Patent system slows tech gains

A number of heavyweight venture capitalists in the tech hubs of Silicon Valley and New York are calling for serious patent reform in Washington.
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Software patents “have become a contrast to innovation and a tax on any kind of success,” said Brad Burnham, a partner at Union Square Ventures. “I cannot come up with a single defensible reason for
software patents.”
Patent laws haven’t evolved to accommodate the rapid pace of innovation on the Web and, more recently, in Web-based applications, venture capitalists say. The current shelf life of a patent is 20 years — a lifetime by Silicon Valley standards — even though software tools can be created in a matter of days and are constantly tweaked by developers.
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“We need shields from all these people who are bastardizing the patent system,” said Jason Mendelson, a managing director at Foundry Group. “We wish we didn’t have to get them, but it’s used as a shield or an insurance policy.”