Patents are designed to provide an incentive for companies to invest in heavy research and to publish the results, while being guaranteed a limited monopoly on the invention in order to monetize it. (Or at least that's what they should be for). That is in the interest of society as a whole.
Sorry to nitpick, but the patent system doesn't directly incentivize heavy investment in research initiatives. It incentivizes publicly disclosing how to practice the invention in exchange for a limited monopoly on practicing that invention. The government and other interested organizations incentivize research by offering grants, prizes, or outright subsidizing the research.
What is not in the interest of society as a whole are (1) patents on inventions that did not incur any cost (2) passing on these monopolies to entities that do not plan to produce anything.
I disagree with point (1) if by "cost" you're referring to financial expenditures. Psychic cost and other non-tangible costs are still very real. More than that, however, the patent system's purpose isn't to make people money. Its only purpose is "[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." US Const. Art. 1, sec. 8, cl. 8. As implemented in Title 35, the Patent Act accomplishes this by requiring disclosure of the patentable subject matter in exchange to this exclusive right to practice the invention for a limited time.
I think my point still stands, though. Maybe this is not the intent of the law, which I think is exactly the problem.
There is no benefit to society and "the Progress of Science and useful Arts" if somebody has just an idea (that anybody else could have too - maybe about a cool device, a cool algorithm, a cool user interface), publishes this idea and gets "the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
Science and society only benefit if this an idea worth protecting. The my crucial point is: How do you measure this "worthiness"?
If you measure it in the potential money you can get from idea, you're in the current (bad) situation. The competitive forces of a free market will always provide a better result without artificial monopolies.
If you measure it in the cost required to reach this discovery, then we have a yardstick on which to measure whether something is patent worthy or not.
Just my $0.02. Not a layer, but somebody who has been in the software industry in various capacities for long time.
There is no benefit to society and "the Progress of Science and useful Arts" if somebody has just an idea (that anybody else could have too - maybe about a cool device, a cool algorithm, a cool user interface), publishes this idea and gets "the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
That's just it, though: they don't get legal protection for publishing the idea. They get legal protection for patenting it, which requires that the idea be more than an idea--it has to be an invention. The USPTO is charged with the task of ensuring that the invention is novel, non-obvious, useful, and adequately reduced to practice. Basically, they're giving you an exclusive right for giving someone "instructions" on how to practice your invention. Whether the USPTO does a good job at this is obviously the issue, and my answer is that they don't, which comports with your overall thesis.
Sorry to nitpick, but the patent system doesn't directly incentivize heavy investment in research initiatives. It incentivizes publicly disclosing how to practice the invention in exchange for a limited monopoly on practicing that invention. The government and other interested organizations incentivize research by offering grants, prizes, or outright subsidizing the research.
What is not in the interest of society as a whole are (1) patents on inventions that did not incur any cost (2) passing on these monopolies to entities that do not plan to produce anything.
I disagree with point (1) if by "cost" you're referring to financial expenditures. Psychic cost and other non-tangible costs are still very real. More than that, however, the patent system's purpose isn't to make people money. Its only purpose is "[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." US Const. Art. 1, sec. 8, cl. 8. As implemented in Title 35, the Patent Act accomplishes this by requiring disclosure of the patentable subject matter in exchange to this exclusive right to practice the invention for a limited time.