Innovation at Risk
You know I’m going to be getting this book as soon as it comes out. I’m pretty vocal about my dislike for patents, but because other companies use them I always end up working on some kind of protective patent umbrella or at least some blocking patents where ever I go. I refuse to put my name on them, cause they’re a vestige of an absurd concept gone horribly wrong. I begrudgingly accept their utility in certain cases, but almost all of those cases are where someone else attacks you with some patent issue (and the other ones are all legal issues as well). It’s one of those closed loop feedback systems. Why do you get patents? Well cause everyone else has patents of course! And why do they all have patents? Cause everyone they’re competing with has patents. Oh yes, I would love to see the day where we can just do away with the broken system as a whole. Unfortunately the book is not yet available for pre-order through Amazon, otherwise I would have already done so.
July 16th, 2007 at 6:58 am
As someone who has their name on a couple patents, it feels kind of dirty. However, I also know that they prevented some larger companies from stealing some of the ideas I worked on and putting us out of business.
So I am conflicted between the blatant patent abuse, and the protection of inventions against being hijacked by larger companies.
Hopefully, if patents are indeed uneconomical, the system will right itself in time.