Patents are granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office and give temporary, exclusive property rights relating to an invention. There are three different types of patents one can file for: plant, utility, and design. Plant patents, as they suggest, protect hybrid or new vegetation and last 20 years. Utility patents are for new and unique ideas while design patents are for redesigns of already existing ones. They last 20 and 14 years, respectively, and their infringement can be enforced through civil lawsuits. In exchange for this service, the government asks for a definition of the invention and full disclosure of its contents from the inventor. Once the patent expires the information is released into the public domain for anyone to legally copy, reuse, or market. As of the year 2000, the cost of obtaining a patent in the United States ranges anywhere from $10,000 to $30,000.
At a conceptual level, patents are meant to simultaneously protect ownership of an idea and spread knowledge of its existence. As outlined in the original U.S. Constitution: for “the progress of science and the useful arts” Congress has the power to “grant [inventors] exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries”. Ideally, this was meant to fuel innovation by way of assurance. Why bother inventing something new if anyone could just take your idea and sell it as their own? It seems like the only sensible thing to do. The 20 year time limit also performed double duty by stopping monopolies from forming as well as preventing potentially good ideas from dying out. What, then, could be the problem?
Funnily enough, in the real world ideas don’t work out as soundly as they do on paper. Laws must always allow themselves to make room for the times, and patent laws are no exception. Not every inventor wants to deal with the red tape of the business world, and many patent owners often find themselves selling the right to their creations to others. Theoretically, this should work out fine: even if someone doesn’t have the skills or patience to deal with business they can at least hand off their idea to someone else and make a pretty penny at the same time. But the reality is different. Instead this created an environment in which new ideas could only thrive in the hands of big business – big business ready to sue anyone who even thinks twice about infringing on their hundreds of well-bought patents.
As with many things in life, I refuse to see the problems with patents as a one-or-the-other and no in-between type scenario. I don’t think anyone can argue against the original good intention behind patents as stated in the Constitution, but I also don’t think anyone can argue that the current system is perfect either. The intentional misuse of patents by “patent trolls” is proof that there is still room for improvement. I think it’s time for a change. Three types of patents may have been all-encompassing in the twentieth century, but it seems nigh impossible to try and classify new ideas in 2016 into just those three categories. Intellectual property today should not only be recognized as physical things, and software and the like should have their own type of patent with rules catered specifically to that audience. Eventually the new patent system should have the long-term goals of 1) being able to accommodate new types of patents, 2) discouraging patent misuse (perhaps by way of increased penalties). and 3) allowing orderly revision of the system itself.
dzaragoz 