Patents shouldn't exist.
All patents are bad.
My main concern is that we can't expect anyone to invest m/billions in necessary drug research if they can be copied the instant the drug shows success. The R&D cost per new drug brought to market is often between 1-12 billion.[1] Even on the low end, that's more than the TOTAL US government's budget for health R&D.[2] Who is going to do this research?
[1] http://lillypad.lilly.com/entry.php?id=1583 [2] http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ost...
IMO too many people let their emotions dictate their thoughts about business -- Company X is big enough, so it doesn't deserve patents. Company Y sues everyone in the sun for using their technology; what a horrible company! For every high-profile case like these, though, there are stories of small businesses and new inventors getting screwed by distributors who outright steal product ideas and resell them for cheaper. We need to make sure that whatever system we have can allow for invention but also not stifle progress of entire industries.
Do you know why 3D printing is finally taking off? The parents are starting to expire. The technology has been around since the 80's. Try to let that set in how much patents have held back a very important innovation.
What if you restrict them to organisations using them in at least one actively marketed and supported product?
What if you make it so a company has to show genuine investment to be granted a patent?
What if you raise the bar on what constitutes innovation to cover a certain degree of complexity?
What if you make it so all patents have to be licensed to a FRAND (genuinely fair, not the current "fair") basis?
That same history happened with almost every technology since patents existed. Some quite famous examples are the steam engines, electronic valves, and airplanes. It's an easy to spot pattern, new tech just takes off only a patent length interval after it leaves the labs.
That alone is not evidence that patents are bad. But coupled with the fact that most of those techs were concurrently invented by several people (who often got bankrupt, because they couldn't sell their inventions) it becomes very strong evidence.
What are these stories about small businesses and new inventors getting screwed by people who steal their ideas? It seems to me that you're the one arguing based on emotion -- your post is full of dire warnings without any attempt to back them up.
The status quo is rediculously inefficient: "...patent-protected brand drugs sell for more than three times the price of generic drugs that sell in a free market. This means that the country could save approximately $140 billion a year on its $220 billion annual bill for prescription drugs if the government did not provide patent protection and drugs were instead sold in a competitive market.
According to the pharmaceutical industry, it spent $41.1 billion on research in the United States in 2004.4 This means that the country spends more than three dollars in higher drug prices for every dollar of drug research supported through the patent system. The rest of the additional spending went to marketing, high CEO pay, and drug company profits."
(Quoted from: http://deanbaker.net/images/stories/documents/cns.html#5)
What I hear from people, is the question if this form of state supported industry is really the best way to produce superior speed in research. There are no research to support the claim that state support monopolies is the only choice, a choice with by itself is not even enough so the government has to funnel even more cash to keep things going.
The current system also makes the government assessor to murder, by preventing people in producing medicine that saves lives. Its a sacrifice some for the greater good argument, but for a 2013 society it kind of bad. We really can't figure out a better way except forbidding people to heal themselves? Kind of odd system if one think of it.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2012/02/10/the-tru...
1 - Most of that R&D cost is created because companies must create small differences between their products, requiring new tests. That is, if patents were absent, the society would need to spend a much smaller sum for the same gain.
2 - The pharmaceutical industry isn't an unbiased party of that research (quite obviously) and thus it isn't the ideal party for administrating it.
But, like I said, it does not invalidate the argument. Those issues also don't have an obvious solution (as far as I can see), but they exist.
If technology is accelerating, why not just shorten patent periods? We could also impose FRAND terms that dwindle over time.