There is this interesting passage at the end: But Jenner has one suggestion: Require inventors to prove their technology works before giving them a patent. Mos

There is this interesting passage at the end: But Jenner has one suggestion: Require inventors to prove their technology works before giving them a patent. Most countries require inventors to provide a working model, he said, while the U.S. merely requires a description. “One way to get rid of a lot of half-baked ideas would be to require that somebody make it first,” he said. If Lemelson had been required to do that, his record as an inventor might have been a lot shorter. I wonder how well such a rule would work for software. It would probably cut down the number of patents drastically, since most patent trolls don't actually make anything. It would also guarantee much greater precision in what is claimed, since one would have working code to refer to.