Patent System is flawed

introduction

The patent system currently in use in many countries has many flaws that hinder instead of cultivating innovation.

effects

There are many different negative effects in the current patent system. Some are listed below.

process of innovation

Many inventions are the result of a process and not of a single invention. By blocking the initial invention with a patent, the following development can not take place.

This effect has already been observed with the development of the steam engine. During the time where the patent for the steam engine was active, the development proceeded much slower than afterwards when derived work became possible.

burden of proof

The following quote (taken from here) describes this negative effect:

the final responsibility for validating or invalidating a patent lies with the court. In practice, the burden of proof of infringement lies with the patent owner because the alleged offender is held innocent until proven guilty. Furthermore, the patent office is not responsible for failure to discover previous conflicting claims, which means that a patentee never knows for sure if his patent will be deemed valid by a judge (who might also lack the training to understand the technical aspects of a case).case).

ideas can be patented

There are some limitation on the patentability of ideas. Unfotunately these can easily be circumvented. Describing a product based on the idea is very easy in many cases. The patentee is not required to have created the product, be willing to create it or even be capable of creating it. Thus he can block the creation of such a product by any other party willing or capable of doing so.

patents cost much money

Getting a patent is a costly undertaking. Defending it in court even more so. This fact clearly favours big companies over small inventors. (this is also described in The case against the patent system)

some industries work well without protection

This Ted Talk about the fashion industry illustrates, that big industries work well without any form of intellectual property protection.

affected parties

As the patent system is omnipresent, from drugs to technical inventions and in some countries like the U.S.A. even in software, the group of affected people is very big.

Some of them are:

• Inventors
• companies that are locked out of an invention process
• sick persons that need medicine that is patented