It seems that you are conflating many separate issues, and using the red herring of Chinese counterfeiters to try to prove something in an unrelated discussion. Long patents, obvious patents, patent trolls, long copyrights, strong copyrights, trademarks, etc. are all invoked in different ways by the examples given here in your and other comments, and a meaningful discussion can be had only when it is clear which aspect of the law is being discussed, and what segments of society the proposed changes will benefit.
Many of the commenters here on Hacker News are innovators in the sense that they are creating new software with new combinations of ideas that have not previously existed. They are also against stronger IP protection, because to date, "stronger IP" has meant ridiculously long copyright terms, broad, non-novel, and painfully obvious patents, etc. Many obvious patents cover things that are essential to the writing of software and have been previously documented by academics, but companies are still using them to demand a tax on the work of true innovators, large and small. A sufficiently-skilled corporate lawyer can paint broad and obtusely-worded patents as covering anything they want in the minds of a lay jury. Patent holders claim to have "invented" things that are considered by programmers as trivial, everyday tasks in their programming. We are not "stealing" their ideas, as we never even hear they exist until a lawsuit comes out of the blue.
I could go on. Such are the landmines facing small, independent and/or open source software creators, and they do nothing but slow down innovation and limit the growth our sector of the economy. Alas, this thread has long since fallen off the front page, so it is probably best left to rest.
Many of the commenters here on Hacker News are innovators in the sense that they are creating new software with new combinations of ideas that have not previously existed. They are also against stronger IP protection, because to date, "stronger IP" has meant ridiculously long copyright terms, broad, non-novel, and painfully obvious patents, etc. Many obvious patents cover things that are essential to the writing of software and have been previously documented by academics, but companies are still using them to demand a tax on the work of true innovators, large and small. A sufficiently-skilled corporate lawyer can paint broad and obtusely-worded patents as covering anything they want in the minds of a lay jury. Patent holders claim to have "invented" things that are considered by programmers as trivial, everyday tasks in their programming. We are not "stealing" their ideas, as we never even hear they exist until a lawsuit comes out of the blue.
I could go on. Such are the landmines facing small, independent and/or open source software creators, and they do nothing but slow down innovation and limit the growth our sector of the economy. Alas, this thread has long since fallen off the front page, so it is probably best left to rest.