You wrote a lot and described the patent system but what exactly is the problem? The ability to patent software? The length of exclusivity/ownership of the patent? The ability for the patent owner to do nothing with the patent?
Your dislike of patent trolls leads me to guess you think that the owner of a patent doing nothing is a bad idea. Patents are a form of property.
No, you're
entirely missing my point. It isn't that they're not making the thing covered by the patent, it's that they have been given a patent that never should have been granted in the first place. This happens in two general ways, in relation to software (likely in other fields as well, but software is what I'm familiar with):
1. Patents being granted that are
not for unique, novel, inventions, they are, instead, for an obvious next step, which any software developer, presented with a given problem, would have devised.
2. Patents being granted for overly broad ideas - someone makes a car (not the first car), and gets granted a patent which either does cover, or which they repeatedly argue in court (at great expense to others) covers/ought-to-cover pretty much anything that uses wheels in any manner, making it impossible for anyone to make things that use wheels without either paying them royalties or successfully defeating them in court. Selling dogfood is not novel, selling things on the internet is not novel, but
someone was the first to sell dogfood on the internet - should they be granted a government enforced exclusive monopoly on selling dogfood on the internet for 20 years?
You're saying patents are a form of property. Yes, they are. They are essentially property that the government is conjuring out of thin air: in a lawless society, someone could invent something unique and novel and someone else could make exact copies, trading off the inventor's hard work, sell the copies for a nickel less with catchier advertising, and put the inventor out of business.
Patents are a way to prevent that - it is society saying, "because we want to encourage such innovation, we are going to protect the inventor, by manufacturing for them an
artificial piece of property: their idea is now uncopyable, by way of
government decree, rather than mere difficulty, thus granting them exclusive use of their invention for a period of time. In return, they must document their invention, and after their time period expires, others will be able to freely use the idea, thus furthering the technological progress of society overall."
This property that the government is conjuring up is quite valuable - granting the recipient a temporary monopoly on the use of an idea -
and should not be handed out irresponsibly. If the invention
really is novel and non-obvious, then the inventor deserves this valuable grant of exclusivity from the government, and they can do
whatever they want with it (manufacture the item, or sell the patent, or hang it on their mantle and polish it every day, whatever), during their temporary period of exclusivity. This contributes to the betterment of society: the inventor has been encouraged to invent genuinely new things, and the collection of useful inventions in the society increases over time. If, on the other hand, the government hands out what are essentially monopolies on ideas like "the number 3", "the letter e", or "selling dog food on the internet", which are neither novel nor unobvious, then this
harms society as a whole, merely to enrich the person who had the good luck to secure the ridiculous patent. In such a case, the patent
should never have been granted in the first place.
Unfortunately, the US Patent Office has proven itself, over time, almost entirely incapable of evaluating patent applications on software in a reasonable manner, so we've ended up with a whole lot of patents granted - valuable artificial properties manufactured and given away by the government, granting monopolies on ideas - that should have never existed in the first place.
Do you dislike it if a classic car owner keeps his car in his garage? He isn't using it, even tho he paid for it, so Tim can go and steal his car?
Uh, what? How on earth did you get the impression that I might think anything like this? Are you confusing me with someone else? I don't, for the record, think this. Someone owns a car, classic or otherwise, they can do whatever they want with it, so long as it's legal and they don't hurt anyone else.
