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I've worked in China extensively and I feel strong about the following: A) Cloudfare can defend, but a mom-and-pop small business cannot. A startup cannot. B)

I've worked in China extensively and I feel strong about the following: A) Cloudfare can defend, but a mom-and-pop small business cannot. A startup cannot. B) China can hedge against western bureaucracy and gain unprecedented speed in innovation and new ventures - precisely because of hard pressing and blocking issues such as patent law. C) Even if there were no patent trolls, China can still manage to steal, copy, espionage or fearlessly innovate - why? Because of three things - culture, law and international relations. In my opinion, Patents need to end. Yep, completely get rid of patents. Not shorten it, not amend it, just simply stop taking new applications. Existing patents can be still be active until they expire (or better yet, shorten the expiration date). Ideas are cheap, execution is where companies need to compete. This is not a level playing field for the rest of the nations. China gives no fucks about law and the west is gonna watch China lead the way in exponential progress while we are still playing in the dirt with our little patent litigations. I wonder if people here have felt this before: Get an idea, start building a prototype, demo it to a friend, friend suggests checking google.com/patents, excitement collapses :(

latchkey 7y ago
Not just China though, pretty much all of SE Asia. Thanks to the trade wars, manufacturing is spreading more quickly away from China to the surrounding countries where China still has a lot of influence, but US hasn't added tariffs (yet) ... labor is cheap and quality is just as high (or bad, depending on your view of things). If you think the judicial system and 'no fucks' is non-existent in China, try Laos, Cambodia or Vietnam.
- ouiterestos 7y ago
  And in the past East Asian countries like South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. Back in the 70s, Japan had that reputation. Then South Korea and Taiwan had it in the 80s. Now that these countries produce valuable IP, they vigorously support and defend it.
- spectramax 7y ago
  You're absolutely right. I've audited over 100 suppliers in SE Asia in manufacturing, the kind of things you see is completely, utterly insane. I've been to Pegatron (Apple supplier) to some shitty PCB supplier where the boards are running off the conveyor belt in a huge pile. No other book captures it as well as "What's wrong with China?" by Paul Middler [1]. Dejavu after dejavu as I read through it. It is amazing. I think it is safe to extend argument not just for China, but the entire SE Asia. Hell, some regions in Vietnam smells almost like those PVD coating chemical gas chambers in Guangzhou. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Wrong-China-Paul-Midler/dp/1119213711 https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Wrong-China-Paul-Midler/dp/1119...
  - latchkey 7y ago
    I have lived in Vietnam for going on 4 years now and have travelled extensively through Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Not just the tourist spots, but real back country places. I've seen it all first hand... the destruction that is going on in the region, by China's hand, is insane.
akersten 7y ago
100% agree to dismantle patents entirely. They are a hindrance rather than a benefit in today's economy. Show me one small-time developer who earned a little more money by enforcing license fees when Big Corp would otherwise have scooped their idea up, and I'll show you 20 bullshit cases out of the Eastern District of Texas that literally prevent innovating in entire categories of software. It's time to end patents and this bottom-feeding exploitation of the legal system.
- sanxiyn 7y ago
  Are you against software patents, or all patents? Patents cover a lot more than software.
  - thayne 7y ago
    They also cause problems for a lot more than software too. I'm not 100% sure that (non-software) patents should be completely abolished, but as just one example of another industry that is harmed by patents, in the medical industry, there is very little incentive to research non-patentable treatments, because getting a monopoly from a patent is so much more profitable. The other argument is that patents provide considerable incentives for certain kinds of medical research. I'm not sure what the solution is there, but I do know the current system is very flawed.
    - yoz-y 7y ago
      Weren’t patents initially created for the pharmaceutical industry? The issue being that research is so prohibitively expensive that if you can’t benefit from being first then you are screwed? Another similar industry is aero space but they mostly work by secrecy. This is not viable in pharma where I believe more transparency is required for safety.
      - function_seven 7y ago
        Patents predate the pharmaceutical industry by a few centuries. Even back then, I doubt the initial motivation for government-issued monopolies was to advance the apothecary industry.
pitaj 7y ago
Totally agree. - there is very little evidence that patents are beneficial - there is a ton of very evident cases like this where patents are just used to rent-seek or destroy - patents are collected by companies to inhibit competition across industries. Imagine if Intel, Nvidia, AMD, ARM, etc were actually threatened by competition from newcomers - patents are the government giving a monopoly on using certain information. Information should be free
- sanxiyn 7y ago
  Note that your last point applies to copyright as well.
  - TuringTest 7y ago
    And copyright shares a lot of the same problems. When everybody carries in their pocket a device that creates perfect copies of all kinds of information, the marginal economic value of a copy is reduced to zero, and you need to create artificial scarcity to support selling copies as a business model. That's why everyone is moving to "software as a service".
- edoo 7y ago
  If there were no patents everyone would be busy working to implement ideas. Innovation would fly and the inequality index would drop like a rock. A lot of the wealth concentrated at megacorps in the form of IP would flow out to any who worked to actually implement ideas. Information cannot be stolen, it can only be copied. The literal definition of theft is to deprive someone of their property. That just doesn't apply to anything information based. There are several claimed intents but at its root it is an excuse to use violence against others to prevent competition, basically the one thing that shouldn't be allowed in civilization.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    In general you need resources to go to market. John Doe makes a new widget goes to CompanyA with his invention, CompanyA just copy it. John gets nothing, CompanyA gets the profits. How is that good?
