4 ms·

Too late for you to hold up the train of progress, a patent was already filed. /s

by oezi 5y ago

TeMPOraL 5y ago
You being the operative word, as in 21st century, patents are the definition of holding up progress.
- verdverm 5y ago
  That can be true, and so is the idea that if you could not reap the rewards of your inventions, you wouldn't invest the effort because it could only be a cost sink. It's more nuanced and contextual than that. That said, the patent / trademark (probably any similar system) has up and down sides
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    That's why I said "in the 21st century". As far as I studied this, patents are a really solid idea in theory, and perhaps they even worked as advertised at some point in the past. But the way they work today, they're thoroughly gamed - patent owners get the benefits, the society doesn't get its promised returns. But I agree, it's a pretty nuanced topic.
    - verdverm 5y ago
      The idea of having time and protection to recoup your investment still applies today. Being "in the 21st century" doesn't remove this trade-off nor imply that progress is held up because of patents. It could be that progress suffers more without patents. Humanity and society works better with incentives and freedom of preferences
      - TeMPOraL 5y ago
        I'm not questioning the idea of temporary monopoly to allow recouping investment. The idea is prima facie good. But patents aren't just legally enforced dibs; the protection is granted in exchange for giving the invention to the public. This is where the patent system doesn't live up to its obligations in practice. There's a bunch of problems that, together, make the whole greater (i.e. worse) than the sum of its parts: - In many industries, but especially in everything involving computers, patent protection is too long - so long that the invention is likely to become useless before the patent expires. Technologies develop in lock step, riff of each other. If you lock down a crucial invention, you're also locking out a whole branch of R&D that may forever remain not explored[0]. - Patents are supposed to contain enough details in them that experts in a relevant field should be able to recreate the invention from the patent text. This is not what happens, we (the public) are being cheated here. The interesting patents are more like invention hashes - they contain just enough data to identify when someone is in the vicinity of invention, but not enough data to reproduce the invention itself. - Patents are routinely awarded for things that do not have an inventive step (i.e. they aren't non-obvious). I'm willing to give some benefit of the doubt here, because ideas tend to look more obvious in hindsight, but I think we've all seen or heard examples of ridiculously obvious patents. - Patents take too long to grant. The process between inventing something and getting it patented can take 2+ years - in that time, the patented invention may be well on its way to becoming obsolete (see point 1). This encourages shotgun patenting. - Patents do not come with an obligation to actually productize an invention. Companies can, and do, patent inventions they have no interest in productizing, with the sole purpose of preventing competitors from exploring some technology or product space. This is as pure slowdown of progress as you can get. I could go on. The point is, the ideas behind a patent system aren't bad - but the implementation decayed to the point of being just another rent seeking system parasitizing society. -- [0] - It's something plainly visible in software, but perhaps software is a special case, due to existence of FLOSS. Maybe, if all software was proprietary, patents would only slow down progress. With FLOSS, nobody is waiting for patents to expire - eventually, someone will find a patent unencumbered alternative, release it for free, and the world ends up adopting that. And then ends up stuck with it, due to sheer momentum. So if that patent locked out the optimal solution to a problem, it's possible we'll never use it, because too much stuff uses the suboptimal, FLOSS version.
        verdverm 5y ago
        Yes, there are problems with the patent administration and enforcement, but in general they have a role to play in incentivizing. Saying it is only bad (rent seeking and parasitizing) is an oversimplification and exaggeration. Could the case be made that certain FLOSS licenses (i.e GPL3) hold up progress by limiting how people can build on said software or deliver it to their customers / users? Or does the elasticsearch relicense in some way resemble a self-issued "patent" where they only enforce their rights against certain entities? (much like a patent holder has the task of enforcing their own IP and can pick and choose) And perhaps forcing you into choosing between buying their product or using a suboptimal free version?

Too late for you to hold up the train of progress, a patent was already filed. /s

by oezi 5y ago

Too late for you to hold up the train of progress, a patent was already filed. /s

TeMPOraL 5y ago

You being the operative word, as in 21st century, patents are the definition of holding up progress.

verdverm 5y ago
That can be true, and so is the idea that if you could not reap the rewards of your inventions, you wouldn't invest the effort because it could only be a cost sink. It's more nuanced and contextual than that. That said, the patent / trademark (probably any similar system) has up and down sides
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  That's why I said "in the 21st century". As far as I studied this, patents are a really solid idea in theory, and perhaps they even worked as advertised at some point in the past. But the way they work today, they're thoroughly gamed - patent owners get the benefits, the society doesn't get its promised returns. But I agree, it's a pretty nuanced topic.
  - verdverm 5y ago
    The idea of having time and protection to recoup your investment still applies today. Being "in the 21st century" doesn't remove this trade-off nor imply that progress is held up because of patents. It could be that progress suffers more without patents. Humanity and society works better with incentives and freedom of preferences
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      I'm not questioning the idea of temporary monopoly to allow recouping investment. The idea is prima facie good. But patents aren't just legally enforced dibs; the protection is granted in exchange for giving the invention to the public. This is where the patent system doesn't live up to its obligations in practice. There's a bunch of problems that, together, make the whole greater (i.e. worse) than the sum of its parts: - In many industries, but especially in everything involving computers, patent protection is too long - so long that the invention is likely to become useless before the patent expires. Technologies develop in lock step, riff of each other. If you lock down a crucial invention, you're also locking out a whole branch of R&D that may forever remain not explored[0]. - Patents are supposed to contain enough details in them that experts in a relevant field should be able to recreate the invention from the patent text. This is not what happens, we (the public) are being cheated here. The interesting patents are more like invention hashes - they contain just enough data to identify when someone is in the vicinity of invention, but not enough data to reproduce the invention itself. - Patents are routinely awarded for things that do not have an inventive step (i.e. they aren't non-obvious). I'm willing to give some benefit of the doubt here, because ideas tend to look more obvious in hindsight, but I think we've all seen or heard examples of ridiculously obvious patents. - Patents take too long to grant. The process between inventing something and getting it patented can take 2+ years - in that time, the patented invention may be well on its way to becoming obsolete (see point 1). This encourages shotgun patenting. - Patents do not come with an obligation to actually productize an invention. Companies can, and do, patent inventions they have no interest in productizing, with the sole purpose of preventing competitors from exploring some technology or product space. This is as pure slowdown of progress as you can get. I could go on. The point is, the ideas behind a patent system aren't bad - but the implementation decayed to the point of being just another rent seeking system parasitizing society. -- [0] - It's something plainly visible in software, but perhaps software is a special case, due to existence of FLOSS. Maybe, if all software was proprietary, patents would only slow down progress. With FLOSS, nobody is waiting for patents to expire - eventually, someone will find a patent unencumbered alternative, release it for free, and the world ends up adopting that. And then ends up stuck with it, due to sheer momentum. So if that patent locked out the optimal solution to a problem, it's possible we'll never use it, because too much stuff uses the suboptimal, FLOSS version.
      - verdverm 5y ago
        Yes, there are problems with the patent administration and enforcement, but in general they have a role to play in incentivizing. Saying it is only bad (rent seeking and parasitizing) is an oversimplification and exaggeration. Could the case be made that certain FLOSS licenses (i.e GPL3) hold up progress by limiting how people can build on said software or deliver it to their customers / users? Or does the elasticsearch relicense in some way resemble a self-issued "patent" where they only enforce their rights against certain entities? (much like a patent holder has the task of enforcing their own IP and can pick and choose) And perhaps forcing you into choosing between buying their product or using a suboptimal free version?