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So, I just went to Wikipedia to try to understand design patents. They differ from copyright in that to defend them in court, you don't have to prove that the i

by jordigh 10y ago

So, I just went to Wikipedia to try to understand design patents. They differ from copyright in that to defend them in court, you don't have to prove that the infringing item was copied from your design, right? (Their terms are also much shorter than copyright, but historically both patents and copyright were no longer than at most a couple of decades.) What's the societal purpose of design patents? I get the purpose of utility patents: tell us how you did it, and in exchange we promise not to compete with you for a while. Utility patents are an alternative to trade secrets. But with a design patent, what is society getting in exchange? Giving designers more of an incentive to produce original designs? Does originality suffer without it? I guess now that copyright is going to cover furniture, the difference is that the term is ridiculously longer (effectively indefinite), but designers also have to prove that there was deliberate copying if they want to sue for infringement?

toyg 10y ago
> what is society getting in exchange? Not closing all existing creative businesses in developed countries, which would otherwise be completely unprotected against the knock-off industry from countries where manufacturing is extra-cheap.
- morsch 10y ago
  Can't be that great at creating if they're still depending on decades old designs.
  - visarga 10y ago
    Well, now they will have to be more creative, and the law works both ways, their designs will also be protected. So everyone will have slightly or more different designs, just for the sake of being different.
  - toyg 10y ago
    Nobody said otherwise, but they do provide employment and profit for the highly-skilled. This development fits the "market of ideas" vision that developed countries have pushed ever since they lost manufacturing superiority to Asian countries. It's an overall attempt at maintaining some sort of upper hand in the commercial sector. Expect copyright and patent laws to be tweaked to cover more and more sectors - already they have been successfully leveraged in the food industry, for example, with "protected origin" programs. The unfortunate side-effect is that we're edging closer and closer towards thoughtcrime: if the objects of crime are ideas, the agents to police must be minds.
dunkelheit 10y ago
The benefit is to provide incentive for designers to create original products. Essentially in exchange for bearing the costs and risks of creating something original they are rewarded with a small monopoly. But extending copyright to ridiculous terms like 70 years past creators' death does little to achieve that goal. Also, as the article points out, extending the terms retroactively is just egregious - you cannot incentivize anyone in the past. I personally feel that copyright and patents are useful but the terms should be much shorter than they are now (and they have a tendency to become longer with time).
Broken_Hippo 10y ago
What's the societal purpose of design patents? It does give more incentive to produce original designs, but it also means that a well thought-out design won't be immediately copied. At least not exactly. Lets use chairs as an example. One can't really put a utility patent on a chair, as they are commonplace. Most chairs are pretty standard designs (subject to location). But occasionally, you get a chair that is truly unique. It is both beautiful and functional, nearly artlike. Maybe the designer had to tweak it to get it comfortable. Maybe there are a lot of details, or you've figured out a detail or style that is unique to your production. The patent provides the designer (or company) with the exclusive rights to produce that art-like detailed chair. The competing company theoretically can't produce an exact replica. Sure, there will be some cheaper places that have the same sort of feel, but like clothing knock-offs, something is generally missing (like quality) and details have been changed.
- jordigh 10y ago
  > it also means that a well thought-out design won't be immediately copied. And why is this good for society? Like the last paragraph in the article says, I think I'd much rather pay a smaller fee for functionally the same thing?
  - ethanbond 10y ago
    Because otherwise people will stop spending time making those special chairs. Either you're trolling or have absolutely no concept of the amount of work it takes to create a really nice piece of furniture.
    - welterde 10y ago
      So there is no innovation whatsoever in the clothing industry? No real nice piece of clothing?
netcan 10y ago
tell us how you did it, and in exchange we promise not to compete with you for a while That reasoning definitely hasa role in the history of patents, but I don't think it plays much of a modern role either in patent holders advocacy/lobby efforts or in proponent economists' reasoning. Instead, we have a more "modern" & market oriented rationale: We promise not to compete with you for a while, and that should give you the incentive to create. This works equally well as a rationale for copyrights. Either way, neither of these arguments can justify retroactive granting of IP rights of any kind. The value has already been created.
- jordigh 10y ago
  It is important to know the history, because patent and copyright laws are radically different. In order to understand the differences, we must know where the laws came from. The modern version that people say with "incentive to create" is intended to make people accept legislation for both patents and copyrights as inevitable in order to have innovation. It is a deliberate mind trick to persuade people to accept bad legislation, as this new furniture legislation might be.
KaiserPro 10y ago
The benefit to me, is that if I create a design, I can then make money from it. Someone like Amazon can't just come along, copy and paste, and steal my idea and make money from it. On a more general term, this would surely encourage originality, as there is a direct incentive not to copy However I can see the other side of this argument, where big corporation buy up a large number of Design patents and use them to institute a tax on a certain item.
- jordigh 10y ago
  Yes, but designers are a minuscule part of society. Laws shouldn't benefit a few at the expense of the many. I guess incentivising originality is the benefit to the many. Are we better served by original furniture designs than by the ability to build our own furniture, however it may be shaped?
  - KaiserPro 10y ago
    Should they not be paid for their work? I don't see how it is an advantage to allow people to rip off original designers, present it as their own work and charge a premium.
    - 9mit3t2m9h9a 10y ago
      Every legal protection creates a possibility of costly litigation, including a possibility of a litigation that is costly despite the claim being bogus. A design patent (and a regular patent, too) can be broad enough to cover all the obvious solutions to an obvious problem. Even if it covers things that existed before the plaintiff started working on things described in the design patent, it still costs a lot to defend against it even when the prior art is obvious.
    - jordigh 10y ago
      If their work is valuable, sure. If we can easily replicate accidentally (remember, design patents do not involve deliberate copying, but copyright does), then their work isn't valuable to us, since we are able to do it on our on accident. And it appears that in this situation it's the designers pushing for this legislation that are charging a premium.

