5 ms·

The same principle applies to patents. Ideas are worthless, but execution is everything. Patents prevent other people from executing on an idea, meaning you are

The same principle applies to patents. Ideas are worthless, but execution is everything. Patents prevent other people from executing on an idea, meaning you are stuck with an obnoxious patent troll controlling the idea forever. We need to abolish patents.

gwright 5y ago
false dichotomy
wizzwizz4 5y ago
> Patents prevent other people from executing on an idea, meaning you are stuck with an obnoxious patent troll controlling the idea forever. Better than an obnoxious oligarch controlling all ideas forever, which could happen if you completely abolish patents. Do you have any more nuanced (i.e. realistic) suggestions for reform?
- flavius29663 5y ago
  Serious question: how would an oligarch control anything in a patent-less world? I mean, you just have an idea for a SQL Server, you just go ahead and do it, how does the oligarch stop you exactly?
  - nxrabl 5y ago
    I think your example is interesting because it shows just how much we’ve all been spoiled by software. If you have a great idea for a piece of software, you can code it up on your own or in a small team for more-or-less ‘free’, minus time and opportunity costs. As soon as your idea has a physical component, though, you have to start worrying about manufacturing and logistics and materials and personnel and space, all of which are costly and time-consuming and finite. What if your idea requires negotiating for land rights to build infrastructure? What if you need to build an assembly line to manufacture your product at scale? If you’re competing against a counterparty with effectively infinite money, you might need all of the lead time a patent gives you to level the playing field.
    - kiba 5y ago
      As opposed to a corporation with effectively infinite money preventing the development of 3D printing as an industry and a hobby because they sat on their patents until it expired?
    - flavius29663 5y ago
      I don't see how this is different today. If you're a small guy with a patent trying to bring to market a physical product before a giant...good luck with that. I can think of several examples where a large company stuns the development of a technology just because they can (3D printing, LCD monitors, electric cars, e-ink). Can you give me some examples from today where a startup used the patents as a sufficient moat to get to success? There are many successful startups, I am referring to specifically some that were protected by patents. Even if you do, the second you do it and it sells, it gets copied in China faster that you can say IP.
      - robinsoh 5y ago
        > examples where a large company stuns the development of a technology just because they can (3D printing, LCD monitors, electric cars, e-ink). I work in the display industry. I've never heard that e-ink "stuns" the development of technology. Could you elaborate on your meaning? Please see my comment history to see why I keep asking about this.
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    > Serious question: how would an oligarch control anything in a patent-less world? I mean, you just have an idea for a SQL Server, you just go ahead and do it Network effects and the ability to spend 100x what you can raise to destroy you as an example to others or just to duplicate it. I mean, great, you have a new SQL Server. I'll even grant that it's 1,000x better/faster/etc than the current SQL because you sprinkled fairy dust everywhere. How are you going to roll it out to customers before Oracle/Amazon/MS/Google reverse engineer it and deploy it to all their existing customers? At least with IP, there is a bidding war among those companies to buy out your tech - you'll probably get paid. And a limited period of ownership before the world gets the benefit universally.
- fighterpilot 5y ago
  Patent duration of 3 years instead of 20. Long head start on execution but removing the ability for patent trolls to sit on them for decades.
flavius29663 5y ago
I think the patents might have had a good role sometimes in the past, when small people could protect themselves from the big guys. Or protect small guys stealing each other's work. These days, the big guys can just trample over small ones, and use the list of patents they have as a counter-sue threat against other big guys. Small guys are constantly threatened by big guys with patent lawsuits, they can't really dream about enforcing a patent a large guy. Even if they have the perfect patent they just get bought up for it. And now the patent is part of that big list mentioned above, where it can be used for development or just sit in a drawer and have the project killed just so that competition can't use it. Say you manage to fix this, but then you go to China and they will copy everything you do and sell an exact replica the next day with impunity. There is no win, I don't see any benefit of patents in the western world today, they're only used to slow technological progress - the exact opposite of the intent. What am I missing here? This is a very shallow take with my little knowledge, but I just don't see the benefits of patents.
- kiba 5y ago
  I think the patents might have had a good role sometimes in the past, when small people could protect themselves from the big guys. Or protect small guys stealing each other's work. OK. Has this ever been true? I remembered a story about the Wright brothers suing competitors and engaging in a patent war, instead of spending their time and energy continuing to innovate. Say you manage to fix this, but then you go to China and they will copy everything you do and sell an exact replica the next day with impunity. Is this necessarily a bad thing? These Chinese firms made open source 3D printers more accessible to the hobbyist communities, and some of them are even known for quality. Granted, some of them cut corners so much that a burning 3d printer became a meme. 3D printing as a hobby only becomes a thing once the patent expired. I am sympathetic to the idea of the small inventor trying to make it in the world. But people, big and small, corporations and individuals, can and did abuse patents, even innovators.
  - bmn__ 5y ago
