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"They’re awarded for inventions that are nontrivial advances in the state of the art."

I stopped reading right there.

Why? That's the actual intention of patents. You make it sound like the author has a fundamental misunderstanding.

While I agree that our current patent office is doing a lousy job protecting us from the trivial, that is actually the intention.

Since the reality does not reflect the intention we cannot defend the reality on the basis of the intention.

We can debate the intention as one topic, and we can debate improving the reality to make it closer to the intention as another topic.

An article which discusses the intention - and the implications of that - is perfectly valid.

Except that with the current reality people are commiting patent infringement for replicating objects based on obvious and trivial patents. And unlike large corporations with their war arsenals of patents, the little guy has little hope of overturning these patents.

The article is littered with lines which don't reflect reality, but do reflect the sentiment of IP lobby. Reeks of "Save the American Inventor" astroturf.

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