12 ms·
20 years just seems way too long for a patent, especially as fast that the tech industry moves nowadays. Even 3 or 5 years would be better if we're going to kee
by Keverw 10y ago
20 years just seems way too long for a patent, especially as fast that the tech industry moves nowadays. Even 3 or 5 years would be better if we're going to keep having government granted monopolies.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- helthanatos 10y agoJust think about the nonsense Disney did with all the characters that should be in the public sector... But aren't... I don't understand why the patent office doesn't understand the point of a patent - to protect a novel idea, not to allow people to patent everything and she each other over it...
- johnny22 10y agoisn't that a copyright issue, not a patent issue?
- helthanatos 10y agoYeah. Example was copyright but I was thinking of patents...
- coldtea 10y ago>I don't understand why the patent office doesn't understand the point of a patent That's the copyright office. And they understand it fine, but they take orders from lawmakers who are paid under the table (or over it) to extend copyrights.
- gravypod 10y agoTechnically drugs have the same patent lifespan (3 years, 2 year extension for testing/R&D). Sadly there are ways to game the system (only patenting part of the molecule, part of the process, part of the anything) and then continually keeping the hold for years and years on specific drugs. The same would happen in software. They'd write all the software, patent a part of it, and then repatend a different part of the software as time went on. If anyone else attempted to patent an unpatented part they claim they invented it first and will be awarded the patent (because it is their patent). If anyone uses an unpatented part they just file for the patent and sue when they're awarded it. What's broken isn't the lifespan, it's the patent system.
- beached_whale 10y agoThe US went first-to-file in 2011 for those that live or do business there. And in software, it would be trivial to determine the other parts.
- gravypod 10y agoIt seems like the exact date was March 16, 2013 and if so then I stand corrected on that part. I thought FtF applied to any part of the invention. So you patent a specific part of the invention, then you've filed that invention. I could be wrong. IANAL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_to_file_and_first_to_invent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_to_file_and_first_to_inv...
- beached_whale 10y agoSorry yes, they signed it in 2011 but it went into effect in 2013
- pkaye 10y agoIf the unpatented part is put into production by the original inventor, can they still patent it many years later?
- sbierwagen 10y agoTechnically drugs have the same patent lifespan (3 years You might be thinking of New Clinical Investigation Exclusivity, which is 3 years, and is an entirely different thing. https://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DevelopmentApprovalProcess/ucm079031.htm https://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DevelopmentApprovalProcess/ucm0790... Drug patents last 20 years, same as any other patent. The patent expiration tricks you describe don't... exist? (You do have to patent the entire molecule.) Pfizer made a hojillion dollars from Vigara. Its patent expired in 2012, and it's now a generic. "From 1996 to 2012 under the trade name Lipitor, atorvastatin became the world's best-selling drug to that point, with more than US$125 billion in sales". Lipitor is a generic now, and is dirt cheap. If Pfizer could have keep Lipitor under patent, by any means at all, they would have! Drug companies make sequel compounds, sure, and market the heck out of them. But you don't have to buy them if you don't want to. The old drugs still exist. Your description of software patents is equally strange. You know patent examiners don't actually look at code, right? The process, or "apparatus" is described, and they award the patent based on that. You can rewrite the implementation all you want, as long as it's doing the same thing, it's covered by the same patent. You have do something different to get a different patent. What counts as "different" has, of course, been a topic of heated argument for the last two centuries.
- Taek 10y agoIt really depends on the industry I think. Some industries like machine learning move fast enough that a 20 year patent can kill a whole field. Even 2 years is forever in machine learning. But I also think some fields move slow enough and need enough R&D that much longer timescales make sense. Things like wind tech, nuclear tech, fusion tech. I'm really not an expert on any of this, but a I don't think a one size fits all scheme is sufficient.
- deepnotderp 10y agoYeah, a patent would destroy machine learning. 2 years? Try 2 weeks on arXiv... :D But on the other hand, I'm of the opinion that patents should stay, but trivial ones should stop being granted. And perhaps progressively increase the length based on triviality? Something super novel should get a longer lifespan, but something simple(r) should only get 5 years or so.
- dzdt 10y agoCompared to copyrights, patent expiration is much more reasonable!
- hollerith 10y agoTrue, but if you are writing software, it is vastly easier to avoid violating copyrights than it is to avoid violating patents.
