More On Doing Away With Patents

  Do you think that eliminating copyright law would stop monopolys?

While often abused by corporations copyright and patent laws are one of the few things that protect the little guys and allow them to enter into a large market.

People file a patent and let other people know it exists so they can get more funding as they go into the development phase, and want to use other patented products to make something.

And if patents didn't exist, there'd be a much smaller requirement of funding for development as they wouldn't have to pay for licenses to use the other products to make their product. Thus development would be much easier.

I believe copyright and patent law should be completely abolished. 

I'm not saying that innovation won't happen if patents and copyrights don't exist, I'm saying that I think they help increase innovation.

I do think there are issues with patent laws at the moment, particularly in the US, that need to be addressed. Patents should only be awarded on things that do something novel and do not already exist in the public domain. Patents are being issued on things that definitely do not fit those criteria. When that happens the patents can be contested in court but who has the money to go up agains the likes of Apple, Samsung or Pfizer. Those patents should not be issued in the first place and that needs to be cracked down on.

It should also be noted that patents only last a maximum of 20 years (I think medical patents are much shorter, could be wrong on that tho), a lot of people don't realise that a patent cannot be held indefinitely. It's purpose is to give the creator a reasonable and fair head start in the market, not to give them indefinite control of a market.