Introduction
There have been significant changes to the concept of intellectual property and the rights to claim one over the past few decades. With the advent of modern media and information technologies, the regulations for managing the subject matter have expanded to the online environment, thus extending the notion of intellectual property. Thus, the changes in the process of patenting were inevitable.
Compared to the pat principles of giving a patent, the current approach is much more sophisticated since the past one involved giving a patent to the first person who invented an innovative device (Choudhury and Haas 981). Because of the simplicity that the described approach involved, it could be defined as a superior one since it prevented instances of theft that could occur in the identified circumstances.
Main body
The framework for granting a patent to an inventor, which used to be deployed previously, seems to have a range of advantages to the current one. The problem of intellectual property theft is the key one since, in the identified scenario, an investor may fail to receive the patent due to the possible inability to prove that they have designed a device in question (Bouchoux 342).
Therefore, the system in which a patent is given for the invention and not for the act of filing a claim. Indeed, the bare statement of being the author of an invention, even if supported by substantial proof, may turn out to be false, whereas the presence of an invention and the ability to demonstrate its benefits creates opportunities for giving credit to where it is due and rewarding the actual author.
In addition, the specified approach allows encouraging inventors to contribute to science and other areas with their innovative solutions. While the current system makes the process of patenting a product rather competitive and suggests that it might be not as fair as it needs to be in order to recognize the author, the previous system helps to foster the setting for the active exploration. The previously adopted approach creates the atmosphere in which innovators were inspired to break new grounds in the areas of their choice and offer unique solutions to complex problems.
Finally, the fact that the public benefitted from the immediate introduction of a product into the environment for which it was designed. The improvement in the output that ensued from the integration of new solutions to a specific setting made it possible for businesses to thrive and achieve an impressive rate of economic growth (Bouchoux 341). Therefore, the system that suggested an inventor claiming the right for a patent was superior to the current one, which creates unnecessary competition and invites the possibilities of unfairness.
Conclusion
Since the patenting process that implies granting a patent to the inventor and not the first person to file it makes the process of idea theft much more complicated and barely plausible, it seems to be superior to the current one, which has a significantly larger number of loopholes. However, the simplicity of the approach that used to be regarded as a proper patenting process also contains several problems, such as the presence of a co-inventor or the fact that another person has made the same discovery independently from the one that demands a patent. Therefore, while having its advantages, the described approach toward granting a patent also implies significant flaws.
Works Cited
Bouchoux, Deborah E. Intellectual Property: The Law of Trademarks, Copyrights, Patents, and Trade Secrets (5th ed). Cengage Learning, 2016.
Choudhury, Prithwiraj, and Martine R. Haas. “Scope Versus Speed: Team Diversity, Leader Experience, and Patenting Outcomes for Firms.” Strategic Management Journal, vol. 39, no. 4, 2018, pp. 977-1002.