nostr:npub1u20kkrhfhk3pspn4f9dk8w7qp295vrf28jevcm9l7958xs99h3asu7ds5s nostr:npub1sl8kylr2n9gpnfdg5k5jv9dwda5xm9chuyt73gz4mcl88q5fa0tser5emg The problem with patents is that they're an expensive lottery.

It costs a fortune to apply for patents, so only businesses can apply for more than one in practice (although businesses spend far more paying for the patent lawyers to write the greatest insults to the English language to achieve a general idea patent without admitting it).

Patent offices are also hopeless at determining if something has already been patented and somewhat often approves multiple patents on the same thing.

One example is the LZW algorithm, which was patented at least twice.


Also, you having a few patents won't achieve much in practice, as most big technology companies have thousands of patents.

What IBM does where faced with a patent infringement claim from a small player is to go; "Cute, but your invention is covered by this patent, this patent, that patent and this patent of ours - why don't we cross license?" and IBM gets another patent to add to the pile and you get some useless patents licenses.

Even in the extremely rare case where you have a patent pointing in the right direction and a business has nothing to return, if the case goes to court, there's a good chance your patent is going to be deemed invalid.

The only way to improve patents would be to make them only apply to actual inventions and not math and have a slightly sane term limit tailored for each field of endeavor - but the government will never do that.


rms has written extensively on the problems with patents.