Patents were made to protect against an injustice, but they are causing a greater injustice. The injustice they sought to protect against, is the cheating of the inventor of the fruits of his labor, by some Capitalist exploiter, who takes the invention without compensating the inventor.
Unfortunately, in order to protect against that injustice, we have created a framework that perpetuates a greater injustice. The "inventors" have become the wolves in this system, because the bar for invention is so low. And arguably there is no practical and economic system we could use to properly raise this bar. The expertise required to properly remove "trivial" patents is too expensive for the state to deploy, and is in too short supply. We need that expertise to be used to make things, not sit at the Patent Office to sort through patent applications.
Analogously, what if we were greatly troubled by bullies in American schools, and decided to deploy a system whereby highly trained monitors would follow each child around to make sure they were not bullied. The system might result in zero bullying, but the costs might be prohibitive, not only in terms of salaries for all of these monitors, but in invasion of privacy, and perhaps even persecution of innocent children that are mistakenly identified as bullies by under-skilled monitors.
If we sought to remove this system of anti-bully monitors, I'm sure we would here a giant ruckus from all the anti-bullying activists who would demand that the system be kept in place ... to stop bullying. And since bullying is such a terrible thing, we would have a hard time repealing the anti-bullying law in Congress.
And no doubt, the union of anti-bullying monitors would raise the money to lobby against us in congress, as their jobs and benefits would be under threat.
Patents were the worst "good" idea that the founding fathers had. They really fucked up bad. And I don't think we will ever be able to get out from under this shit system. The patent lawyers make too much money. The trolls make too much money. The shit-stains who file the bullshit patents and don't know how to make real products, make too much money.
And the American people don't care, because, so far, the system has just acted as a tax on engineers ... and engineers make enough money to eat. It doesn't matter to the American people that an entry level Patent associate at a big law firm makes $160,000 per year (standard and without much variation) while a software engineer that produces the patented technology makes only about $80,000. Nobody thinks there is any irony in that.
Patents were made to protect against an injustice, but they are causing a greater injustice. The injustice they sought to protect against, is the cheating of the inventor of the fruits of his labor, by some Capitalist exploiter, who takes the invention without compensating the inventor.
Unfortunately, in order to protect against that injustice, we have created a framework that perpetuates a greater injustice. The "inventors" have become the wolves in this system, because the bar for invention is so low. And arguably there is no practical and economic system we could use to properly raise this bar. The expertise required to properly remove "trivial" patents is too expensive for the state to deploy, and is in too short supply. We need that expertise to be used to make things, not sit at the Patent Office to sort through patent applications.
Analogously, what if we were greatly troubled by bullies in American schools, and decided to deploy a system whereby highly trained monitors would follow each child around to make sure they were not bullied. The system might result in zero bullying, but the costs might be prohibitive, not only in terms of salaries for all of these monitors, but in invasion of privacy, and perhaps even persecution of innocent children that are mistakenly identified as bullies by under-skilled monitors.
If we sought to remove this system of anti-bully monitors, I'm sure we would here a giant ruckus from all the anti-bullying activists who would demand that the system be kept in place ... to stop bullying. And since bullying is such a terrible thing, we would have a hard time repealing the anti-bullying law in Congress.
And no doubt, the union of anti-bullying monitors would raise the money to lobby against us in congress, as their jobs and benefits would be under threat.
Patents were the worst "good" idea that the founding fathers had. They really fucked up bad. And I don't think we will ever be able to get out from under this shit system. The patent lawyers make too much money. The trolls make too much money. The shit-stains who file the bullshit patents and don't know how to make real products, make too much money.
And the American people don't care, because, so far, the system has just acted as a tax on engineers ... and engineers make enough money to eat. It doesn't matter to the American people that an entry level Patent associate at a big law firm makes $160,000 per year (standard and without much variation) while a software engineer that produces the patented technology makes only about $80,000. Nobody thinks there is any irony in that.