jcims 7y ago
Just playing devil’s advocate, companies will still want to protect their investment and competitive advantage. Without patents do we start seeing even more aggressive pushes towards implementations (ie cloud) that simplify maintaining trade secret? And longer more egregious non-competes?
- spectramax 7y ago
  I was thinking of the same, if you go to any R&D center (or even a large manufacturing plant) in China, there is an unreasonable level of security. I've been held up for hours in front office security room because they won't let me go home with my briefcase since it was not registered during check-in, and I can't leave my briefcase with the security due to obvious reasons. Security guys had to escalate to corporate VP of security in HK to let me go. This is an inevitable trade-off but it will not be like China mainly due to strong sense of distrust in Chinese society.
- realusername 7y ago
  That's already the case, you get pretty much no information from a patent nowadays, it's just legal-speak to be as broad as possible.
  - sanxiyn 7y ago
    That's not really true... I learned a lot from reading Google's TPU patents, for example.
- pnw_hazor 7y ago
  Big Cos will stop publishing research. Typically today they file a patent before presenting research at conventions, etc. Gadget manufactuers would also obfuscate or hide design features to make it harder for their inventions to be copied. Also, I imagine, in the absence of patent protection, trade secret or non-compete laws would be more onerous.
rayiner 7y ago
How do you reconcile your view with the fact that China is building up its domestic patent system? https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2018/10/04/weak-chinese-patent-applications-burgeoning-patent-system/id=101780/ https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2018/10/04/weak-chinese-patent-ap... https://www.raconteur.net/risk-management/how-china-became-leader-intellectual-property https://www.raconteur.net/risk-management/how-china-became-l... > “Over the past decade, China has demonstrated serious resolve to enforce an effective IP rights regime, and to bring the system in line with other developed systems in the US and Europe,” says Xingye Huang, associate at trademark and patent attorneys Abel & Imray. Indeed, China is on track to achieving its 2020 strategic goal laid out in 2008 of attaining a comparatively high level in terms of the creation, utilisation, protection and administration of IP rights.
- tyri_kai_psomi 7y ago
  Outside of those who are fearful of the PRC, mainly its own citizens and direct neighbors, will any nation take seriously any Chinese IP claim when they have spent nearly two decades of demonstrating complete disregard for anyone else's?
  - vkou 7y ago
    Yes, if they want to ever sell products in China. What really matters in international relations is not how countries used to behave - it's how they behave now. Every country of note has at some point in the past been a pariah of one form or another.
- spectramax 7y ago
  I've not been directly aware of the increased push for patents in China. I've audited number of small to large suppliers and have not felt that IP enforcement has any real meaning in China. > Over the past decade, China has demonstrated serious resolve to enforce an effective IP rights regime, and to bring the system in line with other developed systems in the US and Europe I think this is entirely questionable where you have rampant IP theft [1][2] (I can recall couple of major recent incidents), and the claim that 1 in 5 US companies face IP theft in China [3]. The Chinese government wants to attract foreign businesses and number 1 concern for any western company when they want to do business in China is IP. It doesn't surprise me that the Chinese government is drumming up its stance on IP protection. Lack of respect for IP runs deep in Chinese culture, articulated in great detail by Paul Middler in his book "What's wrong with China?". Having worked in China for a long period, there is no better summary of the Chinese business culture. [1] Huawei Case: https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-prosecutors-probe-huawei-on-new-allegations-of-technology-theft-11567102622 https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-prosecutors-probe-huawei-on... [2] Micron Case: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/22/technology/china-micron-chips-theft.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/22/technology/china-micron-c... [3] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/28/1-in-5-companies-say-china-stole-their-ip-within-the-last-year-cnbc.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/28/1-in-5-companies-say-china-s...
rubicon33 7y ago
> Ideas are cheap, execution is where companies need to compete Have you thought about how this could mean the wealthy are almost always going to win? Patents are helpful when you are small, and cannot win the scale war. Big companies + Rich People will always win in a world where they can copy ideas.
- cortesoft 7y ago
  I mean, they already always win? Although it is kinda a tautology, since rich people and big companies are by definition the ones who won.
- yxhuvud 7y ago
  Copying means that you are always a step behind, and wealth doesn't replace the know-how necessary to recognize the good ideas. You can throw a lot of money on the fire by copying the wrong stuff.
  - chii 7y ago
    Or you see a great idea, and spend to bulldoze the competition. But I do agree patents have gone off the wrong end these days.
- wolco 7y ago
  The rich can afford patents and can enforce them. Unless that changes it doesn't matter who has the idea first.
  - rubicon33 7y ago
    ... You have to have an idea to patent. Just being rich, doesn't mean you can suddenly have rights to all the possible patents.
- raverbashing 7y ago
  > Patents are helpful when you are small, and cannot win the scale war That's a very naive view of things. Big companies will be happy to license your stuff if they actually got something with it (an actual developed product or component) but they won't be much compelled to license if you just wave a patent in front of them. "Oh but then you sue", yea, it's not that simple.
