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The points he made about how to improve the patent system are really good ones. I have always though a short lifespan on patents would be better for inovation.

• JamesBlair 15y ago
  The problem with merely shortening the lifespan of patents is hinted at by the logic in the argument for doing it. When we grant a monopoly to a party in return for a patent, what we are in essence saying is "If you hadn't filed here then we would not know of this invention until later." This argument made sense when the system was first conceived because the norm for that time was to keep inventions as family secrets and innovators themselves were rare. But these days the norm is for some openness and there are so many innovators that there can be very little margin between first to invent and second to invent. Software patents in particular are problematic because it is far more open by its very nature -- the existence of a solution highlights the search space. The problem with merely shortening patents in this light is that it just adjusts the cost/benefit calculation on the basis of this being a sudden jump when this development is the result of a trend that has no signs of stopping. Fortunately, the revision seems straightforward: revamp patents to make the calculation explicit. By the time software patents are completely useless, they will have a 0 year life (and be dead). Meanwhile if other fields end up as amendable to optimization as software is, we can gracefully scale down the patents there without having the same conversation all over again.