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I am always curious what people think about the following subject: Do you believe patents promote innovation or hamper it? Certainly some business models are de

I am always curious what people think about the following subject: Do you believe patents promote innovation or hamper it? Certainly some business models are dependent on patents and intellectual property restrictions, but do you think it actually promotes innovation? My own observation has been that with the 3D printer for example, innovation was stagnant for the 20 years that they were under patent. Once the patents expired, innovation in the space boomed and the price of a decent 3D printer dropped by 100x. So with the US so patent-heavy, are we actually making things more expensive and crippling innovation? What would it do to the price of your washing machine if it was open source hardware? Prusa Research has seemingly had good competitive success even with all open source products and many clones, so I feel like the economics can work. Would we be better off if we learned the economics of open source hardware and pushed the industry in that direction? Have any economists taken this question seriously? This blog post on innovation from Bunnie Huang talks about the real on the ground experience of innovation without IP restrictions here: https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=284 https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=284 Libertarians make a good case against intellectual property restrictions too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZgLJkj6m0A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZgLJkj6m0A

lobotryas 6y ago
The answer is on who you expect to innovate more: big corps that can afford to file, defend, and acquire patents or individual makers? America will win only when we can support both use cases.
- TaylorAlexander 6y ago
  Can you elaborate on what you mean when you say "America will win"? What do you mean win? Open source hardware is really good at making things low cost, because whoever can offer the best value (low cost, reasonably quality) will succeed. So what if we did that with big stuff like MRI machines and semiconductor fabricating equipment and robotics? Wouldn't that make all that stuff cheap, thereby making us better off? Like health care and car repairs and manufacturing would all be cheaper, and we can use that to thrive.
  - ausbah 6y ago
    but where do all the resources for creating complicated technologies like chip fabrication and MRI machines come from? small start ups certainly can't, at least not for large scale R&D. only gov'ts and large corporations really can, and the latter only will if they have some guarantee of making a profit off of the work they put into the tec
  - catherd 6y ago
    Open source hardware is also really good at allowing whoever can produce something cheapest to capture all the profits. Unless the designers are careful about controlling the results of their labor they won't be the ones "thriving", or even benefiting. It only works in certain niches where the technical aspects of production or market naturally exclude most other manufacturers. Or what about designers who don't necessarily want to be in production just to make money? Ask someone who has spent years and thousands of dollars developing something only to have a copy shop in Asia start selling their widget for half the cost a month after the design files get posted if they think that's a sustainable business model.
    - TaylorAlexander 6y ago
      I guess I am asking a systems question. I am asking if it is worth researching what a more open or fully open economy would do for the overall rate of innovation. If we found that it was better to be more open, we could find a way to slowly transition to a more open economy. After transition, you would know someone else may duplicate your work, and you would invest appropriately. You might invest less but you would also benefit more directly from everyone else's investment, so it is non obvious if you would be better or worse off. "Open source hardware is also really good at allowing whoever can produce something cheapest to capture all the profits." Please name specific companies to back up this claim. Open hardware companies that succeed despite clones are Arduino, Prusa Research, Sparkfun, Adafruit... Certainly the rules would be different in an open economy, and so we would have to transition with care. But I think there is a chance that an open economy would have a higher rate of overall innovation. If that were true, the implications for humanity would be staggering. We can duplicate information for free, and so we can duplicate some forms of value for free. But I have never seen an economic theory that leverages this obvious feature of computerized information to produce more value.
unishark 6y ago
> My own observation has been that with the 3D printer for example, innovation was stagnant for the 20 years that they were under patent. Once the patents expired, innovation in the space boomed and the price of a decent 3D printer dropped by 100x. I've seen this in other fields as well. Regular printers were mostly giant appliances until xerox's patents expired. I suspect the extremely slow start for VR (before it finally has started going somewhere now) is due to the flurry of patents you can see from the 90's finally expiring. I'm quite hopeful that a lot of technologies will take off in this way in the next few years, due to the expiration of patents from the internet bubble's R&D. And regardless what one thinks about patents in theory, in practice it has clearly become a horrific mess, with the patent office rejected far too few applications. Applying technology everyone learns in college to a new problem actually counts as novel and non-obvious to them. The "saving grace" is America's "ask forgiveness later" business culture. Basically violate patents as necessary, and if you make it big, pile up your own counter portfolio of patents to go to war with. The beneficiaries are the patent office and of course lawyers. Patent trolls become a problem though, as they have no products to get counter-sued over.
angio 6y ago
Historically, from steam engines to 3D printing, innovation has been stifled by patents. The book "Against Intellectual Monopoly" [0] from Boldrin and Levine (two economists, Levine website has more work by other economists) gives an historical perspective on IP and offers answers to common (and less common) rebuttals ("Why would anyone invest in research if another company can just copy their work?"). [0] http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm
- TaylorAlexander 6y ago
  Wonderful thank you so much!
TACIXAT 6y ago
As a pirate, the more you can share information, the better off society is. Without patents you would have a much faster innovation cycle. The inventor could make some money by being first to market but couldn't milk it for 20 years. They would have to go back and innovate again. At the same time, other people would be innovating on what they released. I think the makers would still make without patents. I know that I do.