bbanyc 7y ago
There's an old quote from a legal scholar to the effect that it was a mistake to introduce patents, but now that we have them, it would be a greater mistake to get rid of them. I honestly don't know. With regard to software, it's clear that patents are causing net harm to the industry - so maybe TiVo makes more money off licensing DVR patents than they did from DVRs, but that's about as close as software patents have ever come to working. But then you have cases like pharmaceuticals, where the high cost of R&D and the long lead time to getting a product to market makes patent protection absolutely essential to recoup costs. I suspect that most industries are closer to software than pharma, but suspicion isn't enough to go on. I do know that the theoretical basis of the patent system, the exchange of public disclosure for temporary monopoly, doesn't work at all. A typical patent is written in a strange, pedantic style that obscures more about the underlying invention than it reveals. And a typical patented "invention" is usually a small aspect of a much larger product, parts of which can also be protected by trade secret and copyright as well, and those last well after the patent expires. So the rationale is utterly incoherent, but it's the law and we're stuck with it.
nine_k 7y ago
Please remember that patents were invented as a way to fight trade secrets. A patented invention should be described in sufficient detail, and the description is made public. This is how important inventions do not get hidden form sight forever, even if they don't bring any profit. This also allows people (including governmental agencies) have an idea of what is being sold as a new invention. Would you take a new medicine whose chemical formula is a tightly guarded secret? I think that what makes a patent worth it is the first-mover advantage. What makes a patent problematic is a long expiration time which does not depend on its being used productively. The best idea I saw is an exponential patent fee. Say, first year it's $100, second, $400, third, $1600 (all amounts acceptable even for a lone-wolf inventor), ... tenth, $26M, ... fifteenth, $27B. This way any useful invention can enjoy a patent coverage for some time, and afford it for some more time if it's bringing in significant profits, but sitting on a patent for a long time would be impossible even for the richest companies. Keeping a portfolio of unused patents would become pointless, too, and patent trolling, likely unprofitable.
- ReaLNero 7y ago
  The idea of exponentially increasing patent costs has a major issue: not all businesses are alike. If I make a new model of fork and patent it, I can probably enter the market quickly. However, if my patent is for some new type of power plant, I will not be able to enter market within 20 years. Refutal: raise the cost differently depending on time to enter the market? Then some statistician will have to be paid to estimate this, meaning patent applications are much more expensive. I hope you think my comment was constructive.
  - 55555 7y ago
    isnt this already an issue with the current system too? Patents all have the same minimum cost and same minimum effective legal cost, even though some opportunities are large and some are small. I understand your criticism but I think, if properly fleshed out and part of a larger plan, some sort of exponential cost feature could be useful.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
flywithdolp 7y ago
>Cloudfare can defend, but a mom-and-pop small business cannot. A startup cannot. Agree. When it comes to patents, getting into court, and fighting back Most of the companies won't even get to a situation they need to spend money they don't have to fight this 'endless' war
XuMiao 7y ago
Patent system was not meant for 21st century. Many drugs re-patented to profit higher, e.g., Albuterol. Innovation should be protected with a capped value instead of a period of time.
pbhjpbhj 7y ago
>Ideas are cheap, execution is where companies need to compete. // A patent [the law intends] is granted for an invention, specifically not an idea. There needs to be a workable embodiment, sufficiently disclosed that a skilled reader can make the invention. Making an idea a workable invention requires expending effort, that is why we need a patent system. The alternative is industrial secrets, which IMO will greatly inhibit progress. Not because we can't reverse engineer but because of the costs of time and resources. There is also an issue of sufficiency of patent disclosures reducing over time, patent offices need to be hot on that.
- pluma 7y ago
  How do industrial secrets, which can safely be reverse-engineered, inhibit progress more than patents, which often intentionally omit important details and can be used to actively prevent reverse-engineering by competitors? Patents encourage monopolisation by harming smaller companies more than large conglomerates. Small companies either take their chances and risk being sued out of existence or actively avoid patent infringement, wasting resources and limiting innovation. If anything, patents discourage knowledge sharing because showing your work opens you up to liability for violating patents you may have been unaware of. The only form of "knowledge sharing" patents seem to encourage is filing patents, which only becomes "knowledge sharing" when they expire many years later. EDIT: The most frequently cited counter-example is historical: guilds keeping trade secrets to prevent outsiders from just copying them. But this is meant to associate all the negative associations we have with that time and its level of technology with the absence of patents without doing the actual work of establishing anything resembling a causal relationship.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    >patents, which often intentionally omit important details These are invalid. That might not help against a troll of course. >The only form of "knowledge sharing" patents seem to encourage is filing patents, which only becomes "knowledge sharing" when they expire many years later. // I'd have to check for USA, but in Europe you can use a patent for research, that's the whole point really of having them. You can even make the invention for yourself, you can't sell it though without a license. When you make an improvement and the original inventor won't license then in UK they can be forced to license it.

