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A huge company like Apple is a bad example. The best example of patents working well are when they are used by startups formed from university research groups.
by Cyph0n 10y ago
A huge company like Apple is a bad example. The best example of patents working well are when they are used by startups formed from university research groups.
You have a group of people that has performed basic research with minimum funding and decides to commercialize an idea. Since the group's work is already published in conferences and/or journals[1], it is extremely easy for a huge company to just throw some money at the idea and come out with a commercial implementation. But with patents in hand, the research group and the university can decide to either sell the patents to the highest bidder, or continue developing the product if they see the potential. And since the idea is protected by the law, no amount of money can kill the company.
I actually believe that the US patent system is one reason behind the success of advanced tech startups here.
[1]: Publication of results is a requirement for virtually all types of research funding. In other words, if you don't patent the outcome of your research, it's essentially in the public domain.
- dave_sullivan 10y agoThat sounds pretty reasonable, but what's a specific example of this happening? One that comes to mind is CRISPR, and the patent dispute over that has literally held the field back. CRISPR is the thing that's going to cure cancer, and it's being held back because of patent nonsense. I can't prove it, but if patents didn't exist, I'm pretty sure CRISPR (and the specific nuances at the heart of the actual patent dispute) would nonetheless have been discovered. Meanwhile compare to something like deep learning, which is uniquely unencumbered by patents for several reasons. Yet somehow corporations seem to be interested and the pace of progress is rapid.
- scott00 10y agoThe massive data required for machine learning presents an opportunity to create a moat around those businesses. Releasing the algo but not the data doesn't help competitors much. There's also often a first-mover advantage in data collection: operating a service can give you a unique opportunity to collect relevant data, making it very hard for competitors to catch up. The canonical example is Google search: a competitor can scrape the web (at great cost), but they can't get Google's result click data until they're competitive with Google. And without the data it's damn hard to be competitive.
- briandear 10y agoIf a university research group has public funding -- then what? My tax dollars go to support a company that then makes billions from a technology that wouldn't be possible without my involuntary investment.
- Cyph0n 10y agoThe university takes a cut, so your money contributed to the US education system, and probably ended up funding more research endeavors.