On Tue, 2008-12-02 at 17:19 +0000, Alex Hudson wrote:
"Such a case reverts the initial idea of patenting: The technology is valuable because it is patented, not patented because it is valuable."
I think this is pretty weak. You don't patent things because they are "valuable", you patent them to make them valuable. That's the whole point of IPR as far as I can see.
I disagree. You patent things to make them exploitable when there is a need of an initial investment in research. Patents, in theory, should protect investments in realizing valuable ideas by granting a short term monopoly.
The fact that some patents *create* value is *the* problem.
Anything that does not require an important initial investment should not be granted a patent, because it does not deserve it.
"From the perspective of most SMEs, 100.000 EUR patent research costs are prohibitively expensive"
So they just don't do it ;) There are plenty of SMEs that are patent holders, and this is really just an argument to reduce the cost of obtaining a patent, which isn't really what we want.
It would level a bit the field by allowing more SMEs to get patents, but certainly will not change any of the problems of the current system.
Simo.