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> 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 develop
by 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 agoThere'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 agoIs 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.