The Farce of the Patent System?

Let me add a quick disclaimer … I am an extremely positive person, and I love reading patents and seeing new inventions. My advice to any inventor is to patent their ideas … it is just that the whole of the patenting system seems out-of-date, and where the actual inventors have very little rights to their work

In a world of blockchain and cryptographic proofs of when intellectual property is actually created, the patent system seems completely outdated and often ineffective. But it remains crucial for spin-out and start-up companies, especially when raising funds and in protecting themselves in the marketplace.

For the inventors, there’s nothing really in it for them, and it’s the individual or organisation which the patent is assigned to or owns that will benefit (the Assignee). The RSA patent sticks out as one of the few where the inventors actually make some money from:

The reason that Rivest and the other inventors involved in the patent did well, was that MIT were strict with their licencing, and where the spin-out company (RSA) were fairly aggressive in protecting the intellectual property. On the other hand, we have the Diffie-Hellman patent, and which is at the…