If the behemoths like Microsoft can get stung by patent trolls and companies with extensive patent arsenals, I guess that either their legal people are vastly overpaid or that $1000 ceiling is a bit low by several orders of magnitude. And thanks for the laughable remarks implying that business gets stuff done while the academics fiddle in their ivory towers – if that were so, you wouldn’t have everyone and their dog trying to patent academic discoveries and skim the cream off publicly funded research.

It’s refreshing to see a venture capitalist spell out the deficiencies of patents. Unlike the likes of Stephen, who presumably claim that they’re “pro-capitalism”, I guess actual capitalists don’t need an entire bureaucracy dedicated to corporate welfare to get stuff done “in the real world”.

Without the “unfair advantage” of intellectual property, no rational investor would risk their money creating code that could be clean-room copied.

I’ve heard the cited antidotes before, and, frankly, I think that they are bunk. There are simply too many developed libraries of code that are open-source and documented & vetted for IP issues, as well as too many patent resources available to check for infringement issues (which, is a large part of my patent practice). The USPTO website as well as PatentStorm.us are free. Such belly-aching about it being “risky” and “difficult” are cop-outs for the lazy, unimaginative, or corrupt. Those that don’t have the funds to pay for a patent search (a knock-out search, without an opinion can cost under $1000) either don’t take their business seriously, or need to move out of their parent’s basement.

The effects of this is are profound: you'll pay $250/month (no lie) for AndroGel, but anywhere from $40-$170 for compounded testosterone (depending on markup). To give a good comparison, people can easily buy a testosterone base for $20/100g (tops). Add in a small cost for the gel base and you have a recipe for a huge market in illegal steroids, since you have about 30 months of medicine made for under $50.

The nearest (legal) competitor is generic injectible, which costs around $10/week plus syringes. More guys use it because it's weekly and costs less, but it requires deep muscle injections which can be really painful to do to yourself.

And the truly sad aspect of this is that it lures in people who really need the medicine. $250/month is totally unreasonable, and Solvay is seeking an extension because they are making so much money off of people.

Meanwhile, no other DVR upstarts can improve on TiVo's ideas with pro-consumer features because of TiVo's patents. Innovation in DVRs has now largely stalled (unless you want to build your own).

Oh, and of course, now Microsoft is suing TiVo. Over violating some ludicrous patents related to 'displaying programming information' and 'secure purchase and delivery of video content programs'.

Yeah. Software patents in this area have worked out JUST FINE, haven't they?