6 ms·

Yeah, the question "do they kill innovation?" is too simplistic. They exist for a valid reason and they also have negative side effects. The current implement

by cptaj 5y ago

Yeah, the question "do they kill innovation?" is too simplistic. They exist for a valid reason and they also have negative side effects. The current implementation has a lot of systemic problems. The ones you mention, patent trolling and length of patents might be tuned in order to optimize innovation. I worry about our political system's ability to perform this tuning operation though. Political discourse seems incapable of tackling complex issues like this where there is no good/evil dichotomy, simply a productive balance to be found.

dantheman 5y ago
I think the case needs to be made that they're valid - If you look at the steam engine, progress only took off after the patents expired.
- staticassertion 5y ago
  The idea is pretty straightforward. "Little guy" invents something truly novel, investing major time into generating that invention. "Big guy" sees this after the fact, uses existing resources to steamroll little guy. Patents exist to prevent that.
  - ModernMech 5y ago
    Okay that's the idea, but do they do that today? It seems that today the more common story is: "big guy" patents everything under the sun before the fact and locks it away in a drawer, while "little guy" actually builds the thing and tries to sell it but gets crushed in the process. Or at least that's the one I hear told more often, maybe it really is the case that patents are promoting innovation. But we can't just assume it's working out like we thought it would.
    - kbenson 5y ago
      That's the story we hear often with software patents, but those are relatively new. There's a long history of patents for physical things which may be less obviously detrimental. FWIW, if I remember correctly, the reason we can even have software patents is because a hedge fund ended up trying to patent their process for categorizing or rating investments, and in their drive to patent a process as opposed to a mechanism, new law was decided. I'm being vague because I don't remember the details enough to be authoritative and don't have the time to look them up, but someone else might be prompted to. To me, I can see a benefit to physical and software patents both, but I think they have very different effects and should be handled differently. If software patents were genuinely harder to get because they had to actually be complex and novel, and also only lasted 5-10 years, I don't think we'd really have much of a problem. I don't know how to raise the bar on their complexity in a good way though.
  - dantheman 5y ago
    That's the theory, but it doesn't play out in reality and never really has.
- seoaeu 5y ago
  That isn't evidence that patents are bad. You also have to know the counterfactual of whether the steam engine would have been invented then if the creator wasn't going to be able to patent it
  - tobyjsullivan 5y ago
    And further, even if it had been invented five times over, would it have been known about by the right people had the patent not forced a public documentation of the design?
    - neltnerb 5y ago
      This is a good question to which we can never know the answer. Every time this discussion happens I can't help but think that the solution is to make patents much harder to get and/or last for a shorter time. Theoretically, without them a big company can just copy or reverse engineer your design and sell it for cheaper than you can make it. In practice, big companies just patent a bunch of vague stuff so that no matter how innovative what you come up with is it will somehow end up covered. I've seen this happen over and over. That makes it seem like we're far, far over some threshold where patents switch from protecting inventors to preventing inventors from doing much of anything.
- SonicScrub 5y ago
  That's the wrong metric to look at to asses the effectiveness of the patenting system. The justification for patents is that they facilitate innovation by granting a state-enforced monopoly for a limited window of time at the cost of publicly disclosing your innovation. Thereby creating incentive to pour R&D money into new ideas, and to share those ideas with the public. Under that mission, your example is proof of the effectiveness of patents, not the ineffectiveness. Innovation stagnating on steam engines, and then exploding after the patent expires is an example of this system working as intended.
  - dantheman 5y ago
    I'm saying that justification needs strong evidence and it's not there. Exploding after a patent expires is because the state has granted a monopoly to one person. The steam engine would have been invented without the patent protection. Look at innovation in software - it's not because of patents. Patents hamper innovation.
    - SonicScrub 5y ago
