Filing a patent is a big thing these days, especially in the academia. It has been there for quite a long time in the industry though. Earlier, it would suffice to publish in top quality journals or conferences, but now patents are the real icing on the cake. Filing a patent is a costly process and it is far more costlier to prosecute it till its allowed lifetime after it has been granted. One needs not only really deep pockets to engage in patent litigation but also an elaborate infrastructure to find out instances of patent infringement.
While a lot of the patents in earlier days would describe an invention/innovation in terms of its parts that make it work with detailed diagrams of parts etc., a lot of patents these days are filed based just on ideas. It is ideas which are getting patented and this is something that many people are concerned about, especially in the software industry. History shows us that similar ideas have been developed by different people independent of each other at different times and it is no different in modern times. Do we really have to patent ideas? Are they patentable? Don’t they stifle flights of fancy and imagination which have helped people in coming up with brilliant inventions and technologies? Where is the tradeoff between protecting intellectual property and protecting flights of imagination? I think that protecting both of these are important. However, the dimension of “time” that patents add to an idea/invention can have an impact as one man’s flight of imagination at time “x” prohibits another man’s flight, even if independent, at time “y” where x > y. It is a curious mix and definitely an important issue to be discussed and debated. You might be interested in reading ” The Patent, Used as a Sword” published by the International Herald Tribune.
On Research, Education and Computer Systems 