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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs

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To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (36623)	9/1/2009 4:45:27 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) of 71588

I guess I basically agree. I think patents do encourage innovation but sometimes new patents are granted far too easily even when there is no real innovation, or its something obvious or with prior art. If your example about changing the color of a drug being enough to get a patent extension is correct, that's ridiculous. Except perhaps in some specific rare cases color changes aren't innovation (and if they where, it would mean you would have a new substance which should get its own patent while the old patent on the old different colored substance should expire, and the old drug could be sold generically). Another example IMO is something like the Amazon "one-click" patent (not so bad as patenting a color change but still not worthy of a patent). I also have some problems with the copyright side. No so much copyright law itself (except perhaps the way it keeps getting extended every time Mickey Mouse's patent is about to expire, so that now we apparently have perpetual copyrights), but with the laws to protect copyright like DMCA.

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