      I understand the point you are trying to make, I'm just pointing out that the example that you were using is actually one in favour of patents not against. I'm positive that the steam engine would have been invented with or without patents, but it's certainly possible that it's invention was accelerated by strong intellectual property protections. The vast majority of inventions are the product of profit-seeking endeavors, and patents help justify the immense capital required to invent. The idea of the lone inventor building something creating something purely for the joy of it is a romantic image, but not really how invention works (certainly not at scale). Also, the technological explosion of the steam engine was partly due to public disclosure of the invention's function as required to obtain a patent. No patenting system, no disclosure. And maybe it takes society longer to figure out how the machine actually works, thus delaying innovation. If the patenting process did not exist, perhaps the inventors go to measures to secure their intellectual property themselves by intentionally making the product's inner workings obscured. A world with no intellectual property protection is a world where everyone attempts to hide and obfuscate their innovations from the rest of society. This is not an environment where innovation thrives either. I'm certainly not trying to make the argument here that the patenting system is flawless or even good. Only that intellectual property protections of some kind or another are, and we shouldn't throw that baby out with the bathwater.
ModernMech 5y ago
> Yeah, the question "do they kill innovation?" is too simplistic... They exist for a valid reason But isn't that entire reason explicitly to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" aka innovation? Shouldn't we ask whether or not patents are doing the thing we want them to do?
- bluGill 5y ago
  Having a patent ensures that I have all the data I need to later improve or implement it. I've read books where the steam engine were encased in explosives so that it couldn't be reversed engineered thus ensuring the inventor had a monopoly on them (the book had a lot of other things to ensure the monopoly as well). A lawyer told me years ago never read patents: if you infringe and claim ignorance that is better than infringing and knowing. If we want to make patents useful, then we need to change this to ??? which ensures engineers keep up on the relevant patents in their field. I have ideas on what to change, but every one has serious flaws so I'm not going to state any - maybe you can do better.
  - the_only_law 5y ago
    > I've read books where the steam engine were encased in explosives so that it couldn't be reversed engineered Stop! You’ll give the HW companies ideas.
    - bluGill 5y ago
      If they try they will run into attempted murder issues.
  - a1369209993 5y ago
    > I've read books where the steam engine were encased in explosives so that it couldn't be reversed engineered thus ensuring the inventor had a monopoly on them That's not a argument for patents, that's a argument for felony prosecution of interference against reverse engineering.
    - 5y ago
strawhatguy 5y ago
Well, there’s plenty of evidence of how patents have delayed innovation until after said patent lapsed, like steam engines, e-ink displays mentioned elsewhere here. I would like to see any evidence of patents actually helping innovation increase. It should be plainly obvious that the negative side effects ARE actually the main effect. It’s one of the few things I think the US constitution completely whiffed on, by mentioning patents at all.
- robinsoh 5y ago
  > e-ink displays mentioned elsewhere here. where? not this one ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26143779 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26143779 ) I hope because I questioned it and I'm pretty sure it is false and written by someone who isn't actually even involved in the display industry. That particular post got cited by Boing Boing and multiple blogs and then subsequent HN posts started citing those blogs and Boing Boing. Basically a self-referential citation infinite loop. Please see my comment history. I work in the display industry and I'm not aware of what patent is blocking anything in developing electrophoretic displays.
  - strawhatguy 5y ago
    Okay, my mistake. if there’s no patent there, there’s no problem there. Kinda proves my point that the absence of patents allows innovation to grow, I have not seen any evidence to the contrary; it’s usually the “but what about the little guy” defense, not mentioning any “little guy” who was helped
    - robinsoh 5y ago
      I'm trying to understand what you're trying to communicate but I don't get it. Could you elaborate what you're trying to say because it sounds like you're claiming patents are bad (absence of patents = innovation growth) but we know that patents arose initially at least to protect inventors. Anyway we've gone well outside my initial question which was about which eink patent.
zepearl 5y ago
> The ones you mention, patent trolling and length of patents might be tuned in order to optimize innovation. Maybe there should be at least a differentiation between tech sectors for which the patent is applied (e.g. IT vs. agriculture vs. materials vs. <all the rest>) in relation to how long the patent would be valid? Having a patent in IT valid for XX years is in my opinion a lot more counterproductive than the same for other sectors. I could have tonight a great idea about software and implement&test&prove it within days but to do the same with new materials/crops/engines/whatever can take a lot more time/effort/resources => maybe IT patents should always have a shorter max life than the rest? At least the ones purely related to software.
mjevans 5y ago
In addition to the DURATION and 'USE' (in an actively produced or utilized real world example): (PS: these should also apply to copyright) A maximum license fee and/or scheme. Lesser values might be negotiable. A fixed rate always paid to the government per licensee. Short initial duration, renewal requires exponentially higher fees.

