The patent system is supposed to increase innovation, but there's a suprising number of adverse feedback effects from an increased rate of innovation which dist

The patent system is supposed to increase innovation, but there's a suprising number of adverse feedback effects from an increased rate of innovation which distort the patent mechanism: - succeeding innovations are more likely to occur within the lifetime of a patent - the patent office can't keep up, so it reduces the time for review - the time to issue (3 years and counting) becomes a huge problem for small inventors, while being much less of one for trolls - the number of patents covering an integrated product increases. At this point it is impractical to actually check whether you are infringing one - The standard of unobviousness, the crucial criterion of whether a patent serves the public interest, is related to the state of the art. But as the state of the art changes more quickly, this becomes more difficult to define, and also more difficult for patent examiners to keep up with. (And the validity of a patent may be decided by a court which has even less chance to keep up).