There’s an article at ECN that echoes what I’ve been saying here for some time:
Lindsey and Teles argue that the main effect of patent laws is to empower already powerful corporations and groups to stifle startups and competition from less powerful inventors and small companies. In U. S. patent law, the first person to file a patent is the winner who takes all the rights. Even if the first to file wasn’t the first to invent, the first filer can, and often does, stop other inventors from using the fruits of their own inventiveness in the case of nearly simultaneous inventions, which often happens in rapidly advancing fields. So in this way, a law intended to let inventors benefit from their own inventions actually stops them from doing so.
Some years back I heard an interview with Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway, an insulin pump, and many others in which he remarked that the secret to making a living as an inventor is not to invent anything important since, regardless of patents, your invention will be stolen by a big company capable of fighting you in court.
There are other reasons to abandon our current patent laws. One of them is that, since China’s enforcement of patent law is cursory at best, patents place Americans at a competitive disadvantage. That’s related to the point I’ve made previously about reciprocity.
