> Why does everyone really want to reform/abolish our patent system? I mean, really.
The current state of software patents is such that a company can stock up, lawyer up, then sue out of existence any attempt at competition. They were invented to promote innovation, not stifle it. I honestly have a hard-time imagining any competent programmer standing behind half the garbage that passes for 'innovative' patents. It would be one thing if it were just patents that were not being used, but its taken to court, succesful cases that prove the point. One-click purchasing? One-box multiple search? Companies are patenting anything they can think of - the most obvious and minor of innovations - and succesfully pushing others out. That's anti-competitive in its aboslute purest.
> We can't just rewrite all patent law or get rid of patents. That's like saying the US needs a new constitution.
Most people aren't anti-patent et al - just anti software patents. A more apt analogy would be wanting to re-write a specific interpretation of a specific clause of the constitution.
> it seems like there are a few trendy startups and companies out there who got burned by the patent system.
If companies were providing actual evidence of specific, long-term, expensive investments that resulted in software innovation, with a compelling case that it would not have been invented otherwise (aka a high school coder couldn't possibly mimic it), then yeah, maybe I coudl see a justification. But the current "just show us that there's not other patents out there that did this alreadY" can only be justified by one means: "I'm a lawyer, and I want to make a good living". Case in point - David Kappos.
The current state of software patents is such that a company can stock up, lawyer up, then sue out of existence any attempt at competition. They were invented to promote innovation, not stifle it. I honestly have a hard-time imagining any competent programmer standing behind half the garbage that passes for 'innovative' patents. It would be one thing if it were just patents that were not being used, but its taken to court, succesful cases that prove the point. One-click purchasing? One-box multiple search? Companies are patenting anything they can think of - the most obvious and minor of innovations - and succesfully pushing others out. That's anti-competitive in its aboslute purest.
> We can't just rewrite all patent law or get rid of patents. That's like saying the US needs a new constitution.
Most people aren't anti-patent et al - just anti software patents. A more apt analogy would be wanting to re-write a specific interpretation of a specific clause of the constitution.
> it seems like there are a few trendy startups and companies out there who got burned by the patent system.
Read more. Companies large and small regularly get burned by ridiculous patents. Like Android removing unified search (http://www.zdnet.com/samsung-galaxy-s3-loses-unified-search-...). That's absurd.
If companies were providing actual evidence of specific, long-term, expensive investments that resulted in software innovation, with a compelling case that it would not have been invented otherwise (aka a high school coder couldn't possibly mimic it), then yeah, maybe I coudl see a justification. But the current "just show us that there's not other patents out there that did this alreadY" can only be justified by one means: "I'm a lawyer, and I want to make a good living". Case in point - David Kappos.