Slashdot Mirror
Patent Trolls In Biotechnology
GNUman writes "A news story in this week's Nature Journal talks about patent trolls attacking biotech companies. They cite a case in which the U.S. federal court of appeals upheld 'a patent that covered the idea of trying to link infant vaccination with later immune disorders.' The news story also references an interesting article from researchers at Boston University School of Law (Bessen, James E. et al, 2011, 'The Private and Social Costs of Patent Trolls'), in which they analyze the effect of litigation on the wealth of the defendants via their stock's value before and after litigation, and given that such loss minimally translates into an increment in the wealth of the inventor, they determine that patent litigation harms society and removes incentives for innovation."
Trade secrets would be preferable. At least then you could use whatever you can learn from reverse-engineering.
Very few trade secrets have ever been kept successfully for long. Some inventions might be locked up indefinitely, but most would probably be re-discovered or reverse-engineered long before a hypothetical patent would have expired.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat