Talk:Harm caused by all types of patents

Talking in the third person

Thanks to User:The Mad Hatter for pointing out his research and findings. I've left the substance of the text in tact, but I changed it from first person "I did this" to third person "He did that". The reason is that with first person, other's can't modify the text (because that would lead to misrepresenting User:The Mad Hatter), which would defeat the purpose of the wiki. Ciaran 07:42, 26 May 2009 (EDT)

Want to rewrite or move this

We should probably split this article, putting studies by respected experts in one article (the current one) and suggestions, discussion, and studies by interested people in a new article. Below is what could be used to get the latter started. Ciaran 02:30, 15 October 2012 (EDT)

==Wayne's research==

A study a while back by Groklaw contributor Wayne aka "The Mad Hatter", which involved reading several hundred patent applications, which was mentioned in a post. In this study, he found not even one valid patent.[1] The patents checked were patents that:

a) He had an interest in. b) Were in a field he had expertise in.

None of the patents that he understood met the US Patent Office regulations for issuance of a patent, according to his understanding of those regulations. Some patents, about 10% of the total, he noted that he couldn't understand. He noted that the odds of reaching similar numbers with another batch of patents was, in his estimation, quite high.

===Wayne's proposal to repeat the experiment===

Wayne has proposed: "As a result, I propose that we look into a cross section of patents. I will evaluate those that I can for validity, and I'd like to ask others to do the same. While this will be ad-hoc, by using a larger sample size, we will be able to further proof that there are issues with patents in general." (This can be discussed on Talk:Should the whole patent system be axed)

To do this, it is necessary to look at the conditions for patentability, specifically with reference to the US Patent Office, since many of the problems appear to stem from the United States, either through patents issued there which would not be issued in other jurisdictions (Business Method Patents not Legal in Canada), or through attempts to export the American Patent Regime to other states (Europe Under Patent Siege - 1/2 way down page).