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Then the question would be, why should any company or person invest millions of $$$ on R&D to innovate something so that others can just copy them?

Everybody will wait for other to innovate so that they can copy. Thereby resulting in a condition where nobody innovates due to the fear of copy.

Wrong. Why would they innovate? To be the first to develop the technology. If they are the first, then they have a head start in the market. Everybody else that copied would be one step behind. Especially in the software industry what is liable is not the final product but minuscule aspects of the product that couldn't be worked around because nobody knows what implementations the patents apply to.

People are not altruists. It hurts when somebody steals something of yours. It is common human behavior and there is nothing wrong in it.

Stop using the term steal. To steal implies that you dispossess the thing the other person had.

Patent provides an incentive for innovation and creates another channel for sharing without fear of stealing. Hence, it is needed.

It also allows the creation of a patent sausage factory, like (reportedly) MS. They patent every and anything they come up with and have the massive legal and bureaucratic infrastructure to churn out this stuff even when not using it. How does this help the little guy?

However, there should be restrictions on patents such as max. 5yrs-life, no patent selling/buying, etc which I've already stated in my other post. Such restrictions would surely help in eliminating patent trolls.

But not large enterprises from trolling each other, or blocking out smaller competitors.

Edited 2011-08-05 11:47 UTC

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