🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1991May24.050234.20366@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>, phil@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Phil Howard KA9WGN) writes:
> kleing@qualcom.qualcomm.com (Klein Gilhousen) writes:
> 
> >In article <1991May21.203853.5180@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> phil@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Phil Howard KA9WGN) writes:
> >>become public anyway.  Technology has already gotten its boostrap from the
> >>patent law; we don't need it anymore.
> 
> >Yea, right.  Everything that needs to be invented has already been 
> >invented.  So who needs patents.
> 
> I didn't say that everything that needs to be invented has already been
> invented.  Rather what I said was that we no longer need to use monopoly
> as an incentive to get people to invent things.
> 
> If you discard the patent system effective today, even allowing already
> issued patents to run their original terms, you would probably see a short
> pause in new technology coming out, following by an upswing due to the high
> level of competitiveness existant today.

Inventors don't need any incentive to invent things.  They can't help
themselves, it just happens.  The incentive is needed to get the inventors
and their employers to disclose the invention for the furtherance of
the state of the art, etc.  

The problem with the current system is that most patents are for relatively
trivial things that would have been invented anyway by lots of people
in lots of places all responding to a common necessity.  Thus, society
gets a bum deal by rewarding the first guy witha 17 year monopoly.

I'm not sure what the fix for this problem should be.  The only thing
that comes to mind is two rather contradictory approaches:
1--jack up the filing fees to eliminate trivial patents, or
2--only allow real persons to own the rights to patents - no 
corporations.  Employees could only be required to give employers
a royalty free non-exclusive license.  

By the way, in today's mail I received notification of Patent #5,017,926, 
just issued, on a method and apparatus for satellite navigation.  I
had three co-inventors, fellow employees.  

Klein Gilhousen, WT6G
Qualcomm, Inc.