Living Rarefied

Here's my quick rant on patents.  I may upset some patent lawyers,
but one patent battle that has a lot of weight in the finance/healthcare/government worlds is the RIM vs. NTP battle.  I understand I am not fully educated in patent law, (or even at all) but I still have some thoughts.NTP owns the patent to technology that RIM has used in its Blackberry's.  NTP has never produced this technology, just owns the rights to it.  To my knowledge, they don't have any intention to produce it, or capabilities.

Here's my counter thought where I believe the circumstances are very very different, but the priciples of the law are the same.

10 years ago, I came across a cure for cancer, or some other deadly disease.  I got it patented,and then went back to my job in the finance world and sit on that patent.  I have no bandwidth to produce the drug/procedures I patented.  A big pharma company does their own research and comes up with the same procedures/drugs in my patent and has been saving lives for a few years.  I still have no intention of producing what I patented, but now am suing the pharma company for a percentage of every person cured…  If we don't settle, nobody can use my patented procedure in the USA.  Canadian tourism would shoot up… Thats for sure.

Where's the break in the system there?  I agree with intelectual property and rights to it.  But say I came from a part of the world with no means for being exposed to pop-culture and I write a song for myself.  It so happens to be the same song that some superstar celebrity singer wrote and is making millions off of.  10 years later, I move to the cities and I go sing that song on a local radio station and get paid for my appearance and the lawyers for the celebrity hear about it and come after me.  Isn't it still my song?

My conclusion is if you aren't producing something…  You should lose the patent.  You should have a few years to show results of a product, or work towards making the product.  But if you have nothing other than the patent application.  The clock should be ticking on when you lose the rights to your idea and they become public property.

Ethan Daily