patents crippled as economic motivation

patents crippled as economic motivation

Posted Oct 19, 2007 15:58 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954)
In reply to: why MS was not sued over this by tialaramex
Parent article: A visit from the trolls

What you're saying is that there's no public advantage to issuing patents for inventions which are obvious to anyone skilled in the art. As it happens, that has been understood since the beginning of US patents and it is written into the law that such inventions aren't patentable.

The problem is that the law as it has evolved sets a very high standard for "obvious." There seems to be widespread agreement that it needs to be lower, but lawmakers haven't been able to fix it yet.

I hope any fix doesn't use the word "software." Whether an invention is realized in software or matter is irrelevant to the question of whether the public benefits from the patent being issued.

---

(Log in to post comments)