They just created a giant loophole that will be easy to game. Patents are easy to get and someone will come up with a startup mill that will be nothing but a visa factory.
That seems like an odd retort to me. Like I have zero because I find the whole idea ethically dubious. When I was at IBM, they had occasional patent brainstorming meetings. I remember saying to one of the more senior engineers that everything I worked on was straightforward/obvious, and he told me I'd be surprised, which didn't do much to sway my thoughts on the ethics there.
Everyone who had been there for a few years had a couple patents. I don't remember any of them now, which I guess is sort of the point: it was all basic stuff that would be very difficult to honestly characterize as an "invention".
How is it an odd retort? If you haven't obtained a patent then the likelihood that you've actually gone through the patent procurement process with the USPTO is extremely low on this website. It's hackernews, not patentexaminernews or patentagentnews after all.
It would be like me saying "designing your own operating system is easy" and having someone respond "how many OSes have you designed?"
And by the way, your own story bears out the same: despite working for IBM (a company where attorneys familiar with the patent process are no doubt legion), participating or being aware of these patent brainstorm sessions, and stating that everyone had one after a couple years, you have zero. So what would you know about the patent prosecution process? Certainly not enough to say that it's easy.
Perhaps it comes down to an interpretation about what's "easy".
Evidently, based on patents being issued, it is easy to get a patent in the sense that you don't need a novel or nontrivial invention to do so. You don't need to go through the process to observe the results.
Perhaps there is a lot of paperwork, and in that sense it's not "easy". Or perhaps it is not "easy" to convince the patent office to accept trivial patents or patents on nonpatentable subject matter like math, but the volume of these things suggests that it can't be that hard.
If you knew millions of high school students write an OS as a project each year, you could safely conclude it's not that hard, even if you haven't done it.
Not only is this unnecessarily hostile, but also easily refuted. Here's the process for software patents, which by the way some countries do not grant because it's such bullshit. Software "ideas" get written up and then transformed by a lawyer into incomprehensible legalese. Often to the point the "inventor" cannot understand them anymore. Sometimes, managers get added as "inventors". Then, the patent is submitted and iterated on until it gets accepted.
So the hard part is having enough money to pay a lawyer. And being morally opposed to patents, especially software patents, is a valid position.
Step 1 - Come up with a software idea and give it to a lawyer (let's not even get into how hard this step might be)
Step 2 - ???
Step 3 - Patent
There was nothing hostile in my reply. I just laid out the exact facts that GP put in their post in order to support the opposite conclusion that GP was pushing.
Eh, they aren't that difficult to get, especially if you have an attorney to help with the legalese. To your point, if you have a couple grand and an even mediocre idea, you can patent it. Technically, you can do it yourself but I suspect navigating the patent minefield is what makes it seem hard, not necessarily having a great new product.
Source: I've done it just to see what the system is like.
Yeah, some larger organization have a good admin and legal support structure around it, so it feels frictionless to the applicant. But it is a total slog, and can take years to materialize.
