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I think you may be limiting your view to software here though. Software has an entirely different cost-of-entry then virtually any other industry, and most of t

by mreome 6y ago

I think you may be limiting your view to software here though. Software has an entirely different cost-of-entry then virtually any other industry, and most of the major products you see coming out of the industry right now are a combination, reimplementation, or reimagining of already existing ideas. Most patent issues in this space are issues with "business method" and "XYZ but on a computer" patents, the validity of which are both arguable, but a separate issue from the wider value of patents. There are many other industries where advancement is not made without huge amounts of investment, and the only thing that protects the little players are patents. An industry like Chemical Engineering and Manufacture for example – the development of a new useful chemical compound may cost 10s of millions of dollars in research, testing, process improvements, etc. Why would any company bear that cost if they could just wait for another company to do it and start producing it themselves, undercutting the cost of the original developers who must price their offering higher to recuperate their R&D cost? What would stop any large manufacture from taking a novel new compound developed by a smaller competitor, or recent entrant, and using their large already existing production and logistics capacity to undercut their small competitor? Also, regarding collective knowledge -- remember that the only alternative to patent protection is to keep something a trade secret. That encourages a company to never publicly disclose anything about their process that they can keep secret, which can theoretically be done forever, and can mean that when the company eventually ceases to exist, that knowledge can be lost. I’m not saying that the patent system doesn’t have its flaws, and really needs some revisions and updates in places, but it does provide a real value.

kiba 6y ago
There are many other industries where advancement is not made without huge amounts of investment, and the only thing that protects the little players are patents. Excuse me, this works the other way around, especially around communities like 3D printing that rely on players sharing information freely with each other. Open hardware is threatened by patent holders, big or small. I’m not saying that the patent system doesn’t have its flaws, and really needs some revisions and updates in places, but it does provide a real value. You provided logical reasons as to why X and Y things happen this way, but not evidence that it actually happened this way in the world.
- mreome 6y ago
  The fact that the 3D printing community, and even some of the companies that currently operate in that niece, share more openly with each other is great. But should 3D printing ever get wide-scale traction (think home appliance), then that free sharing of information means any random mega-corporation looking for a new profit-center can step in, take all that knowledge, and simple stomp out all the small players who invested time and energy into their products. The same goes for any product developed as open-hardware, if it gets wide-scale traction, any mega-corp can trivially reimplement it and remove the smaller players from the board. Neither group has any protections without patents and copyrights. I would also argue that those two areas have a relatively low-cost of entry like software development, but only have such due to the huge amount of investment previously put into those fields, and existing industries around them. High-power and low-cost microchips, high efficiency stepper motors, etc, were developed due to decades of constant industry investment, and the open-hardware community isn’t going to be mass producing stepper-motors, microprocessors, or FPGAs anytime soon. To be clear, these are both communities I think are great, and consider myself part of, but you can’t ignore the reality of the industrial and business world around them because it’s inconvenient. In an ideal world, everything would work like those communities, but our world is far, far, from ideal. As for case examples for my arguments. For small player protection -- just look at how lack of patent enforcement causes so many small companies to fail due to lower-cost knockoffs produced in china being released before their brand gains traction. For the need for a return on investment -- that’s just how industry at large works. No company will invest significant funds developing something if there isn’t a reasonable chance of making a return on that investment. If all your competitors can immediately copy and undercut you, the ROI drops to zero. I can actually provide some specific examples from the company I work for / industry I work in, but I'd prefer to move the conversation offline if you'd like to discuses that.
  - Kliment 6y ago
    3D printing was sat at an impasse for two decades because several companies independently came up with related processes for it, then fought a massive patent war, and each of them walked away with exclusivity to one particular process (EOS with sintering, Statasys with FDM and 3D Systems with SLA). For two decades progress just didn't happen because the patents prevented it. There was a world market of about 5000 3D printers. The market was saturated entirely. As soon as the patents started expiring, it took less than a decade for the market size to grow by four orders of magnitude, part quality improved by an order of magnitude, part cost and machine cost dropped by three orders of magnitude. Everyone, including the fuckers that kept the market locked up, are benefiting massively from this. The innovations that enabled the dramatic development of the field over the past decade were primarily driven by a loose community of individual contributors and companies of all sizes, and there seems to be enough of a market for all those entities to exist simultaneously. You have mega-corps trivially reimplementing open innovation, and then failing commercially because everyone hates them and doesn't trust them enough to work with them. Patents are actively harmful to this industry. As for open hardware producing capital investment intensive products, just have a look at what's happening in the RISC-V community. You can ensure return on investment by collaboration from the start - investing in an ecosystem rather than a particular product. It's much easier for smaller players to survive as part of an interwoven ecosystem than on their own with litigation as their only weapon. If the only way to get people to work with you is to threaten to sue them, you're going to be destroyed as soon as someone comes along with a bigger gun. The very concept of "protecting your investment" and treating everyone else as a competitor and a threat is a mindset that ends up self-fulfilling. I would argue that many more companies get killed by hostile patent enforcement than by lack of patent enforcement.

