Comment Re:Mildly Off Topic.. (Score 1) 179
Patents should not be consumer centric. The idea of a patent is that you get to benefit from your novel idea by having exclusive rights for a period of time. The patent system is intended to benefit those with good ideas and the companies that invest in bringing those to life.
Sitting on patents should invalidate them. Profit for the creator should be the purpose of a patents. If you hold a patent, you should be actively working towards producing the product that you patented. Software patents are a perfect example of how this should be used. The patent is presumably created after the code, so if you don't license the code to perform the function for a published fee, your patent should be invalid. If your patent covers checking if an integer is in a specified range and you charge $1000 per item produced, nobody will ever pay that and therefore you're not actually trying to sell it. On the other hand, if RSA sells software that performs authentication and the cost of that product or library is reasonable, people will purchase and use it because it's a lot more work and risk to try to do it yourself without the experience and expertise they provide.
Imagine a good idea for a product that can be molded out of plastic. Once you design and produce a trial run of your product, someone in China can copy your resulting product and sell it for far less than you can. The benefit of a patent is that the local plastic molding shop can't just rip off your idea and undercut you on price. Without that protection, why would someone invest a significant amount of time and money in creating something new? We don't have a society that pays for cost of living for people who are altruistic and donate all of their good ideas to the public domain.
Patenting rounded corners is taking stupid to a new level. Can I patent sharp corners? My patent allows everyday objects with my patented sharp corners to be used as improvised weapons to cause injury to oneself or others. Then you either have to pay apple or me, and I'm willing to charge you a mere penny per corner, as long as you agree that payment of the fee does not relieve you of any legal liability for injuries caused by your weapon(or you may call it product).