> This entire system needs to be reworked

In my mind patents were made to protect inventors and the little guy so that he/she could capitalize on their invention before the market is unleashed. When multi-billion dollar companies are gaining government sanctioned exclusivity to something through a patent, something seems off.

But in this example they weren't a multi-billion dollar company 20 years ago.

> In my mind patents were made to protect inventors and the little guy so that he/she could capitalize on their invention before the market is unleashed. When multi-billion dollar companies are gaining government sanctioned exclusivity to something through a patent, something seems off.

I agree. Patent laws have created for moral reasons instead of practical ones. Let this be a lesson to lawmakers to pass regulation based on facts instead of feelings.

> When multi-billion dollar companies are gaining government sanctioned exclusivity to something through a patent, something seems off.

So, in your world, why would a medical research lab spend billions researching and developing new drugs, spend years going through regulatory approval and testing, only to have their drug be sold for pennies as a generic?

This comes up as an example a lot. The solution is not to eliminate patents, but just to get rid of a one-size-fits-all patent. Medical patents shouldn't be on the same footing as a software patent. For example, you could maybe ask for a FDA-Approved-Drug-Patent which would be different than new-roller-skates patent.

Software patents may be "strange", but patents are very useful in the rest of the engineering world.

Agreed, years of research and brilliant ideas should be protected. However one click shopping is a bit obvious.

Not to sound condescending but the following phrase

"years of research and brilliant ideas should be protected"

can never adequately define what must be patented and what must not be. An brilliant idea need not take years of research. Even the interpretation of the word brilliant is debatable.

PS: I'm not taking any stance with respect to patents. Just saying that it's not black and white.

Agreed, no issue I know of is black and white. I think the grammar is correct though, or should I have said "years of research OR brilliant ideas"? Would you have preferred "insightful ideas"

Patents are required to be both "novel" (no one has done it before) and "non-obvious" (a typical software engineer wouldn't have thought of it). These seem to cover it pretty well to me, except that novelty is trivial to find in the software world and the bar for obviousness seems to be completely ignored; I've never heard of a software patent so obvious it was rejected.

Agreed. Many things sound obvious in plain English but when you ask someone to write an actual law that everyone will abide by (and will survive committees and constitutionality challenges), it becomes quite a bit more difficult.

I agree about how broken it is. But for a patent attorney, it is gold, if you can extend the idea. If I had more money to defend one back in 2000 I would own mesh networks...

> If I had more money to defend one back in 2000 I would own mesh networks...

Then no one would use mesh networks instead of almost no one!

This is by design. Patent lawyers are paid to obtain the most generic patent possible.