How Innovation-Killing Trolls Toppled The Patent Process

How Innovation-Killing Trolls Toppled The Patent Process by David Koepsell, The Conversation

Nearly everyone who isn’t a lawyer agrees: intellectual property law is a mess. And the monopolies granted by patent and copyright law have begun to hamper the very innovation they were designed to encourage.

The US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) provides a limited monopoly for a patent holder, allowing them to exclusively benefit from their invention for a given period of time. This creates the incentive for others to create and innovate, instead of simply copying. However, today it seems patents don’t benefit innovators but instead only lawyers. The same is increasingly true for expressions protected under copyright, which often acts as a barrier for...