From my experience, both filing and researching, there are good patents out there that do disclose useful things that did require some real investment to come up with them. The disclosure and the potential to licence things for mutual benefit with the inventors are beneficial in these cases. And as mentioned before, the patent lawyer I worked with seemed to be appreciate being able to use the system as intended and was keen to make sure we did get things right.
I think it's just that, like almost any government-run system almost anywhere, the relevant authorities are often under-resourced and under-qualified. There aren't enough patent examiners to keep things running at a reasonable speed, and the ones there are can't all be experts on everything or even most areas where they examine. That means the system as a whole primarily benefits large organisations that can churn out applications and get lots of them granted almost like throwing darts at a wall. Then you get the cross-licensing cabals that are weaponising their patents to prevent small-scale competition from gaining a foothold, which is the opposite of the intended effect, and the patent trolls, and other negative actors in the system.
I do have very mixed feelings on what should or should not be patentable and whether different types of invention should all be treated the same way, and indeed this very discussion is a good demonstration of why that is. But the basic principle, applied in fields where it really does promote research and disclosure, has its merits.
From my experience, both filing and researching, there are good patents out there that do disclose useful things that did require some real investment to come up with them. The disclosure and the potential to licence things for mutual benefit with the inventors are beneficial in these cases. And as mentioned before, the patent lawyer I worked with seemed to be appreciate being able to use the system as intended and was keen to make sure we did get things right.
I think it's just that, like almost any government-run system almost anywhere, the relevant authorities are often under-resourced and under-qualified. There aren't enough patent examiners to keep things running at a reasonable speed, and the ones there are can't all be experts on everything or even most areas where they examine. That means the system as a whole primarily benefits large organisations that can churn out applications and get lots of them granted almost like throwing darts at a wall. Then you get the cross-licensing cabals that are weaponising their patents to prevent small-scale competition from gaining a foothold, which is the opposite of the intended effect, and the patent trolls, and other negative actors in the system.
I do have very mixed feelings on what should or should not be patentable and whether different types of invention should all be treated the same way, and indeed this very discussion is a good demonstration of why that is. But the basic principle, applied in fields where it really does promote research and disclosure, has its merits.