At the moment, our patent and copyright laws are in a mess; they are run under a ludicrous "first come, first served" system. Under this discriminatory system, if you or I, good, decent citizens (I know I am, and I'm taking it on faith that you are; if not, please stop reading now), were to try and register idea of the wheel, the airplane, or the names "USA" or "Microsoft", we would be turned down on the grounds that "someone else has already registered them".

So, at present, this system is geared towards favouring two types of people:

• those who think up an idea in the first place.
• those who bother to make the effort to register it.

In other words, the whole system is geared towards favouring effort and innovation! I'm sure we all can see the big problems with that system. But just to be sure, I'll spell them out.

• if we encourage effort and innovation, hard working and innovative people will become very rich and lazy, depriving the world of their ideas.
• if people knew they could register an idea a long time after someone else has already had it, this would bring them into the registry process, attracting a whole new class of people who would normally not get involved in this.
• the current system results in very expensive and litigious patent disputes.

In order to solve all these problems, I suggest reforming the patent system along the lines of "last come, first served"; in other words, the most recent person to patent or copyright a concept or brand name would own it. Not only would this clear up all the issues listed above, it also has impeccable biblical grounding: Matthew 19:30.

And we wouldn't want to make God angry, now then would we?