Published at LXer:

There are plenty of discussions about the problem of patent trolls, but if you think that's the only problem with the patent system, you haven't been paying attention. There have been a ton of major clashes going on between big companies, spending billions buying up patents, suing each other... and not putting that money into innovation or lower prices. So it's nice to see Cisco CEO John Chambers speak out against the patent system by calling out both the trolls and the big tech companies for abusing the system and hindering innovation.

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Yeah, the patent system is supposed to encourage competing ideas whose end goal is to give the consumer a better product. The shenanigans companies are pulling now most certainly does not benefit the consumer.

However, I don't understand why a system that worked, no longer works. Nobody has explained that. They all want to destroy the patent system ... and replace it with what ? I have a feeling there is a conspiracy here (as usual). I don't think that destroying the patent system will solve anything, in fact it will cause huge problems. I was hoping they would try to do something sensible, like a while back they encouraged the public to look through the patent database and mark questionable patents. That was good, but somehow they just want to destroy it all now.

The patent system worked and I think it can still work, but attitudes need to change, and people at the patent office have to start doing their jobs or delegate like they did with the public interface.

Software patents are something different and I won't discuss them here.