Quick, patent it! – NY Times editorial

From the NY Times:

The Supreme Court hears arguments Monday in a case about what kind of inventions deserve patents. The businessmen who came up with a method for hedging financial risk in energy trading sued the Patent and Trademark Office after it denied them a patent.

Allowing an abstraction of this kind to be protected would take patent law too far.

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Patents perform a useful function, promoting innovation by ensuring inventors the right to profit from their creations for a period of time. But overprotection through patents is as dangerous as underprotection. It can stifle competition and infringe on the rights of non-patent holders. Not every bright idea should be protected as a property right.

Read the rest.

See also: (list is automatically generated)

• Patent-infringement warranties should be negotiated very cautiously
• A patent owner’s lawyer waves the flag for the jury – or is it the bloody shirt?
• Stanford loses patent rights because one of its researchers signed a partner company’s visitor agreement
• Quicken, TurboTax maker signs $120 million patent license agreement with leading ‘non-practicing entity’

Tagged as: Patents