"Patents and copyright have ceased to promote scientific innovation and have....

John Thomas8 · **Posted:** Thu May 03, 2012 11:05 pm

....become weapons of mass destruction." (hardwarelust.com, Samantha Bigger)

While this article might be about a single case, the use of extented copyright (gak, it's a bono) and patents on stupid stuff (software) is hammering innovation senseless.

So much for the Constitution being about protecting individual freedoms as long as K Street has cash to pay for government protection of multi-national kkkorporations.

borealis · **Posted:** Thu May 03, 2012 11:37 pm

I remember going to a lecture during which a professor claimed the Roman Empire destructed because it failed to grant new patents. One of my favorite Roman inventions is concrete.

John Thomas8 · **Posted:** Thu May 03, 2012 11:44 pm

I remember when the Sony Bono Bill wasn't in place and innovation was the order of the day.

Innovation is dying in court rooms around the country, for no legitimate reason.

borealis · **Posted:** Thu May 03, 2012 11:49 pm

John Thomas8 wrote:

I remember when the Sony Bono Bill wasn't in place and innovation was the order of the day.

Innovation is dying in court rooms around the country, for no legitimate reason.

What can I say except to postulate the U.S. is going the way of the Roman Empire.

Somerset · **Posted:** Fri May 04, 2012 2:44 am

This has been going on for quite some time.

http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine ... tents.html

Quote:

For that matter, the most trivial slices of off-line life are winning patent protection: for example, a technique for measuring a breast with a tape, to determine bra size; and one for executing a tennis stroke while wearing a kneepad (U.S. 5,993,366: "The tennis racket is swung toward a tennis ball so as to hit the tennis ball with the racket. . . .") Many of these patents are harmless. Most are narrower, when read carefully, than they sound at first. Others are multimillion-dollar lawsuits in embryo.

I posted a while back about patent trolls, and for some of us the patent game is (or used to be) a big part of our professional lives. Res Ipsa probably has some interesting perspectives on this, but from where I'm sitting I don't see it getting better anytime soon.

Falsehoods unchallenged only fester and grow.

"Patents and copyright have ceased to promote scientific innovation and have....

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