    > Is this necessarily a bad thing? It pains me that I have to explain this to adults on HN, but: yes, this is bad. The foreign investor/customer paid dearly with time and money for the research and development. The factory runs an additional night shift and makes another batch of product. They then sell the night shift products at a reduced price undercutting the original vendor because they do not have to recoup the development costs. The vendor with the higher price cannot sell his stock of product because the demand is already satisfied from the cheaper night shift product.
justin_oaks 5y ago
... or only grant patents if the inventor has a fully functional prototype of their idea.
- Tom4hawk 5y ago
  It works like that in many countries...
- analog31 5y ago
  I'm not a patent lawyer... In principle, a patent is supposed to cover this. The text of the patent has to provide a recipe for reducing the idea to practice. As I understand it, if the recipe is unworkable, the patent is void. Whether the patent office is stringent enough about this requirement is an open question of course. It may vary from one field to another. For instance, a patent for a new kind of optical lens is required to include a complete "prescription" for the lens, which is recognized as a sufficient set of data needed to replicate the idea. (One of my patents is like that).
hansvm 5y ago
IMO we'd be better off without intellectual property at all, but it's probably worth pointing out that weaker measures can accomplish a similar goal. If independent invention were a valid defense and the terms were a bit shorter then the only patents which would actually affect your business would be those which you legitimately couldn't come up with on your own (which seems like the point of the whole system -- you get a monopoly and we get blueprints in return). Shorter terms of 5-10 yrs would allow for faster iteration on important ideas. Alternatively, compulsory license agreements like you have for some aspects of music could substantially reduce the chilling effect on new inventions. You don't have to worry about somebody suing for multiples of revenue; you just always have the ability to pay a reasonable royalty -- the patent owner still gets handsomely compensated, but important new inventions can start rolling out immediately. Or else if the bar to get patents were a little higher then the system would work a lot more smoothly. The fact that cloudflare was able to invalidate the vast majority of patents when a troll sued them strongly indicates they shouldn't have been awarded in the first place even under current guidelines.
- antihero 5y ago
  > we'd be better off without intellectual property at all So there's absolutely nothing at all to prevent a situation where you put time and money into developing something, and as soon as it gets legs, a megacorp instead of buying you out or licensing it from you, just copies it and pushes you out of the market?
  - kiba 5y ago
    There's also nothing preventing a megacorporation from preemptively inventing and patenting everything under the sun. They also have infinite money to fight patent lawsuits. Moreover, these patent lawsuits mean that said inventors spend more time talking to their lawyers instead of getting these inventions to market.
  - hansvm 5y ago
    Is that worse than the current situation where you accidentally infringe on a dozen patents from the megacorp's warchest and get sued to oblivion if you don't quietly agree to their favorite terms? Is that worse than all the innovation being stifled by agreements requiring work on your own time and dime to belong to your employer? Are first-mover advantages and other sources of natural monopolies not really that important in building your moat? Is intellectual property the right mechanism for limiting megacorp power? I'm open to the idea of some intellectual property rights remaining (like the "natural rights" you see in a lot of the world, or retaining current trade secret laws), but I still think we'd be in a better place than we are now if the current system were completely abolished.
didgeoridoo 5y ago
Forever? Patents have a 20-year lifespan and require you to disclose your methodology, allowing others to copy your idea as soon as your exclusivity period is up. In a world without patents, small inventors would have their ideas stolen immediately by corporations that have the resources to build and sell the invention.
- kiba 5y ago
  Forever? Patents have a 20-year lifespan and require you to disclose your methodology, allowing others to copy your idea as soon as your exclusivity period is up. In a world without patents, small inventors would have their ideas stolen immediately by corporations that have the resources to build and sell the invention. The big corporations have the resources to build and sell the invention and defend against a patent lawsuit regardless. Moreover, the big corporations already can use patents against smaller competitors and can fund more R&D to get patents and can simply sit on it. Also, it isn't always a good idea to disclose how your stuff work. For example, SpaceX doesn't do that because the Chinese government will copy their stuff. Not that it matters. The problem with the space industry is that the old space contractors and governments rest on their laurel even when SpaceX became the Goliath of the Space industry.
- voakbasda 5y ago
  That theft happens now. Small fish cannot compete with big fish without risking getting eaten alive. You think one pathetic patent would stand up against a FAANG’s warchest, if they really wanted to implement it? They will use your idea and bury you with their own patent portfolio, unless you license it under terms that are generous and favorable to their interests. If you want to play hardball, they will use their lawyers to drown you in legal debt before a judge ever hears the case. In this light, it should be clear that innovation has been completely crushed under the heel of the present system of fascist corporatism. Eliminating patents will not solve that overarching problem, though we know such an outcome would never be permitted to happen. Patent pools do not solve it, as that sacrifices the autonomy and independence that is the very essence of being a small fish.
  - 5y ago

gwright 5y ago

false dichotomy

wizzwizz4 5y ago

> Patents prevent other people from executing on an idea, meaning you are stuck with an obnoxious patent troll controlling the idea forever. Better than an obnoxious oligarch controlling all ideas forever, which could happen if you completely abolish patents. Do you have any more nuanced (i.e. realistic) suggestions for reform?

