| You speak a lot of sense. One of my great frustrations with the likes of Slashdot was how people would only read the title and say "they're patenting computer games", etc., like you said. However, couple of clarifications ... >People seem to presume that patents are on ideas, and that people are patenting really obvious ideas. Patents _are_ on ideas. Sure you need to demonstrate an implementation but the patent, assuming it's been drafted at all well, will cover more than one implementation. It covers an area of implementations that fit in with the idea being protected. This is why patent claims have "fixing means" instead of "screws"/"nails"/"glue"/.... >I'm responsible for some claims on one of these patents Do you mean responsible for the invention that the claims cover or for drafting the claims? If you're responsible for the invention then you have a legal right in most jurisdictions to be named as inventor on the patent. Finally, probably the most important point. As you say, you can sneak things past the examiner. This is in one way a bad idea because getting an invalid patent should be worthless. But here's the rub: invalid patents are worth a lot against people who don't have millions to spend on negotiations/court or don't have huge patent portfolios to bargain with. An invalid patent could prevent a startup from entering a field unless they have funds up front to challenge the company/inventor holding the patent. Ensuring that patents have a very high degree of validity out of the gate is vital to avoid negatively impacting innovation IMO. |