content: Patents exist for a reason. There can be a great deal of initial investment necessary to develop something truly new and innovative. Without a patent to protect their investment a company can easily be immediately run out of business by competitors who have no R&D debt and can knock-off the product and sell it for much less.  Having said that, the way our patents are currently structured is really outdated. No software patent should exist. I say this as a developer who makes his living selling his software. You should be able to continue to copyright software so that no one can just sell your exact software as if it were their own, but software patents should not exist. We should also disallow patenting other things, such as any part of the human genome.