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> IP has always rubbed me as preoccupied with protecting a past instead of forging a future. Honestly, I think that must because you're using "IP" in a kind of

> IP has always rubbed me as preoccupied with protecting a past instead of forging a future. Honestly, I think that must because you're using "IP" in a kind of vague way. I think it's important to distinguish: 1) more traditional IP regimes, that were designed to incentivize the creation of new things by protecting the people who made the initial effort to bring them into being, and... 2) ...more modern IP regimes, that have been twisted and perverted by powerful entities to protect their ability to milk old work for more profit. You can support #1 without supporting #2, and abolishing #1 to get rid of #2 would (in many, many cases) just lead to the return of old abuses (e.g. why should a publisher pay an author anything when they could just copy their book without paying).

infogulch 5y ago
Where is the line between 1 & 2? And how can it be re-drawn in a way that prevents it from simply being eroded again?
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > Where is the line between 1 & 2? And how can it be re-drawn in a way that prevents it from simply being eroded again? It's not a bright line, but more of a gradient with some difficult corner cases and tradeoffs. However, the extremes are pretty clear. > And how can it be re-drawn in a way that prevents it from simply being eroded again? It can't. The best anyone can do is be vigilant.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  I believe with shortening them to eg. 1 year or two. You still have enough time to break into the market, to establish your position, on the other hand it stops the patenting of "useless" crap (eg, page-down moving one full page (and not screen) down), because patents cost money, and if your invention isn't something revolutionary, it's not worth patenting it for such a short timeframe.
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > I believe with shortening them to eg. 1 year or two. You still have enough time to break into the market, to establish your position I don't think that's enough time to do either of those things, even in the most wildly optimistic circumstances. Honestly a patent term probably should be at least 10 years for an actual invention, but they need to tighten up rules about what an invention actually is. The place where IP has really gone off the rails is copyright.
    - infogulch 5y ago
      I guess just resetting copyright back to 20 years and patents to 10 would be a huge benefit. Maybe give software patents 5 years.

infogulch 5y ago

Where is the line between 1 & 2? And how can it be re-drawn in a way that prevents it from simply being eroded again?

tablespoon 5y ago
> Where is the line between 1 & 2? And how can it be re-drawn in a way that prevents it from simply being eroded again? It's not a bright line, but more of a gradient with some difficult corner cases and tradeoffs. However, the extremes are pretty clear. > And how can it be re-drawn in a way that prevents it from simply being eroded again? It can't. The best anyone can do is be vigilant.
ajsnigrutin 5y ago
I believe with shortening them to eg. 1 year or two. You still have enough time to break into the market, to establish your position, on the other hand it stops the patenting of "useless" crap (eg, page-down moving one full page (and not screen) down), because patents cost money, and if your invention isn't something revolutionary, it's not worth patenting it for such a short timeframe.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > I believe with shortening them to eg. 1 year or two. You still have enough time to break into the market, to establish your position I don't think that's enough time to do either of those things, even in the most wildly optimistic circumstances. Honestly a patent term probably should be at least 10 years for an actual invention, but they need to tighten up rules about what an invention actually is. The place where IP has really gone off the rails is copyright.
  - infogulch 5y ago
    I guess just resetting copyright back to 20 years and patents to 10 would be a huge benefit. Maybe give software patents 5 years.