innovative and novel...
Except that for the past couple decades the patent office has issued patents for all sorts of things that were obvious any 'practitioner of the art'.
Lot's of the claims in the patents Apple is suing everyone in sight for violating (phone stuff) are things that were known and done years before Apple patented them in the early 90's.
Patent law needs to be drastically revised to catch up to reality. Software, wetware, genetics & such are all handled poorly by the system. Plant patent rules date back to before genetics!
There are far too many examples of large corporations driving people with legitimate patents into the ground because they have more money to work with....
The purpose of patents is to stimulate, not stagnate invention.
The current infatuation with 'innovation' is a step backwards, innovation has, as it's main plus': speed, marketing, cost.
But you will never get from a man walking to a bicycle through innovation.
But invention is expensive, time-consuming, difficult to bring to marked, fraught with failure...but it is the only route to truly new and practical devices and processes.
