5 ms·

This can be broadened: stupid patents are dragging down the US economy.

by SomeStupidPoint 9y ago

JoshMnem 9y ago
And maybe human progress in general.
- saimiam 9y ago
  How do you protect and encourage innovation without patents?
  - centimeter 9y ago
    Secrecy until it gets leaked/reverse engineered serves the same function to a more moderate degree.
    - splicer 9y ago
      which isn’t necessarily a bad thing for society as a whole: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_compatible https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_compatible
  - ZenoArrow 9y ago
    Patents only encourage innovation in areas where R&D is expensive and/or time consuming. The pharmaceutical industry is a good example. Software on the other hand has far less R&D risk, and the cost of carrying out that R&D is far smaller. What ends up happening is that there's a race to patent basic processes that require very little R&D, but have wide-ranging legal implications. This stifles innovation. In short, patents aren't beneficial for all industries.
  - pornel 9y ago
    In software, by doing nothing. Merely not punishing for innovation (via submarine patents) is enough. Other incentives and protections seem to be enough for the vast majority of software, which is not patented. To give a specific example, we'd be 20 years ahead in video codecs if they weren't a research minefield and innovations of open-source community weren't tainted by patents (in this area there are lots of people keen to innovate, but they have to bend backwards to make something good strictly out of 20+-year-old algorithms, because anything not obviously outdated is undeployable due to litigation risk). For other areas, like drug research, I think publicly-funded research is a great solution. When new drugs are invented, they should be produced as cheaply as possible, repaying investment by saving as many people as possible.
    - johncolanduoni 9y ago
      > For other areas, like drug research, I think publicly-funded research is a great solution. Tallying up most of the federal funding in the U.S. for R&D of any kind gives you a number ~ $130 billion per year for the last few years[1]. The top fifteen pharma companies have R&D budgets that look to add up to around $80 billion per year[2]. What countries do you expect to be willing to match that spend? [1]: https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2016/nsf16311/ https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2016/nsf16311/ [2]: https://endpts.com/top-pharma-biotech-research-development-budgets/ https://endpts.com/top-pharma-biotech-research-development-b...
      - tedsanders 9y ago
        And note a huge chunk of government R&D is defense. HHS/NIH is like $30B a year, which makes the $80B comparison even more compelling.
        digi_owl 9y ago
        The weird thing being that some of the biggest leaps of technological development have been during wartime, because then budget is no issue. The early cultivation of penicillin involved walls of cotton balls acting as growth environment. Laborious, ineffective and expensive, but maintained so that the army hospitals were provided a reliable supply.
  - acidburnNSA 9y ago
    Be wayyy more strict about what can be submitted. Limit patent claims to one page, authored by the main inventor (not her lawyer), reject wayy more submissions, allow the public to identify prior art on pending patents, etc.
    - chipperyman573 9y ago
