I have 3 kids. They are wonderful and give me tons of joy. But sometimes they fight over things and there is yelling, crying, hurt feelings, etc. That stinks and it hurts my ears.
An analogy occurred to me today that the US patent system, since it is funded by the number of patents that are applied for, are in the business of getting as many people or companies to apply for patents as possible. If they spend a lot of time researching and actually determining if a patent is valid or not they get paid the same. So why spend a lot of time on a patent? There's no reason to actually think about it because the faster they decide on a patent the faster they can move on to the next patent. They get paid faster and make more money.
They shovel the decision of who actually gets that patent over to the judicial system where it costs exponentially more to determine who wins. All of those costs are rolled in to the winners final product to recoup costs and the cost goes up for consumers. Lawyers win, consumers lose.
As a parent, it's like promising all of my children that they can have a cookie even though there is only one left. Then I let them fight it out to see who gets it. Is that the best way to handle it? Maybe I should put a little more thought into this and avoid the fighting and crying. Maybe if the patent office was able to hear all of the crying and fighting, and it affected them negatively, they would be inclined to avoid causing that racket. How about some repercussions if they make a bad decision?
Let me know your thoughts. How can we make this better? What can we do to be heard? Leave a comment or hit me up on G+
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