Nothing Was Delivered

Technology is changing even our most mundane items. For instance, I’m pretty sure my stapler has Bluetooth now.

As people build on the available state of the art to give us ever newer and cooler things, we see time and again innovation being thwarted by patents. Our broken Intellectual Property system is effecting our lives more and more every day. Today it’s thermostats. Tomorrow it’ll be coffee pots with timers or cars that use a certain joint in their axle. New products are either being made more expensive due to outrageous licensing, or they’re being kept off the market to begin with because small companies don’t have the resources to navigate reams of patent law. The end result is we have to put up with crappier products.

Tell me again how patents incentivise innovation.