The Evil behind Patents

You folks may have heard the word patent before. Its to do with inventions. More info can be found on Wikipedia or even on google.

What happens in patents is that someone invents something, and then claims the patent for it. This is meant to safeguard the interest of the inventors, as it makes sure that other people don't pawn off his inventions without giving him his due.

However, recently, with the spate of patents going on, people are begining to wonder if it is actually a good thing or not ?

Case in point - an American firm tried to patent Basmati rice - a stable rice in India. Thankfully, the Indian govt. fought the patent. However, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Many companies just file for patents not to protect the IP but for making money. The open source community is vehemently opposed to such patents as in the case of software patents they say that it prevents the exchange of ideas.

They do seem to have a point , as patenting software is to patent thought. Its like saying - hey, i had this thought - so you cannot think that. If you think , you pay me !! Absurd ?

All this is obviously going to have a repurcussion on further R&D as you cannot legally go ahead with something if you use some idea that is already patented. The AAAS took up a survey and these are the finding :

A total of 40% of respondents who had acquired patented technologies since 2001
reported difficulties in obtaining that technology. Bioscience respondents working in
industry reported the most problems, with 76% of those reporting that their research had been affected by these difficulties. By contrast, only 35% of university-based bioscience respondents reported difficulties that affected their research.
Of the 40% of respondents who reported their work had been affected, 58% said their work was delayed, 50% reported they had to change the research, and 28% reported abandoning their research project. The most common reason respondents reported having to change or abandon their research project was that the acquisition of the necessary technologies involved overly complex licensing negotiations.

More links from there :
Complete report
Executive summary
More on this report

Now, i don't know about you, but I feel that this kind of problem should be looked into. If patents are stopping us getting better products - should we not relook at them and fix the current way they are happening ?