SUMMARY OF THIS ARTICLE BELOW.

Software Patents:

Should software be patentable? Some would argue that software patents are inappropriate, and that rather than spur innovation software patents give large corporations a stick with which to beat new competitors. They also lead to companies that do not produce anything. These non-practicing entities (Patent Trolls) just acquire patents and then use them to sue other companies.

Another common criticism is that the U.S. Patent office regularly issues trivial and obvious patents. For example, Amazon.com was awarded a "one click shopping" patent, (one click shopping is the process of allowing someone to buy something and check out with a single click once their credit card information has been added to the system). Amazon later sued Barnesandnoble.com for violating this patent. Apple has been granted patents that cover tablet computers that have the shape of a rounded rectangle and a glass touch screen top. They have sued Samsung over this. Does such a patent really serve to "promote science and the useful arts"?

Samsung and Apple have fought in court over smartphone features for years, most often with Apple claiming that Samsung infringed on their patents. At one point, Samsung was ordered to pay Apple $1 billion dollars for patent infringement, although the amount of the settlement was later reduced, and some of Apple's patents were invalidated. Did these patents and the resulting legal action actually "promote the useful arts" as stated in the constitution?

More recently, the legal pendulum has swung somewhat away from software patentability, with a prominent circuit court judge opining that software should not be patentable:

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161005/15280135720/prominent-pro-patent-judge-issues-opinion-declaring-all-software-patents-bad.shtml

Other patents:

Biotech, pharmaceutical and business methods patents are also frequently criticized as impeding innovation.

In 2013, the supreme court ruled that naturally occurring genes cannot be patented simply because they were isolated by a given company:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-13/gene-patents-limited-by-high-court-in-mixed-ruling-for-myriad.html

This prevents companies such as Myriad Genetics from owning patents on genes, per se, but the ruling muddied the waters about whether companies can still encumber specific genes with patents related to isolating the gene in a test, however. For example, the court did not prohibit patenting of synthetic DNA sequences, and what constitutes "synthetic" is open for debate.

Companies attempt to capture a market in many different ways. Direct patents are just one way. In some cases, drug companies have simply bought niche medicines that were off-patent and jacked up the price, sometimes by as much as 50 times. Turing pharmaceuticals was the most prominent example of this:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/turing-pharmaceuticals-ceo-martin-shkreli-defends-5000-percent-price-hike-on-daraprim-drug/

However, a similar problem has happened recently with epipens, which have seen extreme price hikes in the last few years.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2016/08/22/two-senators-urge-scrutiny-epipen-price-boost/89129620/

CVS recently announced it would sell a generic epipen alternative for a much lower price:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/01/12/cvs-health-mylan-epipen-injector-impax-adrenaclick-donald-trump/96479776/

Pharamceutical companies will sometimes pay generic manufacturers to limit or stall production. Another sneaky tactic is to make a small change to the drug formula and patent that change. Novartis attempted to do this in India with it's cancer drug Gleevec, but was shot down by India's supreme court.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/opinion/the-supreme-court-in-india-clarifies-law-in-novartis-decision.html?_r=0

Thus, in the U.S. (where the patent is recognized) Gleevec costs more than $100,000 per year today, but generic versions in Canada cost only about $8,800 per year, and about $400 per year in India.

http://www.ascopost.com/issues/may-25-2016/the-arrival-of-generic-imatinib-into-the-us-market-an-educational-event/