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The noble spirit behind patent laws

Patents... legal jousting and intellectual corporate power plays are what comes to mind but... whatever happened to the original ideal... namely a guy/ girl comes up with a valid new idea and the government does the right thing in protecting their right to make a living from the invention without letting all comers just steal the idea and leave them in the dust... especially is this the case when the one wanting the idea for their own is a corporation with consolidated funds and manpower of thousands of investor and employees...

The other fly in the ointment is that the idea of an inventor taking their invention from concept to mass sale is increasingly unrealistic... with the specialized skills and large resources needed to be competitive in any of today's markets, the inventor can at best expect to get the idea into a commercial product and either sell it to a distribution or roll out partner and stand aside while hopefully retaining some equity in the products future success....

Somewhere in all this there is a simple guiding principle... inventors should not use the government to enforce a monopoly that can dictate any price it wants on industry and  consumers (assuming the invention is just that indispensable)... on the other hand if someone or a corporation intentionally ignores patent protection, then they ought to be treated as criminals as bad a gang that breaks into a jewel shop to steal diamonds... unfortunately today such behavior is seen as a commercial decision not as a moral one... I promise to get off my soap box for the next contribution :-)

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