The FTC weighs in on patent reform (opensource.com)

The recommendations on calculating damages and so forth in the FTC report make a lot of sense, at least in those industries where patent protection is a net social benefit. The first part of the FTC report is mostly a one sided advancement of patent propaganda, unfortunately.

Certainly a government granted monopoly on something is profitable for some people. So is a government granted right to collect tolls on a public freeway. The report doesn't spend any time considering the social cost of those tolls, but rather only such things as how the public can best learn where the toll booths are, so as to best promote the toll booth construction industry.

A large part of the problem here surrounds the mythology of "the invention". There may be areas where patents are granted for things that meet the classical idea of an "invention", the most important one being that no long is likely to independently come up with the idea for decades in the future.

If someone else is likely to independently implement the same idea six months from now, or could circumstantially have been likely to do it years in the past, granting a twenty year monopoly is ridiculous.

In addition, the language in the report about making patentees "whole" for the infringement of others is nauseating. The problems is that the vast majority of patents are an artificial and intrinsically unjust abstraction, and a claim that you have suffered _damages_ because someone inadvertently implemented something similar to your government granted monopoly is fraud writ large.

That is the crux of the issue. The entire patent system is based on the idea that patent grants are somehow just, when most of the time the exact opposite is the case. Most patents are just an unusually obnoxious form of corporate welfare. We would do better just to line their pockets directly, rather than crippling innovation and expression in a whole host of industries.