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Wish I Could Save Your Life, But That Kind Of Surgery Is Patented…

Patent madness keeps on growing as patent attorneys keep trying to convince people in all different professions that patents are an important strategy to “protect” their interests. It explains the ridiculous explosion in patents in areas that never would have bothered with patents in the past. That’s why we see things like tax strategies being patented. Now, Marc has alerted us to an alarming rise in patents for surgery techniques, once again being pushed by patent attorneys. It seems that medical device companies were getting rich patenting their equipment and patent attorneys realized an even better route was to talk to surgeons themselves, convince them to patent any new kind of surgical technique and then sue any device maker who created devices for those types of surgeries. Never mind that lives may be at stake, there’s more money to be made and the patent attorneys are thrilled. (via Jason’s shared items in Google Reader)