Hope for Patents

I just got back from a vacation with some good friends. So I'm in a pretty good mood. I don't have a rant for you today. Instead I stumbled across an article over at Ars Technica that basically says the Supreme Court made a ruling that equates to you can't patent common sense.

More specifically you can't patent anything that would seem obvious to someone with ordinary skill in the field that the patent is being applied for. While there is no word on rather this will immediately invalidate 80% of our current patents, or rather each one will have to be fought and beat in a court. Nonetheless, this sets a precedent, and one that was originally intended when patents were devised.

Three cheers for innovation and to the employment offices for all the greedy patent farmers.

The Evil that is our Patent System

Patent Farming, for those that are not familiar with the term, referers to an individual or group that does nothing other than sit around applying for patents all day everyday. They have no intent whatsoever of ever producing any product that resembles any of these patents, infact they prefer to receive their patent as quietly as possible and not tell anyone about it. What is even worse, quite often the patents they are applying for and receiving are for technologies or ideas we've been using for years, but no one bothered to patent because they seemed like "no brainer" ideas.

So, what do they do with all these patents for ideas already in use or could start being used someday? Nothing. They sit on them waiting for enough people to adopt the idea/technology that their patent covers. Then they demand licensing fees retroactive to when the patent was received, or when the idea started being used. The worst part of it all is this is completely legal. Nearly everything in this system is broken and should be scrapped and started over. The current system discourages actual progression of technology because no one knows what obscure patent might be out there covering your invention or a part of your invention.

So is anything safe from the patent farmers or our flawed patent system? It seems not. When I heard Amazon had received a patent for a "1- click checkout button" on a website I knew we were in trouble. Yeah, thats old news now, and to my knowledge its still in appeals courts. But appeals courts aren't a solution, they just compound the situation. This problem grows worse by the day, if we continue down this path what will happen to inovation in America over the next 10-20 years?