Corporate lawyers like to patent anything that isn't nailed down. The
board of directors for the software company I worked for wanted
patents. So I had to put together a patent program with a patent
attorney even though none of us wanted to do it. Software patents are
particularly ridiculous because often you are patenting something that
is just the way a computer works. But because it wasn't patented before
it could be patented. As reported last week the Supreme Court is going
to be hearing this issue.
India was appalled that a pharmaceutical company patented neem so they
put together a program to patent all the various herbs and make them
open just to prevent any more outrageous actions like that.
Disney lawyers ruined copyrights just so Disney could keep selling their
1930s cartoons forever. The DMCA has been referred to as Disney vs the
Internet.
On 12/09/2013 01:33 AM, Jason wrote:
Thanks for raising this issue Bhairitu.
Right now, patent period for patent holders is 20 years,
which IMO is too long. This is one of the reasons why new
inventions take too long to become cheap.
Take for instance the Compact-Disk developed by Philips and
Sony. It took 20 years for CD's to become cheap.
A shorter patent term of say, 8 years is quite enough for
the patent holder to recover his costs.
Secondly patents should be managed by a UN based body. This
will bring global uniformity regarding patent rights.
