Why do you like to push such nonsense? You implicitly back that a monopoly (and/or tollbooth) from a little bit of “teaching” is something that promotes progress or that is fair to the many that rediscover something (or already had) independently or even with a little help.

Fact is that people work hard to create things in high detail, many times without knowledge of someone else having written down the broad description of these things. Then we can have all of that made illegal (if unconstitutional patent law is assumed to be legal).

Fact is that given a, b, c, d, and e, *many* will infer many things like f and g. Not all can infer these things “first” in order to get the 20 year monopoly. You might be busy, or simply need a little more time. AND throw in that the bar to a patent is *so low*, and you have a real serious stifling vehicle (and/or an unfairly controlled taxing vehicle) in your hands.

Here is a list of 42 items that I’m almost sure could be further developed into patents that would eventually do more than a negligible amount to stifle progress. http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2010/06/mailing-out-patent-absurdity.html#IDComment79749495 . I came up with this list one after the other within a short time. The point is not to show that they are brilliant, but that no one should be allowed to essentially write down ideas and then keep others from implementing them simply because they wrote them down first (at least as concerns the USPTO). Of course, the other point is that if patents were automatic and $0, a lot more people that today have little credit and leverage for their innovation would get a lot more, potentially, making it almost impossible for any real products to ever be created having gotten full legal clearance.

You want to be called smart, sharp, .. you want to win some award for being first. Fine, but it’s stifling and unconstitutional to keep others from being able to express themselves by creating what they want, *especially* when they create things that go far beyond any particular idea or passage that they may or may not have copied.

I’m glad the SCOTUS justices before Bilski recognized easily how stifling it could be to award monopolies on broad ideas. Monopolies, if we want to assume they might be, should be a rare phenomenon.

But before even agreeing to any patents, keep in mind, as suggested by that Patent Absurdity video, that many of our greatest works in art, literature, and science, could have easily been kept from seeing the light of day had patents been enforced. Stepping down a bit, we’d also have a great many wonderful works which contributed much to the economy and social progress that would also have been barred. And if patents were intended to give a helping hand to the small folk to launch expensive production facilities/businesses, then we can improve upon this system quite a bit so as to perhaps achieve that (somewhat inefficient) goal (eg, only allow enforcement against large wealthy entities only and for much shorter than 20 years).

I don’t know of any teacher that was an asset to society that got paid anything resembling 20 years of exclusivity.