Quote:
Originally Posted by pricecw
I agree that the Patent trolls are a huge problem, and that was my point about obvious patents and those that should never have made it through the patent office.
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The entire problem is that there's no effective way of screening them out with the current system. I have no problem with patents in general, just the screening system.
(disclosure: I own a patent. It's commercially utterly useless, but hey. I also have a bunch of copyrighted work out there, have worked in games in various mediums and so on)
I have to disagree on drugs, though. It's perfectly fine afaik for companies to hold patents on certain active ingredients, especially given the costs of developing drugs.
There are some issues with generic drugs and availability in the US (related to medicines being effectively either freely available or prescription, with no "behind the counter, requiring a pharmacist" category, but that isn't a patent problem. Also, there are issues with unpublished medical studies, but likewise not a patent problem.
(And I'm in the EU where we don't have software patents in the first place)