3 ms·

Many patents areuseless. But without patents, and with today's reverse engineering, most things would be reduced to cheap chinese clones. Yet it's not the cas

by petra 7y ago

Many patents areuseless. But without patents, and with today's reverse engineering, most things would be reduced to cheap chinese clones. Yet it's not the case, in many fields.

TaylorAlexander 7y ago
What I find interesting is how open source hardware companies can coexist with their cheap clones. The Prusa i3 printer is a great example. An assembled Prusa costs $1000 while clones are $200, and yet the two options serve different markets. If you’re a broke hobbyist you get the clones, and they take a lot of work to keep running. If you’re operating a school, business, or makerspace you get the Prusa because it’s the first party brand that works every time. So I see all the businessss that would die without IP protection as maybe only existing because of our historical legal structure. Perhaps without IP laws the boundaries of who does what work would change but we would still strive to create new things just as we always have. Does that make sense?
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  One thing the layman loses with no IPR is the ability to tell which are the "real" Prusa, or the real brakes for their bike, or whatever. That is one thing that causes clear and imminent harm. I'm pretty communist in my thinking, rail hard against established IPR structures, but most of it would be sensible IMO if the balance were shifted back toward the demos. Things have been allowed to slip away from the IP deals such that the demos no longer get their part of the contract -- eg as established the deal with copyright requires deposit of copies in to pubic libraries (so they fall in to public ownership in a timely manner), DRM breaks the contract at the creator/business end and so such works should not get copyright protection, simple as that.
  - TaylorAlexander 7y ago
    Yeah, I definitely agree with that.
  - CuriousSkeptic 7y ago
    Exactly the reason the term IPR shouldn’t be used https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html
  - anoncake 7y ago
    Apart from excesses, I don't even consider trademarks "real" intellectual property. If you infringe on a trademark you don't commit "theft", but fraud.
    - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
      It's fraud towards the user but theft in the sense that it removes the ability for the trademarks 'owner' to use the mark to uniquely identify the origins of their goods/services. If I also make Nike products then they lose the ability to identify by branding alone that marked goods are endorsed by them. IMO trademark should have a requirement to identify the factory in which a good was made (eg on the label or packaging). That extends the ability for consumers to compare the _true_ origin of goods in way that gives usable information. Capitalism only optimises resources if consumers have perfect information ... so in theory a goal of capitalist government should be provision of as much useful information as possible. An example of how that would be useful would be if I buy supermarket Weetabix, that uses the trademark shape, if they're from the same factory then they're probably the same product (not necessarily) so I can just buy the cheaper product.

by petra 7y ago

Many patents areuseless. But without patents, and with today's reverse engineering, most things would be reduced to cheap chinese clones. Yet it's not the case, in many fields.

TaylorAlexander 7y ago

What I find interesting is how open source hardware companies can coexist with their cheap clones. The Prusa i3 printer is a great example. An assembled Prusa costs $1000 while clones are $200, and yet the two options serve different markets. If you’re a broke hobbyist you get the clones, and they take a lot of work to keep running. If you’re operating a school, business, or makerspace you get the Prusa because it’s the first party brand that works every time. So I see all the businessss that would die without IP protection as maybe only existing because of our historical legal structure. Perhaps without IP laws the boundaries of who does what work would change but we would still strive to create new things just as we always have. Does that make sense?

pbhjpbhj 7y ago
One thing the layman loses with no IPR is the ability to tell which are the "real" Prusa, or the real brakes for their bike, or whatever. That is one thing that causes clear and imminent harm. I'm pretty communist in my thinking, rail hard against established IPR structures, but most of it would be sensible IMO if the balance were shifted back toward the demos. Things have been allowed to slip away from the IP deals such that the demos no longer get their part of the contract -- eg as established the deal with copyright requires deposit of copies in to pubic libraries (so they fall in to public ownership in a timely manner), DRM breaks the contract at the creator/business end and so such works should not get copyright protection, simple as that.
- TaylorAlexander 7y ago
  Yeah, I definitely agree with that.
- CuriousSkeptic 7y ago
  Exactly the reason the term IPR shouldn’t be used https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html
- anoncake 7y ago
  Apart from excesses, I don't even consider trademarks "real" intellectual property. If you infringe on a trademark you don't commit "theft", but fraud.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    It's fraud towards the user but theft in the sense that it removes the ability for the trademarks 'owner' to use the mark to uniquely identify the origins of their goods/services. If I also make Nike products then they lose the ability to identify by branding alone that marked goods are endorsed by them. IMO trademark should have a requirement to identify the factory in which a good was made (eg on the label or packaging). That extends the ability for consumers to compare the _true_ origin of goods in way that gives usable information. Capitalism only optimises resources if consumers have perfect information ... so in theory a goal of capitalist government should be provision of as much useful information as possible. An example of how that would be useful would be if I buy supermarket Weetabix, that uses the trademark shape, if they're from the same factory then they're probably the same product (not necessarily) so I can just buy the cheaper product.