In my opinion, patent law is intended to strike a balance between providing financial rewards and financial incentives to innovators (or the people who foot the bill for the innovators) and the common good (general availability of inventions and further innovation built on top of earlier innovations). The attitude expressed by the "Gold Diggers" article is excessive, because it holds that the rewards for the innovator should always outweigh the needs of the common good. While I do believe inventors should be entitled to some financial gains (should they want them), the balance between these interests should not be allowed to tip to far towards the rewards side as this will result in a destructive obstruction to innovation. On the other hand, if patent protection is done away with, some forms of innovation will not be pursued because the money needed is so large, and no dollar payback can be expected without some period of exclusive rights. For example, assuming the Blacklight (see http://slashdot.org/articles/99/12/22/109245.shtml ) thing is not a hoax, if you read some parts of http://www.blacklightpower.com/bpsummary.html the only way they expect to be able to make money is to be able to bring inventions based on their patents to market and have exclusive rights to it for a number of years. Without this potential for big dollar returns, it is unlikely that Blacklight would have been able to raise the cash to continue operating. Currently, the balance seem to be to far towards the "rewards" side of the balance. I believe to many obvious ideas are being granted patents. The one click shopping cart appears to be one of those ideas.
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In my opinion, patent law is intended to strike a balance between providing financial rewards and financial incentives to innovators (or the people who foot the bill for the innovators) and the common good (general availability of inventions and further innovation built on top of earlier innovations). The attitude expressed by the "Gold Diggers" article is excessive, because it holds that the rewards for the innovator should always outweigh the needs of the common good. While I do believe inventors should be entitled to some financial gains (should they want them), the balance between these interests should not be allowed to tip to far towards the rewards side as this will result in a destructive obstruction to innovation. On the other hand, if patent protection is done away with, some forms of innovation will not be pursued because the money needed is so large, and no dollar payback can be expected without some period of exclusive rights. For example, assuming the Blacklight (see http://slashdot.org/articles/99/12/22/109245.shtml ) thing is not a hoax, if you read some parts of http://www.blacklightpower.com/bpsummary.html the only way they expect to be able to make money is to be able to bring inventions based on their patents to market and have exclusive rights to it for a number of years. Without this potential for big dollar returns, it is unlikely that Blacklight would have been able to raise the cash to continue operating. Currently, the balance seem to be to far towards the "rewards" side of the balance. I believe to many obvious ideas are being granted patents. The one click shopping cart appears to be one of those ideas.