And, just as today's Biotech industry is opposed to any patent reform, the 19th century had powerful advocates for the status quo, including Thomas Edison, who argued that any revision of the patent statues would "strongly tend to discourage and prevent perfection of useful inventions by those most fitted for that purpose..."
Yes, it's sixty pages (double spaced) with tons of footnotes, but if you skip the footnotes and skim the text, there's plenty here to interest any engineer who's had occasion to learn the words "patent troll.".
This takes the perspective of economists, not just engineers. Software patents are quite consistently seen as harmful.
Originally, in 2025, we gave ourselves 6 years (until 2031) to cover these issues, but we've seen since extended that to 10 years (until 2036) because of the amount of material we have
If people are being honest with themselves, many of the gadgets they claim they "cannot live without" are just excesses and distractions they could definitely leave behind
