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When you grant people the right to seek and maintain monopolies, is it any wonder that some do so? Smart people will always find a way to exploit a weak system
by T_S_ 16y ago
When you grant people the right to seek and maintain monopolies, is it any wonder that some do so?
Smart people will always find a way to exploit a weak system. We can point at the exploiters and cry foul or we can thank them for spotting the bugs and change the system. Hopefully we can do that before they purchase all the votes in Congress. Or is it too late?
- gbhn 16y agoThe trade-off question is whether these temporary monopolies encourage innovation and therefore improve overall utility. I think the balance right now is on "no," since the trade-off is predicated on the monopolist teaching in the patent how to implement the invention, and in it being novel and non-obvious. At this point, patents seem written explicitly to avoid teaching and to maximize footprint, and are very frequently not novel and/or obvious, yet the default judgment of the patent office is to be optimistic about applications. We basically need the courts to invalidate a ton of patents which are vague and obscure (don't teach the method in a useful way), and a ton more which are obvious (describe ways to use general-purpose tools in one of their intended uses, for example, like one-click) or not novel. That'd put a damper on it. Unless all east Texas courthouses are nuked from orbit, though, this probably won't happen. :-/
- T_S_ 16y agoGood point. I never heard of anyone reading a patent to learn how to do or build something.