Comment Re:Patent Trolls are a GOOD thing... (Score 1) 250
It's a pain that popular compression algorithms are covered by patents
Quite.
http://www.ross.net/compression/
but I think it's quite fair to say that advances there are patentworthy, just like advances in analog techniques of bandwidth reduction for broadcast video.
And as any student of the patent system will tell you, the patent system never has been and (for various reasons) cannot be made to issue patents only for "patentworthy" inventions. Unless there is good reason and evidence to believe that making patents available in some field/industry "promotes progress...", the economically (and ethically) rational thing to do is to not make them available. See e.g. Machlup's review http://www.mises.org/etexts/patentsystem.pdf and http://researchoninnovation.org/