The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Justice Department's antitrust division will conduct hearings over the next six weeks to consider whether the government is issuing too many patents and (consequently) stifling collaboration and invention. Of course, the issue isn't the number of patents so much as the substance. Defenders of the patent system downplay such concerns. "The entry of patent law into these areas was greeted with predictions of disaster," said James Rogan, director of the U.S. patent office. "Yet the United States is the international leader in [software] and other technological areas." Rogan doesn't read OLDaily, obviously, which has shown how invention and sharing have been stifled. And he ignores the fact that U.S. patent law tends to be adopted (under pressure) by other counteries, so there is no comparative advantage or disadvantage. And he ignores the plucking of ideas and inventions from the public domain by patent poachers - things like, say, the human genome, hyperlinks and the works of Stravinsky.
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