by jordigh 10y ago

toyg 10y ago

> what is society getting in exchange? Not closing all existing creative businesses in developed countries, which would otherwise be completely unprotected against the knock-off industry from countries where manufacturing is extra-cheap.

morsch 10y ago
Can't be that great at creating if they're still depending on decades old designs.
- visarga 10y ago
  Well, now they will have to be more creative, and the law works both ways, their designs will also be protected. So everyone will have slightly or more different designs, just for the sake of being different.
- toyg 10y ago
  Nobody said otherwise, but they do provide employment and profit for the highly-skilled. This development fits the "market of ideas" vision that developed countries have pushed ever since they lost manufacturing superiority to Asian countries. It's an overall attempt at maintaining some sort of upper hand in the commercial sector. Expect copyright and patent laws to be tweaked to cover more and more sectors - already they have been successfully leveraged in the food industry, for example, with "protected origin" programs. The unfortunate side-effect is that we're edging closer and closer towards thoughtcrime: if the objects of crime are ideas, the agents to police must be minds.

dunkelheit 10y ago

The benefit is to provide incentive for designers to create original products. Essentially in exchange for bearing the costs and risks of creating something original they are rewarded with a small monopoly. But extending copyright to ridiculous terms like 70 years past creators' death does little to achieve that goal. Also, as the article points out, extending the terms retroactively is just egregious - you cannot incentivize anyone in the past. I personally feel that copyright and patents are useful but the terms should be much shorter than they are now (and they have a tendency to become longer with time).

Broken_Hippo 10y ago

What's the societal purpose of design patents? It does give more incentive to produce original designs, but it also means that a well thought-out design won't be immediately copied. At least not exactly. Lets use chairs as an example. One can't really put a utility patent on a chair, as they are commonplace. Most chairs are pretty standard designs (subject to location). But occasionally, you get a chair that is truly unique. It is both beautiful and functional, nearly artlike. Maybe the designer had to tweak it to get it comfortable. Maybe there are a lot of details, or you've figured out a detail or style that is unique to your production. The patent provides the designer (or company) with the exclusive rights to produce that art-like detailed chair. The competing company theoretically can't produce an exact replica. Sure, there will be some cheaper places that have the same sort of feel, but like clothing knock-offs, something is generally missing (like quality) and details have been changed.

jordigh 10y ago
> it also means that a well thought-out design won't be immediately copied. And why is this good for society? Like the last paragraph in the article says, I think I'd much rather pay a smaller fee for functionally the same thing?
- ethanbond 10y ago
  Because otherwise people will stop spending time making those special chairs. Either you're trolling or have absolutely no concept of the amount of work it takes to create a really nice piece of furniture.
  - welterde 10y ago
    So there is no innovation whatsoever in the clothing industry? No real nice piece of clothing?

netcan 10y ago

tell us how you did it, and in exchange we promise not to compete with you for a while That reasoning definitely hasa role in the history of patents, but I don't think it plays much of a modern role either in patent holders advocacy/lobby efforts or in proponent economists' reasoning. Instead, we have a more "modern" & market oriented rationale: We promise not to compete with you for a while, and that should give you the incentive to create. This works equally well as a rationale for copyrights. Either way, neither of these arguments can justify retroactive granting of IP rights of any kind. The value has already been created.

jordigh 10y ago
It is important to know the history, because patent and copyright laws are radically different. In order to understand the differences, we must know where the laws came from. The modern version that people say with "incentive to create" is intended to make people accept legislation for both patents and copyrights as inevitable in order to have innovation. It is a deliberate mind trick to persuade people to accept bad legislation, as this new furniture legislation might be.

KaiserPro 10y ago

The benefit to me, is that if I create a design, I can then make money from it. Someone like Amazon can't just come along, copy and paste, and steal my idea and make money from it. On a more general term, this would surely encourage originality, as there is a direct incentive not to copy However I can see the other side of this argument, where big corporation buy up a large number of Design patents and use them to institute a tax on a certain item.

jordigh 10y ago
Yes, but designers are a minuscule part of society. Laws shouldn't benefit a few at the expense of the many. I guess incentivising originality is the benefit to the many. Are we better served by original furniture designs than by the ability to build our own furniture, however it may be shaped?
- KaiserPro 10y ago
  Should they not be paid for their work? I don't see how it is an advantage to allow people to rip off original designers, present it as their own work and charge a premium.
  - 9mit3t2m9h9a 10y ago
    Every legal protection creates a possibility of costly litigation, including a possibility of a litigation that is costly despite the claim being bogus. A design patent (and a regular patent, too) can be broad enough to cover all the obvious solutions to an obvious problem. Even if it covers things that existed before the plaintiff started working on things described in the design patent, it still costs a lot to defend against it even when the prior art is obvious.
  - jordigh 10y ago
    If their work is valuable, sure. If we can easily replicate accidentally (remember, design patents do not involve deliberate copying, but copyright does), then their work isn't valuable to us, since we are able to do it on our on accident. And it appears that in this situation it's the designers pushing for this legislation that are charging a premium.