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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 char

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.
wickedlogic 10y ago
Because rarely is it really their own work, often just subtle variations on prior designs. And in practice... original designers do not win unless they are also backed by large companies. This is not about individual designers... this is about companies preventing individuals from copying them.
EdHominem 10y ago
You know, maybe not. We don't guarantee that effort equals reward anywhere else. You can go tilt against windmills all day, everyday, and find that either because nobody wanted them tilted (hah) or simply through poor execution, you can't make a living at it. Why does some work deserve a hundred-year monopoly on anything like it, but other work does not? Why does designing a chair deserve it, but designing a website UI (not the content) not? And if building a Web UI out of standard parts (ie legs and cushions in the chair metaphor) does deserve protection, when do other people get to use a slider in combination with a dropdown, or whatever my minor innovation was? How long do I deserve to keep the world from using the standard toolbox just because I was first? The process of invention, and the domain (chairs, programming, UX design) seem obscure and complex to the naive viewer and yet obvious to other practitioners. Unfortunately our system is based on asking people who do not work in the field what elements deserve protection. That's what protected slide-to-unlock.

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.

wickedlogic 10y ago

Because rarely is it really their own work, often just subtle variations on prior designs. And in practice... original designers do not win unless they are also backed by large companies. This is not about individual designers... this is about companies preventing individuals from copying them.

EdHominem 10y ago

You know, maybe not. We don't guarantee that effort equals reward anywhere else. You can go tilt against windmills all day, everyday, and find that either because nobody wanted them tilted (hah) or simply through poor execution, you can't make a living at it. Why does some work deserve a hundred-year monopoly on anything like it, but other work does not? Why does designing a chair deserve it, but designing a website UI (not the content) not? And if building a Web UI out of standard parts (ie legs and cushions in the chair metaphor) does deserve protection, when do other people get to use a slider in combination with a dropdown, or whatever my minor innovation was? How long do I deserve to keep the world from using the standard toolbox just because I was first? The process of invention, and the domain (chairs, programming, UX design) seem obscure and complex to the naive viewer and yet obvious to other practitioners. Unfortunately our system is based on asking people who do not work in the field what elements deserve protection. That's what protected slide-to-unlock.