephone_controversy

But I doubt anything could convince you. But in the mean time please stop using the telephone, or lights or wearing cotton.

Remember that US patents are given to the first to file for a patent and not the first to invent, as can be demonstrated by the US patent for the incandescent lightbulb: http://www.coolquiz.com/trivia/explain/docs/edison.asp or the telephone: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention_of_the_telephone

Of course, the first one shows that the US patent office can issue a patent for something already patented elsewhere in the world.

This is blatantly WRONG. Unlike most of the world, the US is a first to INVENT system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_to_file_and_first_to_invent http://inventors.about.com/od/firsttoinvent/First_to_Invent_Rule.htm and I could keep going with google results 3, 4, and 5.

I say no. Both are worth about $4.50, depending on the stock market.

As Tesla said "If he had thought a bit more, he would have had to sweat so much"

Besides, he didn't even invent the lightbulb :

Additionally, Joseph Swan, a British inventor, obtained the first patent for the same light bulb in Britain one year prior to Edison's patent date. Swan even publicly unveiled his carbon filament light bulb in New Castle, England a minimum of 10 years before Edison shocked the world with the announcement that he invented the first light bulb. Edison's light bulb, in fact, was a carbon copy of Swan's light bulb.

http://www.coolquiz.com/trivia/explain/docs/edison .asp

I'm often amazed by how much history is so much BS, especially the stuff you could supposedly hang your hat on. I mean, every grade school kid KNOWS Alexander Graham Bell invented the phone just like every kid KNOWS Thomas Edison invented the light bulb. I consider myself fairly cynical about things in general, but stuff like this makes me feel like a doe-eyed innocent setting eyes on the world for the first time. ;)

For the longest time, I thought that was the case- Bayer didn't enforce their trademark rights. I seem to recall a professor in law school telling us that.

Imagine my suprise when I read that Bayer lost the trademark for "aspirin" and "heroin" to the victors of WWI as part of the Versailles Treaty in 1919. Call it war reparations.

Only a vague reference from Bayer. Turns out once the US government sold the mark to Sterling Drug, they were unable to protect against the generic use and lost the mark. Other resources tell the same story, so I'm not sure what to believe now. The web or my professor...?

Its always the case. The Brits invent the prototype, then the Americans refine it, market it, and take the credit. From Democracy to Computers, from Trains to Planes.

Now wait a second. We Americans have invented some pretty useful stuff like the light bulb, the telephone, and the automobile. You can't take those away from us!

" The man behind the demonstration was a 37-year-old Scotsman called John Logie Baird. And what he showed on screen, 19 months before Farnsworth, was far superior to Farnsworth's "blob of light", as it was famously described by Albert Abramson in The History of Television."

Aspirin's success ended up costing the Bayer Company a great deal of money, when the U.S., England, France, and Russia forced it to surrender the trademark to them, as part of Germany's war reparations at the close of World War I. Bayer gave up the trademark in 1919, as part of the Treaty of Versailles, which explains why the aspirin, stripped of its trademark, is now written in the lower case.