On Thu, 11 Jun 2009 11:27:57 -0300, you wrote:

>Wouter van Ooijen wrote:
>
>>>> - giving a limited-time monopoly encourages investment in new
>>>> discoveries that otherwise would not be discovered
>
>This is a prerogative that is not proven at all. Same thing with
>copyright on music, for example. There is nothing that proves that there
>won't be music without copyright on it. Actually, history shows that
>there was music without copyright. And there were inventions without
>patents. Things would be different without them, that's for sure, but
>who's to know how exactly?

Would pharmaceuticals spend hundreds of millions on research, development
and testing of drugs knowing they would be immediately copied and sold by
companies which had spent almost nothing? 

A patent system is needed but what we have no longer works as intended and
often does more harm than good. 

I would suggest that patents are filed with a claimed value. A value which
represents the effort and costs behind the invention. The claimed value
would be open to challenge and settled in court if need be. The patent
holder could license or sell rights granted by the patent for whatever deal
they can get but they would also be required to sell rights equal to their
own to anyone paying the claimed value. 

The value of a patent needs to represent the cost of the invention because
it is invention that the system is trying to encourage and protect.

The patent system currently makes the value of a patent whatever can be
extracted from exploiting it. It over values trivial but useful inventions
which didn't need to be encouraged or protected, it actually encourages
patenting which I'm sure frequently involves more cost and effort than the
patented invention did. 


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