flavius29663 5y ago
Serious question: how would an oligarch control anything in a patent-less world? I mean, you just have an idea for a SQL Server, you just go ahead and do it, how does the oligarch stop you exactly?
- nxrabl 5y ago
  I think your example is interesting because it shows just how much we’ve all been spoiled by software. If you have a great idea for a piece of software, you can code it up on your own or in a small team for more-or-less ‘free’, minus time and opportunity costs. As soon as your idea has a physical component, though, you have to start worrying about manufacturing and logistics and materials and personnel and space, all of which are costly and time-consuming and finite. What if your idea requires negotiating for land rights to build infrastructure? What if you need to build an assembly line to manufacture your product at scale? If you’re competing against a counterparty with effectively infinite money, you might need all of the lead time a patent gives you to level the playing field.
  - kiba 5y ago
    As opposed to a corporation with effectively infinite money preventing the development of 3D printing as an industry and a hobby because they sat on their patents until it expired?
  - flavius29663 5y ago
    I don't see how this is different today. If you're a small guy with a patent trying to bring to market a physical product before a giant...good luck with that. I can think of several examples where a large company stuns the development of a technology just because they can (3D printing, LCD monitors, electric cars, e-ink). Can you give me some examples from today where a startup used the patents as a sufficient moat to get to success? There are many successful startups, I am referring to specifically some that were protected by patents. Even if you do, the second you do it and it sells, it gets copied in China faster that you can say IP.
    - robinsoh 5y ago
      > examples where a large company stuns the development of a technology just because they can (3D printing, LCD monitors, electric cars, e-ink). I work in the display industry. I've never heard that e-ink "stuns" the development of technology. Could you elaborate on your meaning? Please see my comment history to see why I keep asking about this.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  > Serious question: how would an oligarch control anything in a patent-less world? I mean, you just have an idea for a SQL Server, you just go ahead and do it Network effects and the ability to spend 100x what you can raise to destroy you as an example to others or just to duplicate it. I mean, great, you have a new SQL Server. I'll even grant that it's 1,000x better/faster/etc than the current SQL because you sprinkled fairy dust everywhere. How are you going to roll it out to customers before Oracle/Amazon/MS/Google reverse engineer it and deploy it to all their existing customers? At least with IP, there is a bidding war among those companies to buy out your tech - you'll probably get paid. And a limited period of ownership before the world gets the benefit universally.
fighterpilot 5y ago
Patent duration of 3 years instead of 20. Long head start on execution but removing the ability for patent trolls to sit on them for decades.

flavius29663 5y ago

I think the patents might have had a good role sometimes in the past, when small people could protect themselves from the big guys. Or protect small guys stealing each other's work. These days, the big guys can just trample over small ones, and use the list of patents they have as a counter-sue threat against other big guys. Small guys are constantly threatened by big guys with patent lawsuits, they can't really dream about enforcing a patent a large guy. Even if they have the perfect patent they just get bought up for it. And now the patent is part of that big list mentioned above, where it can be used for development or just sit in a drawer and have the project killed just so that competition can't use it. Say you manage to fix this, but then you go to China and they will copy everything you do and sell an exact replica the next day with impunity. There is no win, I don't see any benefit of patents in the western world today, they're only used to slow technological progress - the exact opposite of the intent. What am I missing here? This is a very shallow take with my little knowledge, but I just don't see the benefits of patents.

kiba 5y ago
I think the patents might have had a good role sometimes in the past, when small people could protect themselves from the big guys. Or protect small guys stealing each other's work. OK. Has this ever been true? I remembered a story about the Wright brothers suing competitors and engaging in a patent war, instead of spending their time and energy continuing to innovate. Say you manage to fix this, but then you go to China and they will copy everything you do and sell an exact replica the next day with impunity. Is this necessarily a bad thing? These Chinese firms made open source 3D printers more accessible to the hobbyist communities, and some of them are even known for quality. Granted, some of them cut corners so much that a burning 3d printer became a meme. 3D printing as a hobby only becomes a thing once the patent expired. I am sympathetic to the idea of the small inventor trying to make it in the world. But people, big and small, corporations and individuals, can and did abuse patents, even innovators.
- bmn__ 5y ago
  > Is this necessarily a bad thing? It pains me that I have to explain this to adults on HN, but: yes, this is bad. The foreign investor/customer paid dearly with time and money for the research and development. The factory runs an additional night shift and makes another batch of product. They then sell the night shift products at a reduced price undercutting the original vendor because they do not have to recoup the development costs. The vendor with the higher price cannot sell his stock of product because the demand is already satisfied from the cheaper night shift product.

justin_oaks 5y ago

... or only grant patents if the inventor has a fully functional prototype of their idea.

