The American patent system is designed to protect innovation and thus to make possible further innovation. The major problems surround the tradeoffs involved and whether the system is tilted at any given time more to industry or more to the public interest. Although in theory protection of industry's innovation would seem to be directly to the public's best interest, this is not the case when industry uses the patent laws to charge exorbitant prices in the name of further innovation which becomes a catch all justification for whatever industry wants. Nor is it really aided when industry attempts through every legal manoeuvre conceivable to the human mind, and some not even that, to circumvent the termination period of lucrative patents. This book presents important new information on current issues and laws in this field.