6 ms·

Um, what? I don't recall some kind of mythical "anti-patent lobby" successfully convincing the government to eliminate patents anytime recently.

Animats 10y ago
There have been four major changes which devalued patents in recent years. One is the America Invents Act, and the others are court decisions I don't have time to look up right now.
- vlehto 10y ago
  Personally I read Leahy-Smith America Invents Act in completely opposed way. The old system was only used in U.S. and Canada. Which is pretty shitty thing for any patent system. Global coverage is beneficial on it's own right, both for inventors and for economies. Your old system was very susceptible for forgery, produced nasty arguments and rewarded inventors who didn't disclose their inventions as soon as possible. All of these are detrimental for both, inventors and economy.
urza 10y ago
But I wish there was one. It would make our civilization much better. Against Intellectual Monopoly http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfi...
- stevetrewick 10y ago
  As I recall, Levine insists that FOSS is a perfect example of why we don't need copyright, even though (AIUI) it is in fact foundational to most (all?) OSS licences that the authors assert copyright. For instance "How to use GNU licenses for your own software"[0] states right upfront : Whichever license you plan to use, the process involves adding two elements to each source file of your program: a copyright notice (such as “Copyright 1999 Terry Jones”), and a statement of copying permission, saying that the program is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (or the Lesser GPL). AFAICT - and I'm more than happy to be corrected - without copyright (that intellectual monopoly against which the authors argue) there would be no enforcement mechanism for the GPL? [0] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.en.html http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.en.html
  - Animats 10y ago
    That's right. The GPL depends on copyright to make it "viral". Some other licenses let you make changes and go proprietary, and they don't really need copyright. The MIT license, for example.[1] [1] https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT

Animats 10y ago

There have been four major changes which devalued patents in recent years. One is the America Invents Act, and the others are court decisions I don't have time to look up right now.

vlehto 10y ago
Personally I read Leahy-Smith America Invents Act in completely opposed way. The old system was only used in U.S. and Canada. Which is pretty shitty thing for any patent system. Global coverage is beneficial on it's own right, both for inventors and for economies. Your old system was very susceptible for forgery, produced nasty arguments and rewarded inventors who didn't disclose their inventions as soon as possible. All of these are detrimental for both, inventors and economy.

urza 10y ago

But I wish there was one. It would make our civilization much better. Against Intellectual Monopoly http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfi...

stevetrewick 10y ago
As I recall, Levine insists that FOSS is a perfect example of why we don't need copyright, even though (AIUI) it is in fact foundational to most (all?) OSS licences that the authors assert copyright. For instance "How to use GNU licenses for your own software"[0] states right upfront : Whichever license you plan to use, the process involves adding two elements to each source file of your program: a copyright notice (such as “Copyright 1999 Terry Jones”), and a statement of copying permission, saying that the program is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (or the Lesser GPL). AFAICT - and I'm more than happy to be corrected - without copyright (that intellectual monopoly against which the authors argue) there would be no enforcement mechanism for the GPL? [0] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.en.html http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.en.html
- Animats 10y ago
  That's right. The GPL depends on copyright to make it "viral". Some other licenses let you make changes and go proprietary, and they don't really need copyright. The MIT license, for example.[1] [1] https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT