Judge Richard Posner: There Are Too Many Patents In America

Tired of all these various conflicts involving patents here in the U.S.? Well, you’re not alone. After dismissing a frivolous suit from Apple against Motorola and expressing his unhappiness on the matter shortly after, Judge Richard Posner recently wrote an opinion expressing his complete and utter disdain of the U.S Patent system. Posner argues:

“With some exceptions, US patent law does not discriminate among types of inventions or particular industries. This is, or should be, the most controversial feature of that law. The reason is that the need for patent protection in order to provide incentives for innovation varies greatly across industries.”
Posner believes there are indeed industries out there that serve as examples of actually needing patent protection— he names the pharmaceutical industry as the “poster child” for patent protection. The sole reason the pharmaceutical industry would need protection? Posner specifically argues “the invention of a new drug tends to be extremely costly–in the vicinity of hundreds of millions of dollars”. Conversely, there are “few industries that resemble pharmaceuticals” and “the cost of invention is low”, generally speaking. In fact, Posner adds “the product will be superseded soon anyway, so there’s no point to a patent monopoly that will last 20 years” and “most industries could get along fine without patent protection”. Looking at the bigger picture, Posner feels a patent:
“blocks competition within the patent’s scope and so if a firm has enough patents it may be able to monopolize its market” .
Posner doesn’t offer a specific solution, but he does outline a few preventative measures to fight defensive patents and patent trolls (we’re looking at companies like you Lodsys!). He cites examples like reducing patent terms for certain industries and completely eliminating jury trials by expanding the authority and procedures of the Patent and Trademark Office to make it the trier of patent cases. Nevertheless, Posner believes the problems and solutions of patents “merit greater attention than they are receiving”.

Source: TalkAndroid