latchkey 7y ago

Not just China though, pretty much all of SE Asia. Thanks to the trade wars, manufacturing is spreading more quickly away from China to the surrounding countries where China still has a lot of influence, but US hasn't added tariffs (yet) ... labor is cheap and quality is just as high (or bad, depending on your view of things). If you think the judicial system and 'no fucks' is non-existent in China, try Laos, Cambodia or Vietnam.

ouiterestos 7y ago
And in the past East Asian countries like South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. Back in the 70s, Japan had that reputation. Then South Korea and Taiwan had it in the 80s. Now that these countries produce valuable IP, they vigorously support and defend it.
spectramax 7y ago
You're absolutely right. I've audited over 100 suppliers in SE Asia in manufacturing, the kind of things you see is completely, utterly insane. I've been to Pegatron (Apple supplier) to some shitty PCB supplier where the boards are running off the conveyor belt in a huge pile. No other book captures it as well as "What's wrong with China?" by Paul Middler [1]. Dejavu after dejavu as I read through it. It is amazing. I think it is safe to extend argument not just for China, but the entire SE Asia. Hell, some regions in Vietnam smells almost like those PVD coating chemical gas chambers in Guangzhou. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Wrong-China-Paul-Midler/dp/1119213711 https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Wrong-China-Paul-Midler/dp/1119...
- latchkey 7y ago
  I have lived in Vietnam for going on 4 years now and have travelled extensively through Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Not just the tourist spots, but real back country places. I've seen it all first hand... the destruction that is going on in the region, by China's hand, is insane.

