9 ms·
I have a feeling that eventually we are going to be facing basically a completely paralyzed tech industry because of what basically amounts to a patent singular
by throwaway2048 7y ago
I have a feeling that eventually we are going to be facing basically a completely paralyzed tech industry because of what basically amounts to a patent singularity.
As more and more formerly innovating and profitable companies that invented and patented key technologies either start to struggle, get bought out, or go out of business, there will be more and more pressure to monetize their huge patent warchests, (and competing companies are even more driven to build up their own warchests as a result) we are going to see wave after wave of massive industry wide patent lawsuits like this that are going to completely disrupt things.
We absolutely need massive patent reform in the USA before things reach this point and any incentive to bring new products to market is destroyed by the tidal wave of patent suits that it is virtually guaranteed to attract.
This stuff has very extreme chilling effects, for instance a technology that has almost limitless potential (forward error correction) receives very little attention because of how crazy the patent situation surrounding it is.
- Fjolsvith 7y agoI'm sure a national emergency declaration would resolve an issue like this.
- ajsnigrutin 7y agoSince the technology moves on so fast, shortening the patent expiration to eg. 1year would solve most of the problems. Companies get 1 year head start (which is a lot), and after 1 year, we all benefit.
- mstolpm 7y agoWouldn't the slowness of the courts and the lengths of processing lead to virtually no protection at all? If going through the courts takes sometimes 3+ years but parents expire after 1 year, every final court ruling would be retroactive.
- rapsey 7y agoSo if you prevail you get payed retroactively for the damages. Whats wrong with that?
- josaka 7y agoYou can get six years back damages, and often you have a substantial portion of a patent's 20-year term in front of you. And frequently cases settle well before you are three years into a suit.
- new299 7y agoIf you're suggesting a 1 year patent period for all utility patents, you might as well just get rid of patents. In the industry I work in (Biotech - DNA sequencing) it takes maybe 5 years to mature an approach and get it to market. Once your patent is published, there isn't much to stop others developing the same method [1] (they just would run into trouble if they sold it commercially). So at the same time that the patent owner is developing their platform, a competitor can be developing theirs and launch at the same time or nearly the same time as you. Certain areas, like software patents, I'd possibly agree. I don't think software/algorithm patents are a good idea for a number of reasons however... [1] General consensus seems to be patents don't cover academic work. I've also heard that they don't cover commercial research, and that in any case it's hard to provide damages. http://softlib.rice.edu/ques.html#2 http://softlib.rice.edu/ques.html#2
- rapsey 7y ago> If you're suggesting a 1 year patent period for all utility patents, you might as well just get rid of patents. In the industry I work in (Biotech - DNA sequencing) it takes maybe 5 years to mature an approach and get it to market. So have a two phase validity. Once it's in the market you have a year.
- dkersten 7y agoYou’d want some limitations on the first phase too, so that companies don’t hold onto their patents indefinitely while waiting for the perfect market conditions for their one-year monopoly.
- mcny 7y agoA real solution is don't apply for patent protection. The down side is if someone else also figured it out, you don't get anything. Makes sense to me.
- dkersten 7y agoYes, I agree. I'm not a fan of patents. While I understand the desire to protect ones investment, it doesn't make sense to me that it should be done at the expense of someone else's investment, since multiple people coming up with similar ideas around the same time isn't particularly uncommon and unfortunately there's no easy way to differentiate those from plagiarism.
- beefield 7y agoI would think that setting a fast increasing tax (say doubling each year) on patents would solve lots of issues. Once you do not want to pay the tax, the patent moves to public domain. Same tax should apply also to copyrighted work.
- velox_io 7y agoShortening patents (when it can take years to gain traction) or making them more expensive only plays into the hands of large companies
- mensetmanusman 7y agoAs someone who researches at a western company, this would actually get rid of a lot of research, because business moves so slow to commercialize due to the highly regulated environment. Regulation and legal arbitrage, where companies (particularly in Asia) can take what is newly invented on a silver platter and sell to the global market due to lack of environmental protections etc. would be all that is left.
- mcny 7y ago» As someone who researches at a western company, this would actually get rid of a lot of research, because business moves so slow to commercialize due to the highly regulated environment. I don't know about you but I'm perfectly ok with that.
- mensetmanusman 7y agoI like technological progress, but I would also be okay digging ditches in case our economy crashed towards a commodities-only enterprise, so I’m strange in that regards :)
- phkahler 7y agoSome people think patents are required for innovation. They are mistaken. It is human nature to innovate.
- mensetmanusman 7y agoI agree, but it is not human nature to take their innovation to the world. Post WW2 the US govt had tens of thousands of technology patents but no one to bring it to the world. Patents are risk mitigation tools for funding entities to actually support commercialization. Innovation will happen always, but most of it stays on a dusty shelf a la an academic library. It’s not necessary that anything interesting and innovative (and sufficiently complex) gets sold.
- 7y ago
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]