At Mint, we developed five pending patents on our technology, ranging from categorization to the Ways to Save system that calculates how much a new financial product would save a user given their present financial situation.
Patents have a place in medical science - for new inventions that advance the state of knowledge.
There's no such thing as a legal right to break patents in the United States.
Patents are like fertilizer. Applied wisely and sparingly, they can increase growth. But if you apply too many chemicals, or make patents too strong, then you can leach the land, making growth more difficult.
For a decade, makers of AIDS medicines had rejected the idea of lowering prices in poor countries for fear of eroding profits in rich ones. The position required a balancing act, because the companies had to deflect attacks on the global reach of their patents, which granted exclusive marketing rights for antiretroviral drugs.
Patents are being used to wage war in the digital world, and as a result, patents have become a toll gate on the road of innovation.
People equate patents with secrecy, that secrecy is what patents were designed to overcome. That's why the formula for Coca-Cola was never patented. They kept it as a trade secret, and they've outlasted patent laws by 80 years or more.
Patents are basically rights to try and develop a commercial product.
You know, in China, they say, come on over, we'll build the plant for you. Of course, then they steal your patents, but the reality is that they are aggressively trying to take our jobs. Every other country is. They know that to have a middle class, you have to make things.