Cutting Through the Patent Thicket: Current US System Harms Innovation

[mandy]

For over 200 years, the U.S. patent system has catalyzed economic growth and protected the national interest. Unfortunately, over the past few decades, patents have become irrelevant -- even harmful -- to the innovation process.

The patent system was designed to encourage the free flow of ideas, in exchange for a temporary monopoly. Not all ideas, however, are worth pursuing, worth defending, or worth backing financially. And this gets to what, at bottom, is wrong with the patent system: We issue patents too easily for trivial ideas, thus diminishing protection for true breakthrough ideas.

full article: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/c...827695.htm