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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, June 07 2012 @ 04:46 AM EDT |
| Any issued patent is stealing from the public. That's what a patent is. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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- NO! - Authored by: swmech on Thursday, June 07 2012 @ 04:58 PM EDT
- NO! - Authored by: Wol on Thursday, June 07 2012 @ 05:50 PM EDT
- I am totally serious. - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, June 08 2012 @ 04:24 AM EDT
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, June 07 2012 @ 06:29 PM EDT |
The original idea behind patents was to prevent ideas from
being "stolen", if you will, and used as the basis for
competing products. This seems plausible to me.
A big problem, however, is the pernicious idea of
"inadvertent infringement". In other words, someone can
create a product that is 100% his/her own idea, with
absolutely no direction or inspiration taken from others,
and still be infringing on patents, all without ever having
heard of the patented "invention" or its inventor.
I fail to see how this prohibition on "inadvertent
infringement" creates any benefit to society. In such
cases, the "infringer" cannot be argued to have "stolen" an
idea from the patent holder. The infringer probably isn't
even aware of the existence of the patent or the "invention"
it covers. If the idea is easily arrived at independently,
shouldn't that be grounds to invalidate the patent on the
basis of obviousness? Really, the patent holders shouldn't
be able to have it both ways. If the idea is sufficiently
non-obvious to be patentable, it ought to be very unusual
for an independent developer to unknowingly do the same
thing. Conversely, if a patent covers something that
developers are likely to infringe inadvertently, how can it
be so non-obvious as to be patentable?
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