texasville - 5:09 pm on Apr 3, 2009 (gmt 0)

Patents are probably the MOST stimulating to innovation of anything in existence. If you can't just copy then you have to find and build something better to do the same job in a different way. Copying is stagnation.
Patents probably have done more for the American ingenuity than anything else.
But I do agree the patent office needs to be funded better and technology should be paramount to speed things thru.