So here we are, a society that considers itself civilized. A society that has tons of issues. A society that loves clogging up the court system with litigation. You get litigation if you buy coffee at McDonald’s and spill it on yourself, if you are a 4 year old who hit an older lady while riding your bicycle, and especially if you try to make anything in the technology field.
I look at the lawsuits being brought out recently. Apple Sues Motorola, Motorola sues Apple, Microsoft sues Motorola, some company that bought a software patent sues major websites, and so on, and so on. Heck I’m waiting to see who is going to sue whom over what next.
With all the big companies suing each other, its no wonder that you don’t have much technological advancement anymore. You get repackaged versions of older ideas that work better cause of faster processing power. No real innovation, and this is I feel is due to 2 things. Patent trolling, and lack of entrepreneurial spirit.
Seriously, who wants to try to build new things when you can just keep making money off what you already have, and who wants to try to start up a new company, when virtually every method of doing anything is patented, and thereby a potential death by litigation for a small company.
Now, don’t get me wrong. There is a good reason to have patents, just like copyrights. The issue is the length of time they last for. At some point you need to reduce that amount of time back to something more normal, just so that we can innovate and move forward. Of course, that is just my opinion.