Your Money or Your Life

Remember patents? They're those things that are supposed to promote innovation. Take surgeons, for example: they would never invent new ways of saving lives without some kind of financial incentive to do so - I mean, why should they?

So it's only logical that patent lawyers should be encouraging surgeons to patent anything that might save lives:

"What it does is it provides something for other companies to work around. The patent is out there. It's wide open. The whole world looks at it and thinks, 'How do I get around it?' That inspires more creativity and more development," Raciti said.

Well, that's logical: let's put obstacles in the way of people trying to save lives - it's more of a challenge.

The medical community is weary. "It's not clear that providing a monopoly over a certain process promotes innovation in the field of patient care delivery," said Aaron Kesselheim, a patent attorney and doctor who conducts health policy research at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

"The legal concern is that physicians won't do something because they're concerned that somebody will sue them, and if that affects the care that they are trying to provide to the patients, then that's a negative," he said.

Sometimes you get the impression that patent lawyers really want to hated. (Via TechDirt.)