High court wrestles with software patent questions

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Thoughts & Idea: People sometimes forget that the opposite of Patented is Public Domain, meaning we all own it. Patenting something is taking it out of the public ownership. Even the concept that someone could own an idea is only a few hundred years old and is really still a social experiment at this stage.

This system was created to help encourage innovation by ensuring that the innovator or inventor receive compensation for their invention. Seems fair and logical in intention. Unfortunately that is not what happened. It turned into a bloated cash cow and is slowing and hurting innovation and invention. Most patent holders are not the original inventors or innovators of the ideas. Patents and IP are hot commodities that are owned, bought, and sold, by companies that are carving up as much of this "idea space" for themselves as they can, at the expense of the innovation of other companies and at the expense of the general public.

Every idea that is patented is an idea that the general public and other companies are restricted from using or benefiting from unless they pay whatever arbitrary fee the patent holder decides to charge. This idea is locked down for a very long time, halting or at least severely constricting innovation in that same direction.

Perhaps patents should expire as soon the inventor/innovator has received a predetermined, reasonable, and fair compensation for their invention? That amount could be set when the patent is granted and be open for public review. That way useful patents could pass into public domain more quickly and everyone could benefit from it. Things for the public good like cancer fighting medicines or other highly beneficial inventions could have their patents bought out by the public/government/private trusts so they could be freely available for all to use.

Patents also need to be only granted for items of true innovation or invention, not the garbage that is being handed out for these days.

The huge 20 year delay in an idea passing into the public domain is not acceptable. It was less then 10 years when it originally was passed into law. Even that might have been acceptable back a few hundred years ago when this system was created, but today the pace of change is so fast the delay needs to be significantly shorter, not decades.

We need less patents not more. Compensation needs to be more reasonable and fixed and go to the inventor or innovator only. Patents need to pass into the public domain much more quickly.

I'm sure others will have their own ideas.
Thanks.; Posted by: jjarman Posted on: 02/23/07 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use