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Do you think there is value in small businesses and startups? The original intent of the patent system was to give inventors a leg up to commercialize their ide

by m-ee 5y ago

Do you think there is value in small businesses and startups? The original intent of the patent system was to give inventors a leg up to commercialize their idea before they can be bullied out of the market by large competitors. Without that patent large companies would have taken the idea and either implemented it without giving anything to the inventors, or more likely filed their own IP on the idea, kept it on a shelf, and sued anyone who tried to pursue it. As I mentioned before there was a pretty litigious player in that space. We courted partners and investors, went to trade shows etc. The idea is out there. If anyone wants it bad enough they could contact my old boss and his university to figure out how to license it. Otherwise they can wait 4-5 years and have at it. Giving the IP to someone who deeply understands it and wants to bring it to market is a worthwhile goal in my opinion, even if it its not always attainable.

_0ffh 5y ago
>The original intent of the patent system was to give inventors a leg up to commercialize their idea before they can be bullied out of the market by large competitors Maybe, but I don't care at this point what the purported intent was. Reality is, it failed and made things much worse. The whole patent system, at this point, serves mainly as a barrier for small companies to enter the market. The best thing that could be done with it is to burn it to the ground.
- Applejinx 5y ago
  Given that in a global market system anyone contending with the patent system and its abusers, also has to contend with market competition from countries such as China which aren't interested in honoring the IP rules in the first place, I find it hard to argue with your conclusion. Looks like arbitrary rent-seeking and random intellectual piracy to me. A cover for barratry as an income stream.
  - NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
    Imaginary Property is just a term ginned up by lawyers to parasitize actual productivity. It was invented by lawyers, for lawyers. Fuck IP and fuck lawyers.
mbreese 5y ago
>The original intent of the patent system was to give inventors a leg up to commercialize their idea before they can be bullied out of the market by large competitors. Almost... I think there is a subtle difference in what the intent was/is. The point of the patent system is to incentivize inventors to make their creations available to the public. The time-limited monopoly to their invention (the patent) is the incentive. But you need to make enough details public to get the patent so that someone else can also take advantage of the invention. This is the public benefit... eventually, the public has access to an invention. So, yes, the idea is to give companies a head start to commercialize an idea, but that's not the reason in and of itself. The reason is to make the invention available to the public, so that the public can benefit from the invention. And after a few years, it will be freely available. The limited monopoly is a financial incentive to keep the company working on the idea. Yes, it's a barrier to competitors, but it's also a potential reward for developing the idea. In your case, I think the system worked (and Bayh-Dole in general works). Even though the company ultimately failed, the company had an incentive to try and commercialize the invention. This could have benefited the public by having access to a product that didn't exist before. But, even if the company fails in the market, after a certain amount of time, the public still has the patented information. Really, the idea behind Bayh-Dole (which created these University-based IP systems) was to get inventions and data out of universities and into the public-domain. Otherwise, there would be billions in research that would be sitting on a shelf somewhere, or mentioned in a paper, but never used to benefit the public. Without that patent incentive, would your company ever have been formed? Would the research ever been commercialized? Likely not.
- Isinlor 5y ago
  The issue is that patents are designed to be as useless as possible at revealing anything and as broad as possible at claiming everything.
  - mbreese 5y ago
    You won't get any arguments from me that the current system isn't broken. I personally believe that we'd get a lot farther if every claim on a patent had to be "reduced to practice", that is -- actually done. I think change alone this would help to get rid of trolls from the system. But I don't think it would be better if we didn't have patents at all. So many things are currently protected by trade secrets and not disclosed. Imagine if it were all kept secret... I don't think that would benefit the public interest. And that was the original goal -- benefiting the public.
zucker42 5y ago
> The original intent of the patent system was to give inventors a leg up to commercialize their idea before they can be bullied out of the market by large competitors. I disagree that this was originally or should be currently the sole goal of the patent system. The purpose of patents is "to promote the progress of useful arts". As in, the patent system should assist in making the invention useful, public, and widely available. The patent system should not exist to promote the individual interests of companies, though that might be a necessary side effect. Frankly, the idea that an invention should remain behind a paywall even though it is no longer being developed or commercialized does not seem like a good system to me. It seems like a system designed to protect the patent holder over the public.

by m-ee 5y ago

_0ffh 5y ago

>The original intent of the patent system was to give inventors a leg up to commercialize their idea before they can be bullied out of the market by large competitors Maybe, but I don't care at this point what the purported intent was. Reality is, it failed and made things much worse. The whole patent system, at this point, serves mainly as a barrier for small companies to enter the market. The best thing that could be done with it is to burn it to the ground.

Applejinx 5y ago
Given that in a global market system anyone contending with the patent system and its abusers, also has to contend with market competition from countries such as China which aren't interested in honoring the IP rules in the first place, I find it hard to argue with your conclusion. Looks like arbitrary rent-seeking and random intellectual piracy to me. A cover for barratry as an income stream.
- NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
  Imaginary Property is just a term ginned up by lawyers to parasitize actual productivity. It was invented by lawyers, for lawyers. Fuck IP and fuck lawyers.

mbreese 5y ago

>The original intent of the patent system was to give inventors a leg up to commercialize their idea before they can be bullied out of the market by large competitors. Almost... I think there is a subtle difference in what the intent was/is. The point of the patent system is to incentivize inventors to make their creations available to the public. The time-limited monopoly to their invention (the patent) is the incentive. But you need to make enough details public to get the patent so that someone else can also take advantage of the invention. This is the public benefit... eventually, the public has access to an invention. So, yes, the idea is to give companies a head start to commercialize an idea, but that's not the reason in and of itself. The reason is to make the invention available to the public, so that the public can benefit from the invention. And after a few years, it will be freely available. The limited monopoly is a financial incentive to keep the company working on the idea. Yes, it's a barrier to competitors, but it's also a potential reward for developing the idea. In your case, I think the system worked (and Bayh-Dole in general works). Even though the company ultimately failed, the company had an incentive to try and commercialize the invention. This could have benefited the public by having access to a product that didn't exist before. But, even if the company fails in the market, after a certain amount of time, the public still has the patented information. Really, the idea behind Bayh-Dole (which created these University-based IP systems) was to get inventions and data out of universities and into the public-domain. Otherwise, there would be billions in research that would be sitting on a shelf somewhere, or mentioned in a paper, but never used to benefit the public. Without that patent incentive, would your company ever have been formed? Would the research ever been commercialized? Likely not.

Isinlor 5y ago
The issue is that patents are designed to be as useless as possible at revealing anything and as broad as possible at claiming everything.
- mbreese 5y ago
  You won't get any arguments from me that the current system isn't broken. I personally believe that we'd get a lot farther if every claim on a patent had to be "reduced to practice", that is -- actually done. I think change alone this would help to get rid of trolls from the system. But I don't think it would be better if we didn't have patents at all. So many things are currently protected by trade secrets and not disclosed. Imagine if it were all kept secret... I don't think that would benefit the public interest. And that was the original goal -- benefiting the public.

zucker42 5y ago

> The original intent of the patent system was to give inventors a leg up to commercialize their idea before they can be bullied out of the market by large competitors. I disagree that this was originally or should be currently the sole goal of the patent system. The purpose of patents is "to promote the progress of useful arts". As in, the patent system should assist in making the invention useful, public, and widely available. The patent system should not exist to promote the individual interests of companies, though that might be a necessary side effect. Frankly, the idea that an invention should remain behind a paywall even though it is no longer being developed or commercialized does not seem like a good system to me. It seems like a system designed to protect the patent holder over the public.