The terms for both patent and copyright are way too long. Instead of increasing over the years as we advanced further into the Digital Age, they should have been gradually decreasing. The whole point of the US patent and copyright system is not to "give a special reward" to inventors and authors, but to "promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts" by building up the public domain commons of inventions and art. The current law, with its lenghthy terms and slipshod processes that invite abuse by trolls and encourage the smothering oppression by monopoly power, is at odds with those original goals. It needs to be torn down completely and rebuilt for this not-so-new century.
> The whole point of the US patent and copyright system is not to "give a special reward" to inventors and authors, but to "promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts" by building up the public domain commons of inventions and art.
First, citation needed.
Second, these two things are not at odds. People require incentives. If you want people to submit their inventions to the public domain, you do need to provide them with economic incentives for it. Otherwise, people will simply keep their inventions to themselves, as they did before, and as many do now.
The citation is literally The US Constitution: "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."
I asked for a citation of something that explicitly did not mention rewards to inventors / authors to accomplish this goal.
What you cited backs my argument, specifically that owners of intellectual property have exclusive right to their discoveries and writings during the period of protection.
Rewards were an intended outcome of patents from day one, as it was literally included in the U.S. Constitution.
