[Major Malfunction @ Nov 17th 2006 2:30PM]

That is a great quote... "Those who can, do; those who can't, sue."

But you see the patent process is long and expensive, and regardless of what you think, they did indeed "DO" something. Simply because they don't have millions to move on it 'at this time' does not mean that anyone can come along and utilize the patented work without permission/licensing.

When will people get it through their thick skulls, that patents were designed to protect the individual inventor... and they are doing a fine job, it is the abuse of that intellectual property that ruins it for the small time inventor and like those who keep bringing up the 'laser cat toy' invention, you don't know what you are talking about.

Invent something, patent it, and then do nothing as another company makes millions or billions off of your innovation... then come back and let us know how the Federation of Planets would have done things differently.

[Gil @ Nov 17th 2006 2:40PM]

"When will people get it through their thick skulls, that patents were designed to protect the individual inventor... and they are doing a fine job"

Funniest thing I heard today.

[John Commenter @ Nov 17th 2006 3:10PM]

Patents were not designed to protect the individual inventor.

Patents are (for current circumstances, poorly) designed as a disclosure for exclusivity bargain, to statistically accelerate diffusion of new technical ideas in exchange for granting mini-monopolies for a limited time.

A secondary, but related, reason that drug companies like to blather about is to encourage risky research that pays off only once in a while. This of course does not make much sense, as drug exclusivity is overpowered and needs to be nerfed - specifically in the direction of encouraging investment in less-common, horrible diseases rather and away from 15 types of Viagra. In any case, it is a variation of the exclusivity for accelerated technological progress.

The incentive system does not give a crap whether the inventor is an individual or a team or otherwise, or whether the party that owns the invention is an individual or otherwise. Whatever will push progress more reliably.

The political system does care, and this is why some patent legislation is affected by the interests of individual inventors - it is a lobby that gets a lot of bang for its buck because of the overemphasis on inventors in American industrial mythology.

Incentive systems are statistical and have attenuated effects, and anectodal abuses and ridiculous inequities will abound. There's a couple of problems with patents.

First, all we ever hear about is abuse and inequities, because those are more interesting from a news perspective.

Second, notwithstanding that the effects should be gradual and statistical, there is no way to test it for any industry. Economic models are cute, but are immediately overwhelmed by externalities. So the bargain is one of faith.

Combine these two, and you can look forward to a future of repeated stories of trolls, corporate greed, and other interesting news items, all revolving around an incentive system that no-one knows works.

And don't tell me it doesn't work for specific technologies like software or works extra well for others like biotech, because there is no way to find either of those out. You can't draw any causative correlation between anything here, and every attempt I have ever seen eventually descends into personal anecdotes of inequity and commons dogma. We just don't know, and probably won't ever know.