David,
This it too good and important article to just go by with out saying interesting stuff more please.

Some patents especially software patents should be abolished.
There are some companies that produce nothing except litigation. Most of these companies are in USA esp Texas. Have a look at this site:
http://www.groklaw.net/
This is the article http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090216150306923

There are called "patent Trolls"
Cheers

I get the sense that some patents these days seek to establish an intellectual property right to some particular piece of knowledge, rather than to a design or invention for applying such knowledge to a particular purpose.

As an example, consider what I understand to be the patented process for synthesizing liquid petroleum fuels, the Fischer-Tropsch process. Surely the discovery that under the catalysis of iron oxides in certain conditions molecular hydrogen would combine with carbon monoxide to produce a range of hydrocarbon fuel compounds represents the acquisition of knowledge, not the making of an invention. To permit the patenting of the process appears to me to deny the natural ability of other persons to independently research and perhaps acquire this knowledge, such learning being a basic latent human characteristic. Should only the first to learn something new be the only persons having a State-protected right to put that new knowledge to some practical use?

In the case of a patentable invention, should the transferability of patent rights perhaps be made subject to any acquirer other than the original grantee being required to meet some ongoing actual commercial exploitation tests for the patent protection to continue for its full term? Tests which if not met with compliance result in reversion of title in the patent to the original inventor and/or in some measure to the State. A bit like meeting the test requirements in relation to investment in mining or exploration development on mining leases as being a condition for continued tenure of the lease.

Such changes, if they have not already occurred, might go some way to negating the effect described by the author as being the development of "a mind-set among many researchers that their knowledge represents a potential goldmine not to be shared with potential competitors ......... until it has been protected by a patent application.". Surely it must be this sort of mindset that in large measure leads to the over-valuing of patents and the consequential discouragement of developments otherwise dependent upon the holding of a patent.

Is time overdue for change?