Too Many Patents as Bad as Too Few

NonSoftAntiCurve writes "Forbes.com has an interesting article about how too many patents are as bad as too few when it comes to incentives for innovation. 'The tension between the patent as a way to stimulate invention and the patent as a weapon against legitimate competition is inherent in the system.' There is a scary example of how this plays out in practice."

Comments

It is Scary

[Lucas Membrane]

I know of a medical researcher making great progress on a wonderful device that might eventually be implanted in many people. He notes that there is one problem he needs to solve, a problem with the body rejecting one of his materials. Someone else has solved the problem, but they've got a patent on using the material that they use, so he's got to find a different one that works almost as well or better. Would be a shame if many people wound up walking around with a second-best material inside of them.

Too Many Patents, Like this one on the Wheel

[dlur]

Last year in a show of how easy it was to disrupt and abuse the patent process by registering a common, every-day idea a Melbourne lawyer patented a "circular transportation facilitation device" with more info on the story here, here(pdf file), and here

Obviously it's too easy to get things patented these days, especially in areas of high technology as few if any patent officer workers are well versed in the areas of technology. Most of the patent office stampers would have little inclination as to how an intigrated circuit works or if an item of software recently designed is any different or unique from any other piece of similar software.

Sure, it's nice to be able to patent and protect your inventions and innovations, but when most of today's patent holders are larger corporations, it's hardly meant to protect the garage inventor anymore.