Re:MPEG LA Announces Call for Patents Essential to VP8 Video...
by pyre on Friday February 11, 2011 @02:02PM
(#2207675)
> Don't be mad at the patent holders for protecting
> their work- they published it for everyone to
> benefit from in exchange.
Is this really the case anymore? Would the world have been a worse-off place had Amazon not patented One-Click? Would the world be a worse off place had Microsoft not patented parts of FAT32?
The point of patents was to encourage inventors to open up to the world how their inventions worked. There are so many patents granted presently that are not really secrets in any fashion. In most cases, they are just the next iteration in a long line of improvements in a specific area. It has become a me-first free-for-all, where it doesn't matter if the first person that needed to solve problem X would have come up with solution Y (regardless of the person). It just matters who walks down to the patent office first. There are a number examples of patent cases where someone developed something, then someone else saw that and tried to patent it before the original inventor.
The flaw in your statement is your presumption that all (or most) patents should be valid. I argue that most patents granted in the two decades (at least) should never have been granted and do more to hinder innovation than they help it.
The point of patents was to encourage inventors to open up to the world how their inventions worked. There are so many patents granted presently that are not really secrets in any fashion. In most cases, they are just the next iteration in a long line of improvements in a specific area. It has become a me-first free-for-all, where it doesn't matter if the first person that needed to solve problem X would have come up with solution Y (regardless of the person). It just matters who walks down to the patent office first. There are a number examples of patent cases where someone developed something, then someone else saw that and tried to patent it before the original inventor.
The flaw in your statement is your presumption that all (or most) patents should be valid. I argue that most patents granted in the two decades (at least) should never have been granted and do more to hinder innovation than they help it.