by mreome 6y ago

kiba 6y ago

There are many other industries where advancement is not made without huge amounts of investment, and the only thing that protects the little players are patents. Excuse me, this works the other way around, especially around communities like 3D printing that rely on players sharing information freely with each other. Open hardware is threatened by patent holders, big or small. I’m not saying that the patent system doesn’t have its flaws, and really needs some revisions and updates in places, but it does provide a real value. You provided logical reasons as to why X and Y things happen this way, but not evidence that it actually happened this way in the world.

mreome 6y ago
The fact that the 3D printing community, and even some of the companies that currently operate in that niece, share more openly with each other is great. But should 3D printing ever get wide-scale traction (think home appliance), then that free sharing of information means any random mega-corporation looking for a new profit-center can step in, take all that knowledge, and simple stomp out all the small players who invested time and energy into their products. The same goes for any product developed as open-hardware, if it gets wide-scale traction, any mega-corp can trivially reimplement it and remove the smaller players from the board. Neither group has any protections without patents and copyrights. I would also argue that those two areas have a relatively low-cost of entry like software development, but only have such due to the huge amount of investment previously put into those fields, and existing industries around them. High-power and low-cost microchips, high efficiency stepper motors, etc, were developed due to decades of constant industry investment, and the open-hardware community isn’t going to be mass producing stepper-motors, microprocessors, or FPGAs anytime soon. To be clear, these are both communities I think are great, and consider myself part of, but you can’t ignore the reality of the industrial and business world around them because it’s inconvenient. In an ideal world, everything would work like those communities, but our world is far, far, from ideal. As for case examples for my arguments. For small player protection -- just look at how lack of patent enforcement causes so many small companies to fail due to lower-cost knockoffs produced in china being released before their brand gains traction. For the need for a return on investment -- that’s just how industry at large works. No company will invest significant funds developing something if there isn’t a reasonable chance of making a return on that investment. If all your competitors can immediately copy and undercut you, the ROI drops to zero. I can actually provide some specific examples from the company I work for / industry I work in, but I'd prefer to move the conversation offline if you'd like to discuses that.
- Kliment 6y ago
  3D printing was sat at an impasse for two decades because several companies independently came up with related processes for it, then fought a massive patent war, and each of them walked away with exclusivity to one particular process (EOS with sintering, Statasys with FDM and 3D Systems with SLA). For two decades progress just didn't happen because the patents prevented it. There was a world market of about 5000 3D printers. The market was saturated entirely. As soon as the patents started expiring, it took less than a decade for the market size to grow by four orders of magnitude, part quality improved by an order of magnitude, part cost and machine cost dropped by three orders of magnitude. Everyone, including the fuckers that kept the market locked up, are benefiting massively from this. The innovations that enabled the dramatic development of the field over the past decade were primarily driven by a loose community of individual contributors and companies of all sizes, and there seems to be enough of a market for all those entities to exist simultaneously. You have mega-corps trivially reimplementing open innovation, and then failing commercially because everyone hates them and doesn't trust them enough to work with them. Patents are actively harmful to this industry. As for open hardware producing capital investment intensive products, just have a look at what's happening in the RISC-V community. You can ensure return on investment by collaboration from the start - investing in an ecosystem rather than a particular product. It's much easier for smaller players to survive as part of an interwoven ecosystem than on their own with litigation as their only weapon. If the only way to get people to work with you is to threaten to sue them, you're going to be destroyed as soon as someone comes along with a bigger gun. The very concept of "protecting your investment" and treating everyone else as a competitor and a threat is a mindset that ends up self-fulfilling. I would argue that many more companies get killed by hostile patent enforcement than by lack of patent enforcement.