lobotryas 6y ago

The answer is on who you expect to innovate more: big corps that can afford to file, defend, and acquire patents or individual makers? America will win only when we can support both use cases.

TaylorAlexander 6y ago
Can you elaborate on what you mean when you say "America will win"? What do you mean win? Open source hardware is really good at making things low cost, because whoever can offer the best value (low cost, reasonably quality) will succeed. So what if we did that with big stuff like MRI machines and semiconductor fabricating equipment and robotics? Wouldn't that make all that stuff cheap, thereby making us better off? Like health care and car repairs and manufacturing would all be cheaper, and we can use that to thrive.
- ausbah 6y ago
  but where do all the resources for creating complicated technologies like chip fabrication and MRI machines come from? small start ups certainly can't, at least not for large scale R&D. only gov'ts and large corporations really can, and the latter only will if they have some guarantee of making a profit off of the work they put into the tec
- catherd 6y ago
  Open source hardware is also really good at allowing whoever can produce something cheapest to capture all the profits. Unless the designers are careful about controlling the results of their labor they won't be the ones "thriving", or even benefiting. It only works in certain niches where the technical aspects of production or market naturally exclude most other manufacturers. Or what about designers who don't necessarily want to be in production just to make money? Ask someone who has spent years and thousands of dollars developing something only to have a copy shop in Asia start selling their widget for half the cost a month after the design files get posted if they think that's a sustainable business model.
  - TaylorAlexander 6y ago
    I guess I am asking a systems question. I am asking if it is worth researching what a more open or fully open economy would do for the overall rate of innovation. If we found that it was better to be more open, we could find a way to slowly transition to a more open economy. After transition, you would know someone else may duplicate your work, and you would invest appropriately. You might invest less but you would also benefit more directly from everyone else's investment, so it is non obvious if you would be better or worse off. "Open source hardware is also really good at allowing whoever can produce something cheapest to capture all the profits." Please name specific companies to back up this claim. Open hardware companies that succeed despite clones are Arduino, Prusa Research, Sparkfun, Adafruit... Certainly the rules would be different in an open economy, and so we would have to transition with care. But I think there is a chance that an open economy would have a higher rate of overall innovation. If that were true, the implications for humanity would be staggering. We can duplicate information for free, and so we can duplicate some forms of value for free. But I have never seen an economic theory that leverages this obvious feature of computerized information to produce more value.

unishark 6y ago

> My own observation has been that with the 3D printer for example, innovation was stagnant for the 20 years that they were under patent. Once the patents expired, innovation in the space boomed and the price of a decent 3D printer dropped by 100x. I've seen this in other fields as well. Regular printers were mostly giant appliances until xerox's patents expired. I suspect the extremely slow start for VR (before it finally has started going somewhere now) is due to the flurry of patents you can see from the 90's finally expiring. I'm quite hopeful that a lot of technologies will take off in this way in the next few years, due to the expiration of patents from the internet bubble's R&D. And regardless what one thinks about patents in theory, in practice it has clearly become a horrific mess, with the patent office rejected far too few applications. Applying technology everyone learns in college to a new problem actually counts as novel and non-obvious to them. The "saving grace" is America's "ask forgiveness later" business culture. Basically violate patents as necessary, and if you make it big, pile up your own counter portfolio of patents to go to war with. The beneficiaries are the patent office and of course lawyers. Patent trolls become a problem though, as they have no products to get counter-sued over.

angio 6y ago

Historically, from steam engines to 3D printing, innovation has been stifled by patents. The book "Against Intellectual Monopoly" [0] from Boldrin and Levine (two economists, Levine website has more work by other economists) gives an historical perspective on IP and offers answers to common (and less common) rebuttals ("Why would anyone invest in research if another company can just copy their work?"). [0] http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm

TaylorAlexander 6y ago
Wonderful thank you so much!

TACIXAT 6y ago

As a pirate, the more you can share information, the better off society is. Without patents you would have a much faster innovation cycle. The inventor could make some money by being first to market but couldn't milk it for 20 years. They would have to go back and innovate again. At the same time, other people would be innovating on what they released. I think the makers would still make without patents. I know that I do.