A patent according to the dictionary is a government authority or license conferring a right or title for a set period, especially the sole right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention. Essentially, a patent is a document that gives its owner a legal monopoly over an invention. The purpose of these patents is used to promote people into sharing their ideas by protecting them from being stolen. Ethically and economically they prevent people from stealing and profiting off someone else’s idea or invention. Patents make it safe to share and to innovate.
Patents should definitely be granted, however the current use of patents in the software industry is excessive and bloated. In the reading the story of how a patent for the cotton gin was used to help prosper and develop the American economy and this is where I see the value. It protects and rewards innovators and inventors. Unfortunately, the over patenting of software is hindering this progress. In a vacuum patents are an amazing solution, but with the current legal understanding of software and technology patents there needs to be a change. The evidence suggests that in the software industry, the patent system does more to hinder innovation than to reward it. Inventors spend more money defending themselves against patent lawsuits than they earn from patent royalties. More and more entrepreneurs are losing sleep about the risk that patent litigation will drive them into bankruptcies. In the current system the patent laws are doing the exact opposite of what they are supposed to accomplish. They are not promoting innovation, they are stifling it because patent lawsuits are on the rise.
Currently, one of the main issues facing current patents is that the judicial system does not seem to understand the technical terminology. “Many judges seem to believe that some software is worthy of patent protection. The problem is that “software” and “mathematical algorithm” are two terms for the same thing.” I believe that patents should primarily focus on physical objects and that algorithms should be open source. If the code provides a distinct output or solution then maybe I can understand that, but I feel moving forward patents must have a more stringent for criteria and should not be handed out as freely. Essentially, if the invention utilizes the computer to manipulate numbers that represent concrete, real world values (such as a program that interprets electrocardiograph signals to predict arrhythmia or a program that analyzes seismic measurements), then the invention is a process relating to those real world concepts and is patentable.
Patent trolls are companies that make no products, but go around suing other companies that do make products over supposed patent infringement. I think they are wrong and should be fixed but they show the system works there are just currently inefficiencies that could be addressed. By having lawsuits arise to try and have people protect what they think is theirs shows the basic ideas of patents work. However, the trolls are abusing this. While I currently don’t have a solution that could fix this I feel if patents became more difficult to obtain it might alleviate the issue.
programming ethics 