Method and system patents stifle innovation. When you can make up an idea, not apply it to any actual system, and get a patent for it, even after it’s already out there, the system is broken.
Further, I take great issue with the idea that ‘a limited time’ is virtually for all intents and purposes reinterpreted to mean forever. There is an exchange - in exchange for you getting exclusive government protected use of your creation, you give up rights to that creation after a certain number of years. The trade has been broken through poor congressional action and courts that won’t outright declare the laws unconstitutional for breaking the provisions of limited time.
First case fails the requirement of novelty. A just court would rule that a patent that fails any one of the tests: novel, inobvious, and useful is null and void.
The problem is not with the patent, but with the court.
Second case, currently patents last 20 from date of filing. Period. There are no extensions. A company or inventor can continue to file patents on any improvements or derivative works/technologies, but the underlying technology becomes public domain after the initial creator has his first bite at the apple.
Without the protection of patents an individual would have absolutely no hope of deriving any benefit from his own efforts. Lack of such protection absolutely stifles any creative effort.
Compare the net creativity of all civilizations before Franklin proposed patents, to after it became possible to “own”, no matter how temporarily, an idea.
“Method and system patents stifle innovation. When you can make up an idea, not apply it to any actual system, and get a patent for it, even after it’s already out there, the system is broken.”
So glad to hear you are wise enough to know the difference. How easy it would be to give out protection only for real, physical, or whatever stuff instead of abstract “method and system” plans, and also what’s not already out there and what’s going to be immediately used. The world will never run out of genuises like you to distinguish between honest innovation of hardworking Americans and greedy fat cats.
On second thought, it doesn’t take a genius. It’s obvious that “the system” is broken, so who needs a system? Junk it all and see how much more “creative” we all become (sha-la-la-la).