akersten 7y ago

100% agree to dismantle patents entirely. They are a hindrance rather than a benefit in today's economy. Show me one small-time developer who earned a little more money by enforcing license fees when Big Corp would otherwise have scooped their idea up, and I'll show you 20 bullshit cases out of the Eastern District of Texas that literally prevent innovating in entire categories of software. It's time to end patents and this bottom-feeding exploitation of the legal system.

sanxiyn 7y ago
Are you against software patents, or all patents? Patents cover a lot more than software.
- thayne 7y ago
  They also cause problems for a lot more than software too. I'm not 100% sure that (non-software) patents should be completely abolished, but as just one example of another industry that is harmed by patents, in the medical industry, there is very little incentive to research non-patentable treatments, because getting a monopoly from a patent is so much more profitable. The other argument is that patents provide considerable incentives for certain kinds of medical research. I'm not sure what the solution is there, but I do know the current system is very flawed.
  - yoz-y 7y ago
    Weren’t patents initially created for the pharmaceutical industry? The issue being that research is so prohibitively expensive that if you can’t benefit from being first then you are screwed? Another similar industry is aero space but they mostly work by secrecy. This is not viable in pharma where I believe more transparency is required for safety.
    - function_seven 7y ago
      Patents predate the pharmaceutical industry by a few centuries. Even back then, I doubt the initial motivation for government-issued monopolies was to advance the apothecary industry.

pitaj 7y ago

Totally agree. - there is very little evidence that patents are beneficial - there is a ton of very evident cases like this where patents are just used to rent-seek or destroy - patents are collected by companies to inhibit competition across industries. Imagine if Intel, Nvidia, AMD, ARM, etc were actually threatened by competition from newcomers - patents are the government giving a monopoly on using certain information. Information should be free

sanxiyn 7y ago
Note that your last point applies to copyright as well.
- TuringTest 7y ago
  And copyright shares a lot of the same problems. When everybody carries in their pocket a device that creates perfect copies of all kinds of information, the marginal economic value of a copy is reduced to zero, and you need to create artificial scarcity to support selling copies as a business model. That's why everyone is moving to "software as a service".
edoo 7y ago
If there were no patents everyone would be busy working to implement ideas. Innovation would fly and the inequality index would drop like a rock. A lot of the wealth concentrated at megacorps in the form of IP would flow out to any who worked to actually implement ideas. Information cannot be stolen, it can only be copied. The literal definition of theft is to deprive someone of their property. That just doesn't apply to anything information based. There are several claimed intents but at its root it is an excuse to use violence against others to prevent competition, basically the one thing that shouldn't be allowed in civilization.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  In general you need resources to go to market. John Doe makes a new widget goes to CompanyA with his invention, CompanyA just copy it. John gets nothing, CompanyA gets the profits. How is that good?

jcims 7y ago

Just playing devil’s advocate, companies will still want to protect their investment and competitive advantage. Without patents do we start seeing even more aggressive pushes towards implementations (ie cloud) that simplify maintaining trade secret? And longer more egregious non-competes?

spectramax 7y ago
I was thinking of the same, if you go to any R&D center (or even a large manufacturing plant) in China, there is an unreasonable level of security. I've been held up for hours in front office security room because they won't let me go home with my briefcase since it was not registered during check-in, and I can't leave my briefcase with the security due to obvious reasons. Security guys had to escalate to corporate VP of security in HK to let me go. This is an inevitable trade-off but it will not be like China mainly due to strong sense of distrust in Chinese society.
realusername 7y ago
That's already the case, you get pretty much no information from a patent nowadays, it's just legal-speak to be as broad as possible.
- sanxiyn 7y ago
  That's not really true... I learned a lot from reading Google's TPU patents, for example.
pnw_hazor 7y ago
Big Cos will stop publishing research. Typically today they file a patent before presenting research at conventions, etc. Gadget manufactuers would also obfuscate or hide design features to make it harder for their inventions to be copied. Also, I imagine, in the absence of patent protection, trade secret or non-compete laws would be more onerous.

