I’m not convinced there’s any value in the patent system in the 21st century. Maybe it should be abolished. Who is it now helping? Certainly not the individual inventors it was meant to encourage.
Software patents should absolutely be prohibited altogether. They help no one; they’re not useful for small inventors and they’re just a pointless tax paid to patent trolls on innovation for everyone else. (I am a named inventor on many software patents.)
Patents have maintenance fees that have to be paid periodically, otherwise the invention becomes public domain early. They are only a few thousand dollars, so it is a no-brainer to pay them.
If they were exponential, it would be reasonable to see most patents have shorter lives, as patent owners would probably decide that it is not worth it to keep the patent around if they are not using it.
Also, most software patents are invalid. See the Alice Supreme Court case.
I’m not convinced there’s any value in the patent system in the 21st century. Maybe it should be abolished. Who is it now helping? Certainly not the individual inventors it was meant to encourage.
Software patents should absolutely be prohibited altogether. They help no one; they’re not useful for small inventors and they’re just a pointless tax paid to patent trolls on innovation for everyone else. (I am a named inventor on many software patents.)