Friday Fun: The Onion on How To File A Patent (and a few more serious readings)

Oh, The Onion. You are so wonderful and your take on the world of patents is so spot on that it hurts.

What are patents for, anyways?

Here's a bit of an excerpt from their 11 Step Program. Drop by the site to see the rest. Brilliant.

Step 1: First, come up with something really cool, like a cheese grater that works in both directions. Oh shit, don’t steal that one! That’s mine!

Step 2: Research the marketplace to find out if your idea is original or if some asshole has already stolen it from you
.
.
.
Step 11: Spend remainder of bitter, unnaturally truncated life filing lawsuits to protect patent

For your edification, here are a couple of readings on the state of the patent world.

• Patent Reform Under Attack, But Needed More Than Ever
• Time to fix patents
• What Are My Patents Worth?
• How 3-D Printing Threatens Our Patent System
• Patents and Innovation: Evidence from Economic History
• Patents that kill
• Here’s why patents are innovation’s worst enemy