rayiner 7y ago

How do you reconcile your view with the fact that China is building up its domestic patent system? https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2018/10/04/weak-chinese-patent-applications-burgeoning-patent-system/id=101780/ https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2018/10/04/weak-chinese-patent-ap... https://www.raconteur.net/risk-management/how-china-became-leader-intellectual-property https://www.raconteur.net/risk-management/how-china-became-l... > “Over the past decade, China has demonstrated serious resolve to enforce an effective IP rights regime, and to bring the system in line with other developed systems in the US and Europe,” says Xingye Huang, associate at trademark and patent attorneys Abel & Imray. Indeed, China is on track to achieving its 2020 strategic goal laid out in 2008 of attaining a comparatively high level in terms of the creation, utilisation, protection and administration of IP rights.

tyri_kai_psomi 7y ago
Outside of those who are fearful of the PRC, mainly its own citizens and direct neighbors, will any nation take seriously any Chinese IP claim when they have spent nearly two decades of demonstrating complete disregard for anyone else's?
- vkou 7y ago
  Yes, if they want to ever sell products in China. What really matters in international relations is not how countries used to behave - it's how they behave now. Every country of note has at some point in the past been a pariah of one form or another.
spectramax 7y ago
I've not been directly aware of the increased push for patents in China. I've audited number of small to large suppliers and have not felt that IP enforcement has any real meaning in China. > Over the past decade, China has demonstrated serious resolve to enforce an effective IP rights regime, and to bring the system in line with other developed systems in the US and Europe I think this is entirely questionable where you have rampant IP theft [1][2] (I can recall couple of major recent incidents), and the claim that 1 in 5 US companies face IP theft in China [3]. The Chinese government wants to attract foreign businesses and number 1 concern for any western company when they want to do business in China is IP. It doesn't surprise me that the Chinese government is drumming up its stance on IP protection. Lack of respect for IP runs deep in Chinese culture, articulated in great detail by Paul Middler in his book "What's wrong with China?". Having worked in China for a long period, there is no better summary of the Chinese business culture. [1] Huawei Case: https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-prosecutors-probe-huawei-on-new-allegations-of-technology-theft-11567102622 https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-prosecutors-probe-huawei-on... [2] Micron Case: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/22/technology/china-micron-chips-theft.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/22/technology/china-micron-c... [3] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/28/1-in-5-companies-say-china-stole-their-ip-within-the-last-year-cnbc.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/28/1-in-5-companies-say-china-s...

rubicon33 7y ago

> Ideas are cheap, execution is where companies need to compete Have you thought about how this could mean the wealthy are almost always going to win? Patents are helpful when you are small, and cannot win the scale war. Big companies + Rich People will always win in a world where they can copy ideas.

cortesoft 7y ago
I mean, they already always win? Although it is kinda a tautology, since rich people and big companies are by definition the ones who won.
yxhuvud 7y ago
Copying means that you are always a step behind, and wealth doesn't replace the know-how necessary to recognize the good ideas. You can throw a lot of money on the fire by copying the wrong stuff.
- chii 7y ago
  Or you see a great idea, and spend to bulldoze the competition. But I do agree patents have gone off the wrong end these days.
wolco 7y ago
The rich can afford patents and can enforce them. Unless that changes it doesn't matter who has the idea first.
- rubicon33 7y ago
  ... You have to have an idea to patent. Just being rich, doesn't mean you can suddenly have rights to all the possible patents.
raverbashing 7y ago
> Patents are helpful when you are small, and cannot win the scale war That's a very naive view of things. Big companies will be happy to license your stuff if they actually got something with it (an actual developed product or component) but they won't be much compelled to license if you just wave a patent in front of them. "Oh but then you sue", yea, it's not that simple.

bbanyc 7y ago

There's an old quote from a legal scholar to the effect that it was a mistake to introduce patents, but now that we have them, it would be a greater mistake to get rid of them. I honestly don't know. With regard to software, it's clear that patents are causing net harm to the industry - so maybe TiVo makes more money off licensing DVR patents than they did from DVRs, but that's about as close as software patents have ever come to working. But then you have cases like pharmaceuticals, where the high cost of R&D and the long lead time to getting a product to market makes patent protection absolutely essential to recoup costs. I suspect that most industries are closer to software than pharma, but suspicion isn't enough to go on. I do know that the theoretical basis of the patent system, the exchange of public disclosure for temporary monopoly, doesn't work at all. A typical patent is written in a strange, pedantic style that obscures more about the underlying invention than it reveals. And a typical patented "invention" is usually a small aspect of a much larger product, parts of which can also be protected by trade secret and copyright as well, and those last well after the patent expires. So the rationale is utterly incoherent, but it's the law and we're stuck with it.