      >Limit patent claims to one page Wouldn't that force people to be vague? More pages would mean more specificity, wouldn't it? A patent can currently only cover one thing anyway, and even if this wasn't the case then people would just submit many one-page patents instead of a 100-page collection of 100 smaller patents. >not her lawyer Can I ask why you specified her? I am all for gender equality and am currently trying to get into the habit of using "them" and "theirs" instead of "him" and "his" but switching to the opposite gender doesn't seem to solve anything. Plus it reads oddly because the male is gender-neutral in English, swapping it with a word that is not gender-neutral is confusing.
      - betterunix2 9y ago
        Actually, "its" would be gender-neutral in English, but using "its" to describe a person is considered very rude (because people actually have genders, so "its" implies that you are talking about something rather than someone). Something to consider: Would you have had the same reaction to this sentence: "...a nurse (not her lawyer)...?" Many people would find that to be less "forced" because they are already comfortable assuming that nurses are women. In other words, the fact that using one pronoun stands out more than using another is evidence of a bias people carry (not necessarily you -- maybe you would have been equally curious if it was, "not his lawyer"; that would make you a very unique person ;) ).
        mercer 9y ago
        I generally go for 'they' to be neutral, but it doesn't always feel right.
        9y ago
  - dantheman 9y ago
    The question is do patents encourage innovation? It seem that they do not -- they in fact encourage rent seeking and slow down innovation.
    - Nomentatus 9y ago
      So Halliburton could have funded the very long expensive development of Xerox machines... how?
  - betterunix2 9y ago
    How are software patents protecting or encouraging innovation? I have seen patents cover algorithms that had not been proved feasible at the time the patent was granted. I have seen patents granted on academic research that do not recognizably cover the same invention. Most programmers have no idea whether or not they are infringing on patents. Patents are supposed to come with limitations. For example, nobody is supposed to receive a patent on math. In my own field (crypto) math patents are the norm -- I have seen countless patents on results in algebraic number theory (elliptic curves, pairings, lattices, etc.). The software industry has demonstrated an ability to innovate without patents, both in open source and proprietary software. Open source is obvious. Proprietary software is monetized with copyrights and trade secrets; patents play a minor role at most, and legitimate software companies just amass defensive portfolios to protect themselves from patent trolls. The only people making big bucks on software patents are lawyers who represent a drain on our industry.
  - ekianjo 9y ago
    False logic. It's not like the absence of patents has prevented innovation in the course of History. Imagine how poor the world would have been if a patent on "fire" was ever granted to some kind of proto-human organization.
    - brians 9y ago
      Twenty years and it’s done. No big deal. But the patent on teepee fires, log cabin fires, elm fires, oak fires, pine fires that start faster, maple fires, fire for cooking chicken, fire for cooking turkey, fire for smoking meats, fire for signaling, fire for signaling with morse code, fire for warmth, Uber but for fire, charcoal, fire for witches, and firing employees—those would drown us.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - asow92 9y ago
    Profits. For being better, not first.
cyberpunk0 9y ago
Which can be mirrored, the us economy is dragging down the world

