Perhaps it's not the system that is an issue, but the personnel who award patents.
Granting them can certainly be a result of the USPTO examiner not being a current professional developer in the field.
The check and balance is that an issuance isn't considered final. Patents can be challenged later on.
(In some countries, patents are granted pretty easily... with the expectation that if need be, a formal challenge will be made by someone, and that's when the patent is really examined in detail and confirmed - or not - once and for all.)
Also, any government contract should require any resulting non-classified IP to become public domain. If the article is correct, then it sounds like US citizens have paid for this patent already.
Perhaps. Siri, for example, originally came from government paid research. (And sure enough, you can download a lot of that code.)
Tough call. I lean towards your view, but what if the government only pays you to make a few of something you invent, and then drops the much more lucrative followup contract? You'd need to sell your invention to more customers to make up for that. It wouldn't be fair to deprive the inventors.
I think paid public research is different from a contract to create something that's actually bought and used. E.g. should Humvees be a public domain design? Or shouldn't AM General own the patents on their creation?
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