nine_k 7y ago

Please remember that patents were invented as a way to fight trade secrets. A patented invention should be described in sufficient detail, and the description is made public. This is how important inventions do not get hidden form sight forever, even if they don't bring any profit. This also allows people (including governmental agencies) have an idea of what is being sold as a new invention. Would you take a new medicine whose chemical formula is a tightly guarded secret? I think that what makes a patent worth it is the first-mover advantage. What makes a patent problematic is a long expiration time which does not depend on its being used productively. The best idea I saw is an exponential patent fee. Say, first year it's $100, second, $400, third, $1600 (all amounts acceptable even for a lone-wolf inventor), ... tenth, $26M, ... fifteenth, $27B. This way any useful invention can enjoy a patent coverage for some time, and afford it for some more time if it's bringing in significant profits, but sitting on a patent for a long time would be impossible even for the richest companies. Keeping a portfolio of unused patents would become pointless, too, and patent trolling, likely unprofitable.

ReaLNero 7y ago
The idea of exponentially increasing patent costs has a major issue: not all businesses are alike. If I make a new model of fork and patent it, I can probably enter the market quickly. However, if my patent is for some new type of power plant, I will not be able to enter market within 20 years. Refutal: raise the cost differently depending on time to enter the market? Then some statistician will have to be paid to estimate this, meaning patent applications are much more expensive. I hope you think my comment was constructive.
- 55555 7y ago
  isnt this already an issue with the current system too? Patents all have the same minimum cost and same minimum effective legal cost, even though some opportunities are large and some are small. I understand your criticism but I think, if properly fleshed out and part of a larger plan, some sort of exponential cost feature could be useful.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago

flywithdolp 7y ago

>Cloudfare can defend, but a mom-and-pop small business cannot. A startup cannot. Agree. When it comes to patents, getting into court, and fighting back Most of the companies won't even get to a situation they need to spend money they don't have to fight this 'endless' war

XuMiao 7y ago

Patent system was not meant for 21st century. Many drugs re-patented to profit higher, e.g., Albuterol. Innovation should be protected with a capped value instead of a period of time.

pbhjpbhj 7y ago

>Ideas are cheap, execution is where companies need to compete. // A patent [the law intends] is granted for an invention, specifically not an idea. There needs to be a workable embodiment, sufficiently disclosed that a skilled reader can make the invention. Making an idea a workable invention requires expending effort, that is why we need a patent system. The alternative is industrial secrets, which IMO will greatly inhibit progress. Not because we can't reverse engineer but because of the costs of time and resources. There is also an issue of sufficiency of patent disclosures reducing over time, patent offices need to be hot on that.

pluma 7y ago
How do industrial secrets, which can safely be reverse-engineered, inhibit progress more than patents, which often intentionally omit important details and can be used to actively prevent reverse-engineering by competitors? Patents encourage monopolisation by harming smaller companies more than large conglomerates. Small companies either take their chances and risk being sued out of existence or actively avoid patent infringement, wasting resources and limiting innovation. If anything, patents discourage knowledge sharing because showing your work opens you up to liability for violating patents you may have been unaware of. The only form of "knowledge sharing" patents seem to encourage is filing patents, which only becomes "knowledge sharing" when they expire many years later. EDIT: The most frequently cited counter-example is historical: guilds keeping trade secrets to prevent outsiders from just copying them. But this is meant to associate all the negative associations we have with that time and its level of technology with the absence of patents without doing the actual work of establishing anything resembling a causal relationship.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  >patents, which often intentionally omit important details These are invalid. That might not help against a troll of course. >The only form of "knowledge sharing" patents seem to encourage is filing patents, which only becomes "knowledge sharing" when they expire many years later. // I'd have to check for USA, but in Europe you can use a patent for research, that's the whole point really of having them. You can even make the invention for yourself, you can't sell it though without a license. When you make an improvement and the original inventor won't license then in UK they can be forced to license it.