[hammadfauz]

I just got an insight upon reading this. Patents stand to incentivize the research and development, the failures that precede innovations. On the other hand, they hinder research and development that builds on existing technology.

A good middle-ground would be patents being applicable only on rights to create _products_ based on a technology. Rights for any products based on a derivative patent belong solely to that patent, with nothing going towards the 'parent' patent.

This encourages the incremental innovation, as well as pushing the original inventor to continue to improve on their own patent.

For example, let's imagine someone patented a glass bottle as a container for ketchup. Any glass ketchup bottle makers pay that person. A person examines that glass bottle, observes that breakage of glass is a problem, and patents a plastic ketchup bottle. All plastic bottle makers buy their rights from this person. Glass bottle makers (if any) continue to pay the original patent owner for their rights. The glass bottle person, improves upon the plastic bottle, and gets a patent for a squeezable plastic ketchup bottle...You get the idea.

Discuss.