In 1880, Supreme Court Justice Noah Swayne added a third requirement: A patentable invention, he wrote, should be inspired by "a flash of genius."

This put a high bar on patentability, and through the decades the courts raised it. In 1950, Justice William O. Douglas wrote, "The Constitution never sanctioned the patenting of gadgets. Patents serve a higher end — the advancement of science."

Inventors and patent-seeking corporations didn't like that. Two years later, Congress removed the "flash of genius" standard and replaced it witha vaguer requirement of "non-obviousness."

That began to loosen the patent floodgates. In 1980, the Supreme Court said life, in the form of genetically engineered bacteria, was patentable. The decision gave birth to the modern biotech industry.

....In a recent speech, Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago said a large part of the recent jump in applications "is defensive or strategic patenting."

"You get a patent because [otherwise] someone else will patent it," he said. "Or you get a patent because you would like to block a competitor."

The walls protecting this ever-expanding pool of intellectual property are getting stronger. One reason is the 1982 creation of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. It handles only patent cases - and usually rules in favor of the patent holder.

"A specialized court tends to see itself, I think, as a booster of the specialty industry," Posner said.

In part two, the nonsense comes to the Internet:

Lockwood, whose firm is called PanIP, is one of a new group of patent holders who say they own the rights to key Internet technologies. They are blanketing hundreds of small and large Web sites with lawsuits, threats of suits and demands for licensing payments.

A former CIA technology officer is bringing EBay Inc. to trial this spring, claiming that the hugely successful trading site is infringing an online auction patent he applied for in 1995 — six months before EBay began.

Charles E. Hill & Associates, a software firm, is suing 18 e-commerce companies, including EBay, alleging that they violated its patents on an "electronic-catalog system" and a "method of updating a remote computer."

Acacia Research Corp. in Newport Beach has filed legal complaints against 27 adult entertainment Web sites, alleging that they violated its patents on "the transmission and receipt of digital audio and/or video content." The company is demanding licenses from mainstream music and movie companies too.

...."If you're selling online, at the most recent count there are 4,319 patents you could be violating," said David E. Martin, chief executive of M-Cam Inc., an Arlington, Va.-based risk-management firm specializing in patents. "If you also planned to advertise, receive payments for or plan shipments of your goods, you would need to be concerned about approximately 11,000."

The system is now clearly stifling innovation and competition and needs to be radically changed. We are now in the throes of a leech economy.