Sure, that's what it would lead to eventually, but I'm quite sure that right now the 'big' companies are using patents the way they use (armies of) lawyers, simply to raise the bar to competition.
They can afford it, those who can't have very little choice but to give up.
Patents are weapons in the corporate arena, not something that has a net positive effect.
I'm sure that if it became apparent that there would be lots of companies with 99 patents that would agree not to sue each other we can make it more interesting by lowering the limit to 50 or by using that as proof that the patent systems main function is to be used in anti-competitive ways rather than to foster creativity.
It's a totally naive solution, but something really has to be done about this.
See elsewhere on the thread about how the EU patent system set up to stop counterfeit materials is now used to stop generic drugs in transit.
I've just about had enough of these tactics.
Big companies have a way of getting what they want, if we can make them want to get rid of the patent system then they'll use their lobbying power to make it happen.
Sure, that's what it would lead to eventually, but I'm quite sure that right now the 'big' companies are using patents the way they use (armies of) lawyers, simply to raise the bar to competition.
That is what they were intended to be for.
The original idea (as I understand it, obligatory IANAL) was that in order to reward inventors, the government would temporarily raise the bar on competition to the point no one else could directly use that particular technology to compete at all. Anyone who wanted to compete would either have to license the technology from the inventor, or go to the point of developing a new parallel technology that achieved the same function. This was their reward for adding to human technology and it was meant to encourage inventors to do this.
One key point though is that like copyright, patents are for a limited time.
I think that is a bit of an overstatement, but it is a point well made.
Copyrights have been extended to great lengths and retroactive extensions have been passed, so they expire at a very slow rate which is not at all fixed.
I'm not sure if you are saying that copyrights have been expiring, or if you mean that copyrights aren't expiring now but will eventually.
If the former, you have my curiosity... Could you describe a case in which a copyright's term could have expired in the past decade? As I understand it, the Sonny Bono Copyright Act extended all copyright terms by twenty years, and that was eleven years ago.
Before you get to the point of morphing the patent system into something they'd want to get rid, do you not think that they'll use their lobbying power to stop you from doing that? (It's not like you'll be able to "sneak up on them" with some stealthy sweeping patent system reform.)
They can afford it, those who can't have very little choice but to give up.
Patents are weapons in the corporate arena, not something that has a net positive effect.
I'm sure that if it became apparent that there would be lots of companies with 99 patents that would agree not to sue each other we can make it more interesting by lowering the limit to 50 or by using that as proof that the patent systems main function is to be used in anti-competitive ways rather than to foster creativity.
It's a totally naive solution, but something really has to be done about this.
See elsewhere on the thread about how the EU patent system set up to stop counterfeit materials is now used to stop generic drugs in transit.
I've just about had enough of these tactics.
Big companies have a way of getting what they want, if we can make them want to get rid of the patent system then they'll use their lobbying power to make it happen.