A talking head in a recent pundits round-table was hawking the notion of human ingenuity mixing with market forces to provide inevitable progress by humanity for overcoming all problems by means of technological innovation.
Do the forces of raw capitalism truly lead to inevitable progress and conquest of all problems through "innovation"?
Raw capitalism directs large entities to minimize costs, maximize profits, take over government and crush all potential opponents.
The independent inventor represents a potential opponent. But how to most efficiently crush him while minimizing costs and maximizing profits?
One answer is to engage in corporate capture and then let the cogs of government do all the crushing for you. An elegant answer since tax payer money does the work while you sit back and enjoy the carnage.
So let's step back and see what the system has wrought:
1) Inventors are encouraged to file patent applications so that the government can "secure" for them exclusive rights in "their" respective discoveries and inventions.
2) Inventors are encouraged to early publish their filings with an implied promise that they will be treated fairly.
3) Examiners at the Patent office come up with all kinds of bizarre rejections, including under the Alice/Mayo doctrine and the KSR flexibility rule so as to make sure inventors spend lots of money, RCE after RCE, without ever getting anywhere.
4) Even if they initially do get a grant of a patent, inventors are subject to repeat post-grant reviews (PGRs).
5) Even if they get in front of a jury and win, inventors do not get the promised exclusivity via injunctions thanks to the eBay decision.
6) At the end of the day most inventors are left bankrupt, having spent their lives and fortunes fighting in the unsympathetic court rooms and appeal chambers.
In the mean time, the oligarchs who have set up this catch and kill system sit back and laugh. They take what they want and rarely if ever pay for it.
