3 ms·

No, both they and their competitors are equally advantaged once the invention has been made. What paents give them is not freedom from disadvantage; it is an ar

by fnj 10y ago

No, both they and their competitors are equally advantaged once the invention has been made. What paents give them is not freedom from disadvantage; it is an artificial advantage to justify making the investment. Society/the government is ostensibly afraid nobody will invent if they are not artificially advantaged. Those with working intellect consider that trade secrets are enough of a protection against competition.

ryandrake 10y ago
It's a good thing too, because as we all know, nobody ever invented anything before patents existed.
- type0 10y ago
  Of course not, that's why Einstein worked at the patent office.
didibus 10y ago
I remember reading that the idea behind patents was to improve the knowledge transfer that trade secrets didn't offer. In exchange for a temporary exclusivity right, you are required to make public your discoveries and advancements. The article went further into how trade secrets allowed a company to have its employees sign non disclosures and actually sue the employee and whoever else used the employer's "stolen" knowledge in criminal court, while patents changed this to be only civil and prevented employees from being sued at all. As everything in life, a balance between the two is probably the most optimal. So I agree patents might have started going too far one way, but I doubt trade secrets would be any better in addressing OP's complaint that patents prevent the free transfer of knowledge and limits innovation. While I never lived when trade secrets were the norm, I believe most people supporting it in favor of patents suffer from the same problem a lot of younger programmers suffer from. We keep reinventing the wheel and making the same mistakes over and over. It's all a cycle, we'll go back to trade secrets and then their issues will become more "apparent", people will have forgotten the inherent issues with patents and we'll move back to patents again, repeating the cycle. So I personally disagree with both, you rarely solve issues by reverting back to older ways which the people before us had already tried in vain. We have to try something else, maybe a hybrid, maybe something totally different.

by fnj 10y ago

ryandrake 10y ago

It's a good thing too, because as we all know, nobody ever invented anything before patents existed.

type0 10y ago
Of course not, that's why Einstein worked at the patent office.

didibus 10y ago

I remember reading that the idea behind patents was to improve the knowledge transfer that trade secrets didn't offer. In exchange for a temporary exclusivity right, you are required to make public your discoveries and advancements. The article went further into how trade secrets allowed a company to have its employees sign non disclosures and actually sue the employee and whoever else used the employer's "stolen" knowledge in criminal court, while patents changed this to be only civil and prevented employees from being sued at all. As everything in life, a balance between the two is probably the most optimal. So I agree patents might have started going too far one way, but I doubt trade secrets would be any better in addressing OP's complaint that patents prevent the free transfer of knowledge and limits innovation. While I never lived when trade secrets were the norm, I believe most people supporting it in favor of patents suffer from the same problem a lot of younger programmers suffer from. We keep reinventing the wheel and making the same mistakes over and over. It's all a cycle, we'll go back to trade secrets and then their issues will become more "apparent", people will have forgotten the inherent issues with patents and we'll move back to patents again, repeating the cycle. So I personally disagree with both, you rarely solve issues by reverting back to older ways which the people before us had already tried in vain. We have to try something else, maybe a hybrid, maybe something totally different.