Software patents oughtn't be permitted in the first place though

Summary: Profit for private companies and tax on the public is "not wittingly" part of this latest patent scheme, which sees public investment turning into a monopoly

THE US patent system gives of plenty of reasons for optimism. Over the past few years, for example, software patents have been marginalised there; as we predicted, accompanying this trend would be the decline in abusive litigation primarily (but not exclusively) from patent trolls.

Once in a while we stumble upon news about patents that we cannot help remaking on. To give an example from today, the NSA, which is funded by taxpayers, is pursuing monopolies on surveillance, based on this report from WIPR. Shouldn't that be in the public domain rather than up "for licensing"? We wrote about that before in relation to NASA patents, which had been fed to patent trolls [1, 2]. According to this new report, there are plenty of similarities; "According to the NSA," it says, "the TTP creates partnerships between the agency and industry to ensure that the NSA’s investments in research find additional uses that will benefit the US economy."

But the allusion to "licensing" implies there's a cost to it. If the public paid for it, why can't it be in the public domain? This should be obvious. ⬆