Do patents kill innovation? The US patent office is asking
Patents clearly kill innovation. Like, that shouldn't even be a question.<p>Fun fact: when the US entered WWI they had to buy warplanes because they didn't have the capacity to build them. Why? The original steering patent related to Orville and Wright was used to stifle innovation [1]. This was such a problem that a patent pool had to be created.<p>Likewise, e-ink devices have largely had no innovation due to the patents of the e-ink corporation being used to stifle innovation.<p>I'm relatively OK with pharmaceutical patents... within reason. The big problem in the US is you can't import that same drug from another country where the same company is making the exact same product. I realize they do this for price differentiation but this has gone way too far and is a big reason why US drugs are so expensive. In the very least you should be able to legally import such drugs from any developed nation.<p>But look at something like a smartphone and there are literally thousands of patents that apply to that product. That's... ridiculous.<p>Business models shouldn't be patentable. Software shouldn't be patentable. Obvious hardware innovations (eg applying more than one texture per clock cycle) shouldn't be patentable. Software can be protected by copyright.<p>The US PTO and the US Federal Court of Appeals are clearly in a state of regulatory capture at this point (so much so that the Supreme Court has taken to routinely slapping down the excesses of the US FCoA) so I suspect any feedback on this will be used to justify that yes patents do protect innovation.<p>[1]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers_patent_war" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers_patent_war</a>