Patents

Alex

Yes, the patent system is kinda broken. No, Scott's crazy plan isn't a useful way to fix it.

However, all hope is not lost. There is a current project that's attempting to farm out the work of determining if something is patentable to other experts in the field. It's almost as if the USPTO is doing something useful.

Rym

I have high hopes for this project.

Phantasos

Digg meets USPTO. If they do this right this would be awesome.

trogdor9

Yeah, I agree with Alex that Scott's crazy plan blows. I usually agree with Scott on this sort of thing, but damn, what was he smoking last night?

crowe

I wouldn't say that Scott's crazy plan blows, because it doesn't sound like Scott has a plan at all. He sounded a lot like I sound when I just feel like arguing for the sake of being argumentative and not bothing with things like 'facts' or 'reality'. :)

Patent reform is definitely a good thing. The abuse of the system by players like NTP or Acacia is just obscene. Patents should be a boon to the public, and are instead just being hoarded and used as ammunition for lawsuits to squish competition from the real innovators.

Chuycobo

Scott seemed like he wanted to make the point that any crazy plan can be equal if not superior to what is currently running the patent system. Here's how it should have panned out:

"Patent system is broken and any average joe, including me, could do equally if not superior to how it's working now. I don't care about the details nor is it important that I know because I'm not the person that's actually going to fix it. Lets move on."

Dr. Timo

What happened to the Nobel Prize winner re. patenting graphene nicely demonstrates the uselessness of the patent system:

We considered patenting; we prepared a patent and it was nearly filed. Then I had an interaction with a big, multinational electronics company. I approached a guy at a conference and said, "We've got this patent coming up, would you be interested in sponsoring it over the years?" It's quite expensive to keep a patent alive for 20 years. The guy told me, "We are looking at graphene, and it might have a future in the long term. If after ten years we find it's really as good as it promises, we will put a hundred patent lawyers on it to write a hundred patents a day, and you will spend the rest of your life, and the gross domestic product of your little island, suing us." That's a direct quote.