You are wrong. A patent remains valid whether it is defended or not, as long as you continue to pay the maintenance fees. You lose the right to get royalties from past infringement if you ignore it for a certain number of years (google "patent laches"), but you can still demand licensing terms for current infringement and, if the current infringer refuses, file a lawsuit against him demanding that he either cease and desist using your patented technology or license it.
Regarding foreign inventions, the U.S. is signatory to WTO/WIPO treaties requiring that it grant priority rights to inventions patented by other signatories of those treaties, so if the first portable mp3 player was invented in 1997 by a guy in Taiwan, it doesn't matter that he waited until 2002 to actually file for a patent in the United States. As far as time limits are concerned, the only time limit is that a patent be applied for within one year of the invention being publically disclosed (either via publication of the invention in a public forum, or public delivery of the invention to paying customers).
As far as patents protecting small inventors, most patents are assigned by their inventors to their employers as part of their contract of employment, thus inventors rarely profit from patents. Very few independent inventors ever manage to successfully obtain money from large corporations that have infringed upon their patents, because said large corporations have infinitely deep pockets for fighting lawsuits. According to one intellectual property attorney that I consulted, few individual inventors have even made enough from their patent to pay the fees required to file for a patent. The best that an individual inventor nowdays can do with a patent is sell it for a few thousand dollars to one of these "patent enforcement" sharks... but it's the "patent enforcement" shark (generally an attorney who doesn't have to pay attorney fees because he's his own attorney) who makes money off the patent, not the individual inventor. In short, patents no longer protect individual inventors, if they ever did. The patent regime set up in the 1790's when inventors were lone people working in their own workshops and corporations were unknown other than a few heavily-regulated canal companies simply doesn't work in today's day and age of gigantic corporations that have been given the same rights as individuals despite having far more resources than individuals and no individual accountability on the part of their owners.
Comments
You are wrong. A patent remains valid whether it is defended or not, as long as you continue to pay the maintenance fees. You lose the right to get royalties from past infringement if you ignore it for a certain number of years (google "patent laches"), but you can still demand licensing terms for current infringement and, if the current infringer refuses, file a lawsuit against him demanding that he either cease and desist using your patented technology or license it.
Regarding foreign inventions, the U.S. is signatory to WTO/WIPO treaties requiring that it grant priority rights to inventions patented by other signatories of those treaties, so if the first portable mp3 player was invented in 1997 by a guy in Taiwan, it doesn't matter that he waited until 2002 to actually file for a patent in the United States. As far as time limits are concerned, the only time limit is that a patent be applied for within one year of the invention being publically disclosed (either via publication of the invention in a public forum, or public delivery of the invention to paying customers).
As far as patents protecting small inventors, most patents are assigned by their inventors to their employers as part of their contract of employment, thus inventors rarely profit from patents. Very few independent inventors ever manage to successfully obtain money from large corporations that have infringed upon their patents, because said large corporations have infinitely deep pockets for fighting lawsuits. According to one intellectual property attorney that I consulted, few individual inventors have even made enough from their patent to pay the fees required to file for a patent. The best that an individual inventor nowdays can do with a patent is sell it for a few thousand dollars to one of these "patent enforcement" sharks... but it's the "patent enforcement" shark (generally an attorney who doesn't have to pay attorney fees because he's his own attorney) who makes money off the patent, not the individual inventor. In short, patents no longer protect individual inventors, if they ever did. The patent regime set up in the 1790's when inventors were lone people working in their own workshops and corporations were unknown other than a few heavily-regulated canal companies simply doesn't work in today's day and age of gigantic corporations that have been given the same rights as individuals despite having far more resources than individuals and no individual accountability on the part of their owners.
Well said.