Patents are worthless if they are easy to design around. They could have written claims that captured your "specific implementation" with great precision. But to show infringement, every single element of a claim has to be practiced by the infringer. 100%. So if you write claims that are extremely specific to a single implementation, the competition only has to change one small detail to completely avoid the patent.

Instead, after performing the appropriate Skull & Bones ritualistic sacrifice, patent attorneys write claims that can cover more than one variation, because the point of novelty, the thing that makes your invention unique, could be applied in more than one way or used in more than one context. If you go too broad, prior art will be found, either during prosecution or definitely during any subsequent litigation, killing that claim (and resulting in the removal of a finger of the authoring attorney, preventing them from ever giving the Secret Handshake ever again).

The fact that the resulting patent didn't tightly fit your single, specific implementation isn't surprising. However, the fact that it seemed full of legalese and unclear to the inventor... that's just bad drafting. If that patent ever gets enforced through litigation, the case will be put in front of a jury made of people averaging at around a high school level of education. If it wasn't clear to you, the creator, what chance do they have?

While the current system is not perfect, what you propose would be much much worse.

How do you propose making patents more difficult to get? Make it more expensive? Require a working prototype before a patent will be granted? Both of these options would make it much harder for the little guy to get a patent, but just a slight inconvenience for the deep pocketed big company. More rigorous examination? How do you accomplish this without increasing the fees (that hurt the little guy the most)? Right now, the USPTO is self-funded by the fees it collects. Hiring more examiners and making examination longer would require higher fees or pulling in money from the federal budget (but there's no way congress would ever pull money away from patents, right?....).

Making patents exclusive to people and non-transferable means that the only way you can profit from your great idea is if you actually build and sell it, or you have the stomach (and resources) to sue the big company that decides your license fees are too high. As for not allowing companies to hold patents, the result would be anything developed by a small company could be stollen, without consequences, by another company with more resources or better marketing. A lot of innovation comes from companies and universities, who can profit from barring competitors from copying the idea or licensing/selling the patent, generating money that funds more research, yielding more innovation. The competitors, being barred from your technology, are forced to find another way, a better way, yielding more innovation. Your system "would totally fuck up our current model" but not for the better. Without those methods of profiting from innovation, progress would slow down.

"But wait," you say, "the small company's engineer would hold the patent, and they could license it to the small company." This means that the company's R&D efforts would result in having to pay license fees to employees you are already paying to invent stuff. No company is going to commit to a product line they develop this way without an air tight exclusive license with a clause requiring defense against infringement, so either the tech doesn't ever see the light of day, or the patent is licensed exclusively to that single company, who defends their product by funding patent litigation on behalf of the individual who "owns" the patent. Which is better than the current system... how?

The U.S. patent system is far from perfect, but it could be a lot worse. You seem to think that patents allow the big guy to fuck over the people. In reality, patents are one of the few places where the little guy can fuck over the juggernaut. Patent litigation is insanely expensive, one of the most costly ways to sue or get sued. But that doesn't mean the big guy can steal with impunity because you can't afford to enforce your patent. You can sell your patent to someone with deeper pockets (like their competitor), or work with a litigation team on contingency.

My favorite example of patents allowing the little guy to win is the story of i4i. i4i is a software company in Canada who makes tools for working with XML. Years ago, when i4i was just a handful of people, Microsoft teamed up with them, using their software to give Word functionality that was being sought after by the U.S. government (i.e. a huge payday). Coincidentally, the year after, Microsoft stopped working with i4i while simultaneously releasing a version of Word with i4i's tech baked in. i4i had a patent, and sued. Microsoft, with seemingly infinite resources at their disposal, failed in every attempt to invalidate the patent with the USPTO, and lost in court, and in every appeal, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. i4i was even able to get an injunction prohibiting Microsoft from selling Word for a while. Ultimately, Microsoft had to pay $300 million in damages to a company several orders of magnitude smaller. https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F...

Filing date doesn't matter... it's the priority date. This patent was filed as a continuation of a much older patent, so you have to look much further back to find your killer prior art.

The real reason Sony is shutting down the game? They discovered it occasionally caused sudden onset of acute Tourettes syndrome.

You are confusing two things here. An interference proceeding is used if two parties are trying to get the patent, both claiming to be the inventor. If you are being sued for infringement for something you have been doing all along, your defense is not "interference", it is "invalidity". A patent is only valid if it is, among other things, novel. If you were doing this or using this before the filing date of the patent, and can prove it, they're boned.

Sony announced their launch of a new line of network security products

Wait... are you saying Zuckerberg tore the spine out of a beached whale, then ate it?

Now, if the title was "Robot Throws First PUNCH At Phillies Game", we'd have a real story on our hands.

I'm going to make a batch of steamed hams, and watch the show!

And I wonder who will pull the trigger on this... Apple or Amazon?

are they going to lock out the Kindle iPhone application from running on the iPad?

They're not exactly thrilled about them now...

Patent prosecution (writing patents) requires you pass the US patent bar, which is different from a state bar. To sit for the patent bar, you must have an engineering/science degree. Patent litigation, however, only requires you be certified by the bar of the state in which you are practicing; Patent Bar and technical degrees are not required. You can also take the patent bar w/o going to law school, and become a patent agent. Still need the technical background, though.

But they HAVE added them... you can't see a monkey from the fifth dimension until it is too late. That's why they're so dangerous.

White text on a black screen? That IS a crime...