by cptaj 5y ago

dantheman 5y ago

I think the case needs to be made that they're valid - If you look at the steam engine, progress only took off after the patents expired.

staticassertion 5y ago
The idea is pretty straightforward. "Little guy" invents something truly novel, investing major time into generating that invention. "Big guy" sees this after the fact, uses existing resources to steamroll little guy. Patents exist to prevent that.
- ModernMech 5y ago
  Okay that's the idea, but do they do that today? It seems that today the more common story is: "big guy" patents everything under the sun before the fact and locks it away in a drawer, while "little guy" actually builds the thing and tries to sell it but gets crushed in the process. Or at least that's the one I hear told more often, maybe it really is the case that patents are promoting innovation. But we can't just assume it's working out like we thought it would.
  - kbenson 5y ago
    That's the story we hear often with software patents, but those are relatively new. There's a long history of patents for physical things which may be less obviously detrimental. FWIW, if I remember correctly, the reason we can even have software patents is because a hedge fund ended up trying to patent their process for categorizing or rating investments, and in their drive to patent a process as opposed to a mechanism, new law was decided. I'm being vague because I don't remember the details enough to be authoritative and don't have the time to look them up, but someone else might be prompted to. To me, I can see a benefit to physical and software patents both, but I think they have very different effects and should be handled differently. If software patents were genuinely harder to get because they had to actually be complex and novel, and also only lasted 5-10 years, I don't think we'd really have much of a problem. I don't know how to raise the bar on their complexity in a good way though.
- dantheman 5y ago
  That's the theory, but it doesn't play out in reality and never really has.
seoaeu 5y ago
That isn't evidence that patents are bad. You also have to know the counterfactual of whether the steam engine would have been invented then if the creator wasn't going to be able to patent it
- tobyjsullivan 5y ago
  And further, even if it had been invented five times over, would it have been known about by the right people had the patent not forced a public documentation of the design?
  - neltnerb 5y ago
    This is a good question to which we can never know the answer. Every time this discussion happens I can't help but think that the solution is to make patents much harder to get and/or last for a shorter time. Theoretically, without them a big company can just copy or reverse engineer your design and sell it for cheaper than you can make it. In practice, big companies just patent a bunch of vague stuff so that no matter how innovative what you come up with is it will somehow end up covered. I've seen this happen over and over. That makes it seem like we're far, far over some threshold where patents switch from protecting inventors to preventing inventors from doing much of anything.
SonicScrub 5y ago
That's the wrong metric to look at to asses the effectiveness of the patenting system. The justification for patents is that they facilitate innovation by granting a state-enforced monopoly for a limited window of time at the cost of publicly disclosing your innovation. Thereby creating incentive to pour R&D money into new ideas, and to share those ideas with the public. Under that mission, your example is proof of the effectiveness of patents, not the ineffectiveness. Innovation stagnating on steam engines, and then exploding after the patent expires is an example of this system working as intended.
- dantheman 5y ago
  I'm saying that justification needs strong evidence and it's not there. Exploding after a patent expires is because the state has granted a monopoly to one person. The steam engine would have been invented without the patent protection. Look at innovation in software - it's not because of patents. Patents hamper innovation.
  - SonicScrub 5y ago
    I understand the point you are trying to make, I'm just pointing out that the example that you were using is actually one in favour of patents not against. I'm positive that the steam engine would have been invented with or without patents, but it's certainly possible that it's invention was accelerated by strong intellectual property protections. The vast majority of inventions are the product of profit-seeking endeavors, and patents help justify the immense capital required to invent. The idea of the lone inventor building something creating something purely for the joy of it is a romantic image, but not really how invention works (certainly not at scale). Also, the technological explosion of the steam engine was partly due to public disclosure of the invention's function as required to obtain a patent. No patenting system, no disclosure. And maybe it takes society longer to figure out how the machine actually works, thus delaying innovation. If the patenting process did not exist, perhaps the inventors go to measures to secure their intellectual property themselves by intentionally making the product's inner workings obscured. A world with no intellectual property protection is a world where everyone attempts to hide and obfuscate their innovations from the rest of society. This is not an environment where innovation thrives either. I'm certainly not trying to make the argument here that the patenting system is flawless or even good. Only that intellectual property protections of some kind or another are, and we shouldn't throw that baby out with the bathwater.

