Cutting Through the Patent Thicket

xzvf writes wrote to mention a BusinessWeek article positing that the overgrowth of patents is harmful to innovation. From the article: "The first problem with patents is that the entire process takes too long: three years on average, often as long as five, and getting longer all the time. So when a venture capitalist invests in a company, its IP 'dowry' remains, at best, provisional. How much would you pay for a company when its assets are hidden from view?"

Comments

VC-Think

[Duncan3]

In summary...

Patents were great when I was an inventor or researcher. But now that I'm a VC whose job is to takeover companies and screw the inventors out of all the money, patents are a pain. They take too long which is slowing down my screwing, please speed things up...

I think that cuts throught the BS and gets at what he means.

Re:VC-Think

[s20451]

Patents really *are* great if, like me, you are a researcher. Without them it would be nearly impossible for an independent inventor to get a product to market: either everything about your product would have to be secret (giving you a credibility problem), or you would risk that your product ideas would be stolen whenever you gave a sales pitch.

I firmly believe that without patent protection, very little innovation would occur at startup companies -- which is a shame, because that is where much innovation and technological risk-taking occurs today.

If anyone can come up with a solution other than patents that protects the small inventor against a big corporation, I'd like to hear it.

It did not !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

For over 200 years, the U.S. patent system has catalyzed economic growth ...


It did not, correct statement would be: for over 200 year innovation was able to overcome rotten patent law, but it finally approaches a dead end.

Consider this troll, but the only good that patent system does it makes investment, for those who have money, more appealing, than just sitting on the pile of cache (I would think there are better ways of achieving that ..).
It does not protect the small guy, as it promises. Nowadays, small guy virtually has no chance of success, because of large corporations patenting everything left and right.

Poor article

[jbeaupre]

After reading the article, I have to say the author has a poor grasp of patents. Yes, he has 70, but by his own admission they were trivial. He's also using terminology loosely. Do numerous patents get granted for trivial stuff? Yes. But the patent office has never been given a narrow definition of novel and non-obvious. Not their fault, talk to congress and the SCOTUS about that.

As far as only granting broad patents, those can be just as trivial as narrow. A broad patent may not have enough details worked out to be useful. I think he was trying to say that only economically important or scientific breakthroughs should be granted patents, everthing else being narrow. Nice idea, but it only works with 20/20 hind sight. Some times it's the guy, 30 years after the first broad patent is filed, that figures out the critical specification to make the whole thing work.

As far as his comments about venture capitalists, so what? If they aren't bright enough to figure out good technology from bad, good patents from bad, that's their own fault. Making it easier for the dumbs ones to become rich isn't very motivating.

So all the article ends up being is the random musings from someone ill informed. Fix the system if you must, but don't listen to this guy.