From the readings, what exactly are patents? What are the ethical, moral, economic, or social reasons for granting patents?
From the readings, a patent was defined as, “an exclusive right granted for an invention – a product or process that provides a new way of doing something, or that offers a new technical solution to a problem.” Basically, it’s just a way to claim innovation as one’s property. I think at first, granting patents was a way to make sure that one’s idea couldn’t be stolen, or that one would benefit from creating their own invention or process and be encouraged to do so without any pressure of outside factors possibly eating that up. In terms of economic reasons, it definitely is profitable to be the one who owns the patent, especially when it becomes desirable or needed in many people’s products or processes. In terms of social reasons, patents were thought to encourage innovation, which may tie into economic or monetary want, or just pride to know that something of importance to others was in want or need.
- In your opinion, should patents be granted at all? Are they really necessary or beneficial for society? Do the promote innovation or do they hinder it? Explain.
I think patents were at first necessary for companies unestablished to establish themselves as people who will make legitimate products. However, as companies become more and more established with a good reputation in terms of their products, then open source becomes more reputable instead. For example, in the article that mentioned Microsoft’s decision to release all their patents to open source, since Microsoft is an established company, their release of their established products promote innovation because of the people’s trust in their used-to-be patents. I still do thinks patents should be granted to protect the less-established smaller companies or people, but that the bigger companies necessarily don’t need patents in order to gain money.
- Additionally, should patents on software be granted or should patents be restricted to physical or more tangible artifacts? Explain.
While reading through the court cases, I think patents on software became more recognized as software became more and more developed and pronounced. At first, it was thought as a means to reach an ends, or in this case, an invention or process worth patenting. Now that software dominates most of what society would call innovation, patents became more applicable as those created extreme amounts of impact on human society. So I think patents should be placed on what translates to monetary gain, whether that be physical or tangible.
- Finally, is the existence of patent trolls evidence that the patent system is working or that the system is broken? Explain.
No system is perfect, and patent trolls kind of expose that the patent system is more of an honor system rather than something that’s stated in law. A combination of impossibly many patents as well as companies or people who decide to hoard them all (as bought property instead of being the ones who actually created the invention or process), led to this problem. Also, the fact that patents can be bought by people with or without malicious intent which leads to the fact that it is property that can be put for sale has led to this problem.