How Innovation-Killing Trolls Toppled The Patent Process

How Innovation-Killing Trolls Toppled The Patent Process by David Koepsell, The Conversation Nearly everyone who isn’t a lawyer agrees: intellectual property law is a mess. And the monopolies granted by patent and copyright law have begun to hamper the very innovation they were designed to encourage. The US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) provides a limited monopoly for a patent holder, allowing them to exclusively benefit from their invention for a given period of time. This creates the incentive for others to create and innovate, instead of simply copying. However, today it seems patents don’t benefit innovators but instead only…