This can be broadened: stupid patents are dragging down the US economy.

JoshMnem 9y ago

And maybe human progress in general.

saimiam 9y ago
How do you protect and encourage innovation without patents?
- centimeter 9y ago
  Secrecy until it gets leaked/reverse engineered serves the same function to a more moderate degree.
  - splicer 9y ago
    which isn’t necessarily a bad thing for society as a whole: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_compatible https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_compatible
- ZenoArrow 9y ago
  Patents only encourage innovation in areas where R&D is expensive and/or time consuming. The pharmaceutical industry is a good example. Software on the other hand has far less R&D risk, and the cost of carrying out that R&D is far smaller. What ends up happening is that there's a race to patent basic processes that require very little R&D, but have wide-ranging legal implications. This stifles innovation. In short, patents aren't beneficial for all industries.
- pornel 9y ago
  In software, by doing nothing. Merely not punishing for innovation (via submarine patents) is enough. Other incentives and protections seem to be enough for the vast majority of software, which is not patented. To give a specific example, we'd be 20 years ahead in video codecs if they weren't a research minefield and innovations of open-source community weren't tainted by patents (in this area there are lots of people keen to innovate, but they have to bend backwards to make something good strictly out of 20+-year-old algorithms, because anything not obviously outdated is undeployable due to litigation risk). For other areas, like drug research, I think publicly-funded research is a great solution. When new drugs are invented, they should be produced as cheaply as possible, repaying investment by saving as many people as possible.
  - johncolanduoni 9y ago
    > For other areas, like drug research, I think publicly-funded research is a great solution. Tallying up most of the federal funding in the U.S. for R&D of any kind gives you a number ~ $130 billion per year for the last few years[1]. The top fifteen pharma companies have R&D budgets that look to add up to around $80 billion per year[2]. What countries do you expect to be willing to match that spend? [1]: https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2016/nsf16311/ https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2016/nsf16311/ [2]: https://endpts.com/top-pharma-biotech-research-development-budgets/ https://endpts.com/top-pharma-biotech-research-development-b...
    - tedsanders 9y ago
      And note a huge chunk of government R&D is defense. HHS/NIH is like $30B a year, which makes the $80B comparison even more compelling.
      - digi_owl 9y ago
        The weird thing being that some of the biggest leaps of technological development have been during wartime, because then budget is no issue. The early cultivation of penicillin involved walls of cotton balls acting as growth environment. Laborious, ineffective and expensive, but maintained so that the army hospitals were provided a reliable supply.
- acidburnNSA 9y ago
  Be wayyy more strict about what can be submitted. Limit patent claims to one page, authored by the main inventor (not her lawyer), reject wayy more submissions, allow the public to identify prior art on pending patents, etc.
  - chipperyman573 9y ago
    >Limit patent claims to one page Wouldn't that force people to be vague? More pages would mean more specificity, wouldn't it? A patent can currently only cover one thing anyway, and even if this wasn't the case then people would just submit many one-page patents instead of a 100-page collection of 100 smaller patents. >not her lawyer Can I ask why you specified her? I am all for gender equality and am currently trying to get into the habit of using "them" and "theirs" instead of "him" and "his" but switching to the opposite gender doesn't seem to solve anything. Plus it reads oddly because the male is gender-neutral in English, swapping it with a word that is not gender-neutral is confusing.
    - betterunix2 9y ago
      Actually, "its" would be gender-neutral in English, but using "its" to describe a person is considered very rude (because people actually have genders, so "its" implies that you are talking about something rather than someone). Something to consider: Would you have had the same reaction to this sentence: "...a nurse (not her lawyer)...?" Many people would find that to be less "forced" because they are already comfortable assuming that nurses are women. In other words, the fact that using one pronoun stands out more than using another is evidence of a bias people carry (not necessarily you -- maybe you would have been equally curious if it was, "not his lawyer"; that would make you a very unique person ;) ).
      - mercer 9y ago
        I generally go for 'they' to be neutral, but it doesn't always feel right.
        9y ago
- dantheman 9y ago
  The question is do patents encourage innovation? It seem that they do not -- they in fact encourage rent seeking and slow down innovation.
  - Nomentatus 9y ago
    So Halliburton could have funded the very long expensive development of Xerox machines... how?
- betterunix2 9y ago
  How are software patents protecting or encouraging innovation? I have seen patents cover algorithms that had not been proved feasible at the time the patent was granted. I have seen patents granted on academic research that do not recognizably cover the same invention. Most programmers have no idea whether or not they are infringing on patents. Patents are supposed to come with limitations. For example, nobody is supposed to receive a patent on math. In my own field (crypto) math patents are the norm -- I have seen countless patents on results in algebraic number theory (elliptic curves, pairings, lattices, etc.). The software industry has demonstrated an ability to innovate without patents, both in open source and proprietary software. Open source is obvious. Proprietary software is monetized with copyrights and trade secrets; patents play a minor role at most, and legitimate software companies just amass defensive portfolios to protect themselves from patent trolls. The only people making big bucks on software patents are lawyers who represent a drain on our industry.
- ekianjo 9y ago
  False logic. It's not like the absence of patents has prevented innovation in the course of History. Imagine how poor the world would have been if a patent on "fire" was ever granted to some kind of proto-human organization.
  - brians 9y ago
    Twenty years and it’s done. No big deal. But the patent on teepee fires, log cabin fires, elm fires, oak fires, pine fires that start faster, maple fires, fire for cooking chicken, fire for cooking turkey, fire for smoking meats, fire for signaling, fire for signaling with morse code, fire for warmth, Uber but for fire, charcoal, fire for witches, and firing employees—those would drown us.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- asow92 9y ago
  Profits. For being better, not first.

cyberpunk0 9y ago

Which can be mirrored, the us economy is dragging down the world