

U.S. Sets 21st-Century Goal: Building a Better Patent Office - jayzee
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/business/21patent.html?hp

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donohoe
Hmmm - so they have a response time of about 2 years to each patent.

Simple solution: disallow all software patents.

Your welcome.

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jayzee
I cannot see the difference between software patents, process patents, or
patents on pharmaceutical drugs etc. If one is against software patents then
one is against patents in general.

I think that the key differentiating factor for software patents is the rapid
time-scale of innovation in the technological sector. Patents are awarded for
long durations (20 years or more) because that is the time it used to take to
extract value from them to justify the risk that the early stage innovators
took and to reward them for their creativity.

But with the rapid speed of development in the technological sector such long
durations of protection benefit the innovator disproportionately, to the
detriment of society which would benefit once the patent was in the public
domain.

I think that instead of arguing about whether software patents are valid or
not, patent durations should be self-calibrating and should be tied to the
time-scale of innovation in that sector.

So a software patents should for example be awarded for a duration of 2-3
years. This will still reward creative innovators, allow them to extract value
from their work, without hampering further growth and innovation in the
sector.

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jayzee
What really threw me off my chair was the part where they say that they have
incompatible systems and so they have to take the printouts from one system
and scan them into the other.

 _absolutely unbelievable_

