sweeney2014

No, just show them how they can make money and management will listen. Next get a demo/prototype in their hands and go from there.

>‘It’s amazing that the most innovative ideas that General Motors has come up with have come from the outside, small companies.’

Many corporations have an 'idea submission' form buried somewhere on their website - even Google: http://www.google.com/intl/en/patents/opportunitysubmission/...

There is a difference between thinking about users, scaling, marketing vs successfully carrying it out. Without needing to carry out the users, scaling, marketing they were able to focus on the technology and innovating.

This matters because often a small startup or individual does not have the resources (not just simply $money, but also things like distribution channels, enterprise relationships, etc..) to not only carry out bringing the finished and refined product to market - let alone recouping costs sunk in.

Let the small guys do what they do best (dreaming and tinkering in their garage) and the large corporations do what they do best (reduce manufacturing costs). Patents provide another avenue for startups or individuals to do this.

Not quite. Those so called patent trolls are the thorn in the side of the large corporations. Even after a small entity succeeds in obtaining a patent and has their innovation copied by a large corporation and opens a dialogue with the large corporation, he/she is shunned and told to get lost. One large corporation (Apple) is at least honest about it and tells the small entity we can't take you seriously until you initiate a patent infringement suit [1]. The reason is rather simple: it is their most cost effective way of weeding out those they do need to worry about from those they can ignore.

[1] http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2013/05/01/is-patent-litigation-re...

That example is not an isolated incident and happens far too often. It has been part of the large corporations game plan for years now. They have found ways of using the patent system to attack small entities AND have used their deep pockets to drag out justice for the small entity.

Patent reform should focus on helping small and independent innovators, when in reality it is being driven by large deep-pocketed corporations.

If you count history as starting recently, then sure. However, the patents came AFTER the refining of an idea to concrete steps which came AFTER the funding to refine the idea which came AFTER the guy/gal with the idea finding funding to refine the idea.

One thing investors fear is investing in small unknown people where once the secret sauce is visible, it can be easily copied. In particular, copied by large corporations with customer channels, marketing muscle, deployed software installations with patch/upgrade cycles, etc... Investors often look at barriers to entry which patents happen to provide.

Patents block copying only exactly what's covered by the Claims and thereby encourage finding alternatives or develop new ways. Society benefits from having alternatives to choose from.

> Software patents are such an obvious incumbrance to programmers

true for those looking to copy or re-implement something they see from others. For programmers looking to innovate or do something completely new and need a way to fund it - completely the opposite. Patents provide the programmer support in convincing investors to fork over their cash since smart investors recognize the R&D will even in the worst case scenario (e.g. startup goes bankrupt) result in a patent which can be transferable or monetized.

This is a perfect example. The 80+ issued patents and 53+ pending patents have provided the original investors a return on their investments. The engineers got funded and got to work on what they wanted, while the investors got rewarded. Both are satisfied and will likely continue on again.