Patents are an important way of encouraging innovation by trying to guarantee some return on intellectual investment: come up with an new, innovative idea, patent it, and your idea is protected for a period of time to let you license it, use it, sell it, whatever.
All of which is keen, except when some companies game the system, acquire patents solely for the purpose of making money through law suits, and stifle innovation through broad application of (overly) broad patents.
Case in point: medical image storage and retrieval software. One has to wonder how the very concept is, itself, patentable. But it provides an excellent case study of how patent trolls can choke off research and advancement. #ddtb
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Patent Trolls: How they stifle innovation.
When hospitals come upon a technology with a proven track record of saving lives, you’d expect a flood of investment to expand its use, and a race by manufacturers to bring new products to market. Dig…