Tom4hawk 5y ago
It works like that in many countries...
analog31 5y ago
I'm not a patent lawyer... In principle, a patent is supposed to cover this. The text of the patent has to provide a recipe for reducing the idea to practice. As I understand it, if the recipe is unworkable, the patent is void. Whether the patent office is stringent enough about this requirement is an open question of course. It may vary from one field to another. For instance, a patent for a new kind of optical lens is required to include a complete "prescription" for the lens, which is recognized as a sufficient set of data needed to replicate the idea. (One of my patents is like that).

hansvm 5y ago

IMO we'd be better off without intellectual property at all, but it's probably worth pointing out that weaker measures can accomplish a similar goal. If independent invention were a valid defense and the terms were a bit shorter then the only patents which would actually affect your business would be those which you legitimately couldn't come up with on your own (which seems like the point of the whole system -- you get a monopoly and we get blueprints in return). Shorter terms of 5-10 yrs would allow for faster iteration on important ideas. Alternatively, compulsory license agreements like you have for some aspects of music could substantially reduce the chilling effect on new inventions. You don't have to worry about somebody suing for multiples of revenue; you just always have the ability to pay a reasonable royalty -- the patent owner still gets handsomely compensated, but important new inventions can start rolling out immediately. Or else if the bar to get patents were a little higher then the system would work a lot more smoothly. The fact that cloudflare was able to invalidate the vast majority of patents when a troll sued them strongly indicates they shouldn't have been awarded in the first place even under current guidelines.

antihero 5y ago
> we'd be better off without intellectual property at all So there's absolutely nothing at all to prevent a situation where you put time and money into developing something, and as soon as it gets legs, a megacorp instead of buying you out or licensing it from you, just copies it and pushes you out of the market?
- kiba 5y ago
  There's also nothing preventing a megacorporation from preemptively inventing and patenting everything under the sun. They also have infinite money to fight patent lawsuits. Moreover, these patent lawsuits mean that said inventors spend more time talking to their lawyers instead of getting these inventions to market.
- hansvm 5y ago
  Is that worse than the current situation where you accidentally infringe on a dozen patents from the megacorp's warchest and get sued to oblivion if you don't quietly agree to their favorite terms? Is that worse than all the innovation being stifled by agreements requiring work on your own time and dime to belong to your employer? Are first-mover advantages and other sources of natural monopolies not really that important in building your moat? Is intellectual property the right mechanism for limiting megacorp power? I'm open to the idea of some intellectual property rights remaining (like the "natural rights" you see in a lot of the world, or retaining current trade secret laws), but I still think we'd be in a better place than we are now if the current system were completely abolished.

didgeoridoo 5y ago

Forever? Patents have a 20-year lifespan and require you to disclose your methodology, allowing others to copy your idea as soon as your exclusivity period is up. In a world without patents, small inventors would have their ideas stolen immediately by corporations that have the resources to build and sell the invention.

kiba 5y ago
Forever? Patents have a 20-year lifespan and require you to disclose your methodology, allowing others to copy your idea as soon as your exclusivity period is up. In a world without patents, small inventors would have their ideas stolen immediately by corporations that have the resources to build and sell the invention. The big corporations have the resources to build and sell the invention and defend against a patent lawsuit regardless. Moreover, the big corporations already can use patents against smaller competitors and can fund more R&D to get patents and can simply sit on it. Also, it isn't always a good idea to disclose how your stuff work. For example, SpaceX doesn't do that because the Chinese government will copy their stuff. Not that it matters. The problem with the space industry is that the old space contractors and governments rest on their laurel even when SpaceX became the Goliath of the Space industry.
voakbasda 5y ago
That theft happens now. Small fish cannot compete with big fish without risking getting eaten alive. You think one pathetic patent would stand up against a FAANG’s warchest, if they really wanted to implement it? They will use your idea and bury you with their own patent portfolio, unless you license it under terms that are generous and favorable to their interests. If you want to play hardball, they will use their lawyers to drown you in legal debt before a judge ever hears the case. In this light, it should be clear that innovation has been completely crushed under the heel of the present system of fascist corporatism. Eliminating patents will not solve that overarching problem, though we know such an outcome would never be permitted to happen. Patent pools do not solve it, as that sacrifices the autonomy and independence that is the very essence of being a small fish.
- 5y ago