A large company like IBM with the most amount of patents in the world in the last 2 decades can do one of a few things with each idea they have. They can keep an invention as a trade secret, publish it at a research conference or in a white paper or patent it. If they patent it, that ensures that only they can work on it and since they have so many ideas, there may be a bunch that are not acted upon and lay around for years as an idea that no one else can have. It is tragic to see large companies having so many patents getting lost within their business, with no one to work on them, hindering innovation on the idea.
Inventions and ideas should not be property. The more public they are, the more quickly they can grow and potentially change the world. Many people can have the same idea, so why should one person or company have true ownership on one? This may keep the idea dormant if the inventor does not work on it, or even if they do, their idea would turn more into reality if they let other people work off of it and create the technology and the marketplace for the invention.
Free writers take ideas and improve them, patents hinder then from diving in and experimenting with new technology. We give people monopolies through the IP system; Apple can patent something and leave it idle for 20 years. We could live in a world where people can create inventions without the motivation for money. China innovates so quickly because they do not have to fight for their ideas or wait for a patented idea to be worked on.
DMCA is frustrating because “violating it could carry up to a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine for the first offense.” Also, “manufacturers such as John Deere have used the DMCA as a means of preventing end users from legally fixing their farm equipment.” This is very annoying because what if your tractor is broken? You must get it fixed at a certain place which may greatly inconvenience you if someone cheaper and closer has a similar fix. I do not mean to say that it is ethical to violate DMCA by doing something convenient for you like pirating a film, I just believe it shouldn’t exist at all because it favors large corporations over the individual.
Finally, a patent troll cheats the system by buying out a bunch of broad patents and then trying to sue anyone with a similar idea. They “use patents as legal weapons” and should be feared by all entrepreneurs because a patent gives them the legal power to actually take money from innovators and people with great new ideas that fall into a category that the troll has a patent of. I do not think patents are even necessary for society because everything is kind of branching off of old ideas anyway, so new ideas do not need to be patented and cause legal issues to potentially arise, they can just be acted upon! Patents hinder innovation because they take a long time to get, they are required in a lot of cases, they could be used against the inventor, and they stop those outside of the patent from working on the idea.
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