[cheepin]

For most of the people I know that aren't in tech, patent reform isn't remotely on their radar. Congress isn't going to go against the money for an issue that doesn't have overwhelming popular support. Is there even a consensus on what would fix the problem? Banning software patents just covers one edge case, but there are plenty more issues in patent law.

Patents in all fields clearly slow down innovation by allowing the holder to slow down or stop derivative works. The common counter to removing patents altogether is big pharmacy. I don't know how much sympathy I can have for big pharmaceuticals either with how much they get away with: even with unpatented drugs we see anti-competitive behavior with companies like Turing. Clearly the innovation is profitable enough that funding it publicly and then reaping the benefit publicly shouldn't be a problem, right?

The other objection is that it promotes secrets over open innovation, but I'm not sure that is too valid either. The current status quo gags profitable utilization of research for 20 years. Surely there's an acceptable alternative.

[throwawaykf05]

>Patents in all fields clearly slow down innovation by allowing the holder to slow down or stop derivative works.

This theory is not supported by empirical evidence. There is plenty of evidence showing how industries became more innovative with the introduction of patent protection. This theory may however apply to industries where innovation is incremental and where claim boundaries are hard to define, like software, but evidence is hard to come by and only now are we seeing some empirical studies on the matter.