ModernMech 5y ago

> Yeah, the question "do they kill innovation?" is too simplistic... They exist for a valid reason But isn't that entire reason explicitly to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" aka innovation? Shouldn't we ask whether or not patents are doing the thing we want them to do?

bluGill 5y ago
Having a patent ensures that I have all the data I need to later improve or implement it. I've read books where the steam engine were encased in explosives so that it couldn't be reversed engineered thus ensuring the inventor had a monopoly on them (the book had a lot of other things to ensure the monopoly as well). A lawyer told me years ago never read patents: if you infringe and claim ignorance that is better than infringing and knowing. If we want to make patents useful, then we need to change this to ??? which ensures engineers keep up on the relevant patents in their field. I have ideas on what to change, but every one has serious flaws so I'm not going to state any - maybe you can do better.
- the_only_law 5y ago
  > I've read books where the steam engine were encased in explosives so that it couldn't be reversed engineered Stop! You’ll give the HW companies ideas.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    If they try they will run into attempted murder issues.
- a1369209993 5y ago
  > I've read books where the steam engine were encased in explosives so that it couldn't be reversed engineered thus ensuring the inventor had a monopoly on them That's not a argument for patents, that's a argument for felony prosecution of interference against reverse engineering.
  - 5y ago

strawhatguy 5y ago

Well, there’s plenty of evidence of how patents have delayed innovation until after said patent lapsed, like steam engines, e-ink displays mentioned elsewhere here. I would like to see any evidence of patents actually helping innovation increase. It should be plainly obvious that the negative side effects ARE actually the main effect. It’s one of the few things I think the US constitution completely whiffed on, by mentioning patents at all.

robinsoh 5y ago
> e-ink displays mentioned elsewhere here. where? not this one ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26143779 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26143779 ) I hope because I questioned it and I'm pretty sure it is false and written by someone who isn't actually even involved in the display industry. That particular post got cited by Boing Boing and multiple blogs and then subsequent HN posts started citing those blogs and Boing Boing. Basically a self-referential citation infinite loop. Please see my comment history. I work in the display industry and I'm not aware of what patent is blocking anything in developing electrophoretic displays.
- strawhatguy 5y ago
  Okay, my mistake. if there’s no patent there, there’s no problem there. Kinda proves my point that the absence of patents allows innovation to grow, I have not seen any evidence to the contrary; it’s usually the “but what about the little guy” defense, not mentioning any “little guy” who was helped
  - robinsoh 5y ago
    I'm trying to understand what you're trying to communicate but I don't get it. Could you elaborate what you're trying to say because it sounds like you're claiming patents are bad (absence of patents = innovation growth) but we know that patents arose initially at least to protect inventors. Anyway we've gone well outside my initial question which was about which eink patent.

zepearl 5y ago

> The ones you mention, patent trolling and length of patents might be tuned in order to optimize innovation. Maybe there should be at least a differentiation between tech sectors for which the patent is applied (e.g. IT vs. agriculture vs. materials vs. <all the rest>) in relation to how long the patent would be valid? Having a patent in IT valid for XX years is in my opinion a lot more counterproductive than the same for other sectors. I could have tonight a great idea about software and implement&test&prove it within days but to do the same with new materials/crops/engines/whatever can take a lot more time/effort/resources => maybe IT patents should always have a shorter max life than the rest? At least the ones purely related to software.

mjevans 5y ago

In addition to the DURATION and 'USE' (in an actively produced or utilized real world example): (PS: these should also apply to copyright) A maximum license fee and/or scheme. Lesser values might be negotiable. A fixed rate always paid to the government per licensee. Short initial duration, renewal requires exponentially higher fees.