- yjftsjthsd-h 10y agoI sincerely hope we aren't using "more reasonable than current copyright law" as a measure of anything.
- giarc 10y agoWhat if a technology takes 3 years to develop? Should the company only have 3 years of protection?
- nitemice 10y agoI'm not sure if this is what you meant, but that's an interesting idea: Patents that last for as long as you can prove you spent developing the technology behind them. If the discoveries and investigation behind a patent took you 20 years, then you get a 20 year patent. If they only took you five minutes because you're advancement is relatively trivial (and yet somehow still qualifies for a patent) then you get a minimum of a year or something. I'm sure that such a system would be just as game-able, but I feel like it would kill at least some of the most pollutant patents.
- giarc 10y agoNot really what I meant. I was more implying that companies should have a right to protect what they spent time and money developing. No one invest in R&D if they would only get a small amount of protection. I think 3 years is likely too short. But I don't know what the right amount is either.
- dave_sullivan 10y agoHonestly, I don't think there is a good argument for patents at this point. If your thing is truly groundbreaking, keep it secret. The reward for having great ideas and successfully productizing them is lots of money; why do there need to be patents (and effective monopoly protections) on top of that? There's a decent argument for drug patents (drugs cost a fortune to develop; makers only recoup losses if they can mark up the cost of drugs massively; competition gets in the way of that), but I'd argue this is a better argument against the whole industry and an argument for more public funding of drug research. If you can't make your business work without patents, I think that's a bad sign. I don't think it's feasible to get rid of patents, but I think they could (and should) be made easier to challenge and invalidate, and there should be some restrictions to discourage patent trolls (what restrictions exactly is debatable).
- srtjstjsj 10y ago> why do there need to be patents (and effective monopoly protections) on top of that? It's explained here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." It's to avoid free-riders copying an invention after someone else researches the related dead ends.
- dave_sullivan 10y agoI understand the argument, I just don't think it "promotes the Progress of Science and useful Arts". If you were to remove patent protections, the progress of science and useful art would not suddenly take a nose dive. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that patents stifle progress in art and science. Also there's a big distinction between copyright and patents. You don't hear about copyright trolls as often; it's not as crippled of a system.
- tomcam 10y agoIt's a compromise. The framers of the Constitution had battles about that. Some of them thought patents were bad, some thought they promoted innovation.
- Cyph0n 10y agoThere are a lot of things that you and I take for granted that simply wouldn't exist without the patent system. I think many people underestimate the amount of R&D effort that goes into coming up with a novel idea and its implementation. If there was no system in place to protect IP, commercially-funded research would basically die, and the average Joe would end up being the biggest loser. However, I am completely against silly patents like the infamous attempt by BT to patent the hyperlink[1]. [1]: http://www.zdnet.com/article/bt-loses-hyperlink-patent-case/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/bt-loses-hyperlink-patent-case/
- maxerickson 10y agoHow much are AC-3 license fees? Like, should I be outraged at the fee built into TVs, or is it basically irrelevant?
- derf_ 10y agoAccording to https://ec.europa.eu/assets/jrc/events/20110428-tto-circle/jrc_20110428_ttocirle_brufani.pdf https://ec.europa.eu/assets/jrc/events/20110428-tto-circle/j... both Philips and Dolby collected royalties on AC-3 in DVD players totaling $1.05 for one capable of 5.1 output. By comparison, the high-volume per-unit fee for H.264 is $0.10, and because of the annual cap on H.264 fees, the effective per-unit fee for large companies is actually much smaller. So AC-3 costs over an order of magnitude more than a video codec (HEVC is, of course, aiming to fix this), and does not, to my knowledge, have an annual cap. You can view a sample license agreement, which does not mention such a cap, here: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1114084/000101287003003164/dex106.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1114084/000101287003... Annual caps are essential for anyone whose business model involves giving away software for free on the internet (even an existing user downloading a new version triggers another royalty). You may also notice that that agreement charges royalties for products made or distributed in "Non-Patent Countries", including those that purport not to have software patents. This is pretty standard. Essentially, if you'd like to sell your product in the US, you have to pay royalties on all units you sell, anywhere in the world.
- briandear 10y agoI wish we'd have the same outrage over the various taxes that constitute a product's cost as we do the license fees. Gasoline taxes for instance are higher than the profit made from selling gasoline.
