5 ms·

I liked much of your message but your "cure" is worse than the disease. A "free for all" world only benefits the big players. With the current system, as bad

I liked much of your message but your "cure" is worse than the disease. A "free for all" world only benefits the big players. With the current system, as bad as it is, at least the little players can file patents and possibly get bought out to acquire them. What truly needs to happen is the governments need to recognize that for the markets to work properly we need to promote small and medium size businesses over mega corporations. Megacorps don't need any protections as their size is protection enough. For example, if you hit a small business with a $1million fine you've killed them. Hit big Oil or a mega bank and they most likely made more money off what ever you're fining them for than that tiny penalty. Given that, I would say we take patents back to what most people that believe in them think they should be about: protecting the little guy. A patent should only ever be applicable to an entity under a certain size. Alternatively, to get a patent you should have to prove that you've invested so much in the development of a patent that not getting it means you're going out of business (e.g. Apple betting it all on the iPhone). We need to be promoting small businesses, where as right now all legislation seems to give more ammunition to the big companies that already have all the tools.

chris_wot 14y ago
I liked much of your message but your "cure" is worse than the disease. A "free for all" world only benefits the big players. With the current system, as bad as it is, at least the little players can file patents and possibly get bought out to acquire them. This is a remarkable assertion. The point of patents is to allow for a monopoly for a limited time while a product ormideamis being invented. It was never a mechanism to be bought out by a larger company! This entire argument is rife with problems. For example, you think that a million dollar lawsuit from a "megacorp" is no big thing - yet we just saw lawsuits between Oracle and Google, where Google won and yet still spent tens of millions in court. And for what? They gained nothing except the assurance that they can't be sued for damages... Talk about putting the cart before the horse! No, the patent system is broken. Poster gives a variety of solutions, but the two solutions that would probably be most equitable are to reduce the term of software patents (no more than 10 years), force licensing terms when infringements are found (the license terms should be determined along with the patent), and a way of ensuring that any patent filed must have a commercial product of some form in the market within 5 years, else you lose the patent. Administration of patents should be resolved too - there are too many patentsm being granted that should not be.

chris_wot 14y ago

I liked much of your message but your "cure" is worse than the disease. A "free for all" world only benefits the big players. With the current system, as bad as it is, at least the little players can file patents and possibly get bought out to acquire them. This is a remarkable assertion. The point of patents is to allow for a monopoly for a limited time while a product ormideamis being invented. It was never a mechanism to be bought out by a larger company! This entire argument is rife with problems. For example, you think that a million dollar lawsuit from a "megacorp" is no big thing - yet we just saw lawsuits between Oracle and Google, where Google won and yet still spent tens of millions in court. And for what? They gained nothing except the assurance that they can't be sued for damages... Talk about putting the cart before the horse! No, the patent system is broken. Poster gives a variety of solutions, but the two solutions that would probably be most equitable are to reduce the term of software patents (no more than 10 years), force licensing terms when infringements are found (the license terms should be determined along with the patent), and a way of ensuring that any patent filed must have a commercial product of some form in the market within 5 years, else you lose the patent. Administration of patents should be resolved too - there are too many patentsm being granted that should not be.