EU Eyes Mobile Patent Wars

The writer makes a darn good point in that the companies are collecting patents like baseball cards and then using them in a way that was never the intention of patent law: stifling of commercial competition.

If you go back in time, you find that the great ideas are almost always those from a single person. Certainly, he or she may be working as a team, but ultimately, there was one person who had the "light bulb" of the breakthrough, and I think that he or she deserves the credit and ownership of the patent. Companies never make the discoveries although they fund the researchers; it's the individual workers that do the "donkey work". Software in particular, is a highly individual item as far as I am aware, rather like a PhD thesis with a single author.

So, I wonder what would happen if patent law was changed to allow patents only to be owned by the individual who discovered the breakthrough ? It would of course, create screams from companies who saw their strangleholds vanishing, but the kudos and capital would then flow to the actual inventor.......and wasn't that the original idea of patents ? To allow the inventor to profit from his or her discovery ?

Just a thought.....probably wildly impractical of course, but there seems a certain justice in it as far as I can see.

Patent laws are passed by politicians. Politicians are bought and paid for by business. So that type of patent reform is a pipe dream.

While it's not software...Do you know who invented the Post-it note....I mean, a 3x3 stack of sticky papers that changed the entire dynamic of an office operation? You can read the who-invented-what timeline on post-it notes here but the "who" isn't the direct point.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-it_note

The point is "who got screwed in the process".

The inventor(s) of the post-it note had signed employee agreements with 3M that dictated any ideas or products developed by employed brain trust belonged to 3M. Now, should the law be changed as the Good Doctor suggests, would that level the table? I'm thinking not. For years now, I have tried to get my hands on a vendor agreement between Microsoft and any major OEM. The "magic key" that should have opened the door, The Freedom of Information act, is actually subverted by these vendor agreements. The lobby was so strong to keep vendor agreements secret, that John or Jane Doe will never see one, or if they do, it won't be from one of the major players.

So JaseP is correct....corrupt politicians have paved the way for corporate golden streets...and the inventor(s) of post-it notes. Well, they kept their jobs until voluntarily leaving or retiring. I am guessing luck is relative.