Lawrence Lessig on the future of patents (or lack thereof):
Who Should Own What?, by Todd Datz.
Also of particular interest is this mention of the MP3 patent, which media player developers will need to keep on radar.

That’s the one that’s most obvious and direct. Another threat is patents that we’ve been seeing recently, from the absurd British Telecom patent on hyperlinking to the way in which the MP3 patent is now being deployed against people who build players or record MP3s and to the way patents have been used in standards-making processes. You have these groups that get together to build a standard that other people can use and adopt. Secretly, one of the participants in the standards-making process early on files a patent for the basic idea. Nobody knows the patent has been filed because you don’t have to reveal that information. Once the standard is out there and adopted, the company comes forward and says, “I have a patent on that standard and you’ve got to pay me to use it.”

Here’s the complete text of the article in case the link goes bad:
http://www.darwinmag.com/read/080102/lessig.html
LAWRENCE LESSIG knows how to stir things up. A professor at the Stanford Law School, he is also the founder of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. His latest book, The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World, published in 2001, details Lessig’s view that commercial forces are threatening to close off the once-free and open Internet by attempting to control the software code and content. Such ideas have stirred up animosity among patent lawyers.
Todd Datz of Darwinmag.com spoke with Lessig about patents and the Internet earlier this year.
DARWIN: If the purpose of patents is to spur innovation that would otherwise not occur, how well does the present system serve that goal?
Lawrence Lessig: My objection has been that we have launched into this fairly massive regulation of the innovation process without any [clear evidence] that it will do good. As I say in my book, where are the Republicans when you need them? Did anyone do any impact statements to show that this kind of regulation for a crucial part of our economy was needed or would actually be productive?
Companies are now patenting everything under the sun. In fact, companies that don’t keep up with the competition are at a disadvantage.
It’s impossible to imagine people sacrificing themselves in order to create a world without patents. It is a rational thing in this world to patent everything under the sun