This paper, commissioned for the now defunct UK Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property, looks at some aspects of UK patent law and asks whether some of the activities it rewards deserve the protection they get. The argument is that patent law should more precisely match and reward the advance the inventor discloses, that patents should not be granted for activities that need no stimulus or are already adequately stimulated by other intellectual property laws, that specifications should disclose all the inventor knows about the invention to as wide an audience as possible, that only activities the patent holder and the public fairly expect to be included with the patent’s claims should be caught, and that patents should be enforced in ways that do not unfairly benefit patentees and unnecessarily restrain industry. While the paper deals with the specifics of U.K. law, many of the general points it makes - for example, on overbroad patents, overlapping protection, disclosure of best methods of practising the invention, overbroad claim interpretation and the injunction remedy - apply equally to the laws of other countries.