I decry the current tendency to seek patents on algorithms. There are better ways to earn a living than to prevent other people from making use of one's contributions to computer science.
In an industry with highly sequential innovation, it may be better for society to scrap patents altogether than try to tighten them.
If you didn't have patents, no one would bother to spend money on research and development. But with patents, if someone has a good idea and a competitor can't copy it, then that competitor will have to think of their own way of doing it. So then, instead of just one innovator, you have two or three people trying to do something in a new way.
Everything that can be associated to ideas, inventions, copyrights, and patents is part of the IP world - at least, that's my definition. That all starts with people. Education is key.
People are getting patents on things that are too general.
It's not healthy for patents to be used to stop other people from doing business.
If you patent a discovery which is unique, say a human gene or even just one particular function of a human gene, then you are actually creating a monopoly, and that's not the purpose of the world of patents.
With the rise of software patents, engineers coding new stuff - whether within a large software company or as kids writing smartphone apps - are exposed to a claim that somewhere a prior patent is being infringed.
I think software patents are a bad idea. Many patents are given for trivial inventions.
If you're a large corporation, you can afford to pay the money to register patents, but if you're an individual like me, you can't.
