Re:The Patent, Used as a Sword
by wissler on Monday October 08, 2012 @12:50AM
(#4625541)
There are other ways than patents to get rewards for your work, but patents are a non-starter in principle. Just because you thought of something first does not give you a right to stop someone else from thinking of it second. It's really very simple.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
By and large, patents aren't intended for situations where it's likely that two people would think of the same design within the patent term. It's designed to address the situation where I spend time and money researching something, and someone else comes along and takes the results of that research and sells a competing product, undercutting me on price because he never had to invest that time or money.
How the system is intended to work is very different from how it actually works.