- ZeroGravitas 10y agoI'm outraged that gasoline taxes aren't higher, if that counts, since it's use literally poisons children and leads to hundreds of thousands of deaths every year amongst other externalities it imposes on people.
- draw_down 10y agoIf you think 20 years is bad, wait till you see what Disney is pulling off.
- StClaire 10y agoI had a neighbor who worked for the patent office. He worked on LCD screens for Samsung and some other manufacturers. He told me the patent office needs 2-3 years to grant the patent but the lifespan of the product is around 18 months. So, he told me, by the time the patent is granted the product is already off the shelves. He got offended when I said the patent system was messed up
- Razengan 10y agoDid you bring up Samsung's past implication in infringing upon the patents of other companies?
- lostlogin 10y agoComments suggesting Samsung disregards intellectual property are often down voted, and up votes go to comments on the triviality of designing of the rounded rect. What's going on here?
- JustSomeNobody 10y agoIt would be interesting to see the actual data on this.
- coldpie 10y agoDefinitely not a reflection of a large group of people with different opinions of different strengths. It's actually a big HN conspiracy designed specifically to piss you off. You figured us out.
- josaka 10y agoThis is still true under the default filing workflow. But the USPTO has mitigated problem with a new program that lets you pay a few thousand dollars and have your case examined w/in a year. Allowances within six months are not impossible. But it's expensive.
- beefield 10y agoI have thought that there could be an IP tax that increases over time, and once you do not pay the tax, the IP in question becomes public domain automatically. The increase rate could be different for different IP, but typically first few years could be free, and after 20 years the tax should be in billions. This would solve quite a few problems with IP (orphan works would be a non-issue, and patent trolls would have difficulties operating) Of course, I think there would be some "small" details to be solved on the international side...
- Someone 10y ago"The increase rate could be different for different IP" I would expect that to end up as just one other thing patent lawyers will use to dispute patents, as that would have the patent office (partially) decide not only whether something is original, but also, to some extent, what it is worth.
- beefield 10y agoI meant not in individual patent level, but higher level. Copyright for books might need a separate tax schedule from patents in medicine, which again might have different requirements than software patents. Or, one schedule might fit everything, I have not done that detailed anaylis of this idea.
- briandear 10y agoI am confused. If I invent something; I pay the government a tax or I lose what I invent? "Hey this is a really nice restaurant; it'd be a shame if you were to have a fire or something."
- std_throwaway 10y agoFor groundbreaking technology, 20 years is shorter than you think. It could take 5 years at university to get it working at all, 5 years as a startup to get the first product to market, 5 years to scale up the marked from zero. Then you only have 5 years left where you actually have a chance to make money. Shortening the patent life to even 10 years would make it unattractive to patent groundbreaking technology. If you immediately make it to market, the story is different. In the software-sector everything is moving much much faster than in the physical world. The negative effects of patents become much more obvious then. One way to go about that is to limit the license fees the patent holder can get. This would change the game in major ways (mostly for the better I think).
- BlackFly 10y agoCould is the most important word in your entire store, it could take that much time. But the story at hand really underlines that 20 years is longer than necessary. Furthermore, the alternative (AAC) is open source. So there obviously exist incentives that are not patents. So 0 years of protectionism was enough for some people to innovate. It is very common for people to act like patents are somehow necessary for innovation, but this is a story where patents were harmful.
- Angostura 10y ago> But the story at hand really underlines that 20 years is longer than necessary. And the scenario outline underlines that it may not be.
- admax88q 10y agoBut one is a real story, the other is a hypothetical...
- dahart 10y ago'Could' applies to patents being too long too. 20 years could be longer than necessary. All scenarios in this argument have already happened in large numbers, companies have both failed and succeeded to realize financial protection and gain from their patents, in both too long and too short timeframes. Shortening patent life will hurt big businesses somewhat. It might completely kill the use of patents for small startups and research groups, and completely eliminate whatever protections they have left, if any. Patent protections already heavily favor big businesses. Big businesses will be fine either way. Shortening patents will have little effect on whether they survive. What I wonder is what we can do to make the patent system useful to small businesses, like it is so often claimed to be, or what alternatives there are to incentivize and protect small business innovation.
- JustSomeNobody 10y ago20 years ago things weren't moving quite as fast. But I do agree with the sentiment.