3 ms·
> If you can prevent other people who had the same idea as you from making products based on them just by describing the idea on a piece of paper and getting go
by anamax 15y ago
> If you can prevent other people who had the same idea as you from making products based on them just by describing the idea on a piece of paper and getting government's stamp that you were the first one to come to them with it, then the society is worse off.
So? Every law has cases where it comes to the "wrong" result.
More to the point, the overwhelming number of "non-practicing" inventors just want to get paid. You seem to think that they shouldn't get paid.
Note that inventors sell to trolls because trolls are better able to get paid. If you weren't so opposed to inventors getting paid, we could look at ways for inventors to get paid without getting trolls involved.
- jbooth 15y agoKind of late here, but I think the point with software patents is that the majority of cases tend towards the "wrong" result, basically every case except for maybe novel encryption/compression algorithms.
- anamax 15y ago> I think the point with software patents is that the majority of cases tend towards the "wrong" result That's the claim, but there hasn't been much supporting evidence other than "that doesn't deserve a patent". The vast majoritiy of the "that was obvious" claims are pure hindsight. (Yes, some software patents have been overturned because of prior art, just as happens in other fields.) I particularly like the "that's just math" (which is often claimed wrt RSA). You never hear someone says "that's just chemistry" wrt chemical application patents. (You can't patent chemistry any more than you can patent math.)