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In general I feel like patents have jumped the shark. Maybe they made sense when they applied to local jurisdictions as a means of growing local manufacturing c

In general I feel like patents have jumped the shark. Maybe they made sense when they applied to local jurisdictions as a means of growing local manufacturing capacity. But global patents just prevent huge numbers of people from innovating. People worldwide would love to make pharmaceuticals more affordable for example, but huge restrictions are placed on how they can operate. They can’t innovate to manufacture an existing drug cheaply using local materials because some multinational owns the patent. 3D printers are another example. In 1995 they were introduced under patent for $50,000 and ten years later the price was $25,000. In 2018 the patents expired and hobbyists got to work designing cheaper machines. Within three years a $2000 machine was decent and ten years after the patent expired $300 machines were available worldwide. Can you imagine how prosperous the whole world would be if they were permitted to copy the best available medical equipment, find effective ways to lower manufacturing costs as with the 3D printers, and then we had cheap high quality medical machinery available worldwide? This would be a revolution in global wealth growth with little cost to the existing wealthy countries. We would benefit from a more rapidly industrialized world with less direct investment required to make it happen, and we would benefit from more diversity of ideas. I really have to call out Bill Gates who said in 2021 “we can’t just open source the vaccine because factories to make it don’t exist the world over” but he would have been perfectly capable of making those investments in 2020 if what he really wanted was maximum vaccine production. He’s thinking in top down systems and I really think we need to understand how effective bottom up engineering can be, as with 3D printers.

fsckboy 5y ago
> People worldwide would love to make pharmaceuticals more affordable for example well, the purpose of the patent is to both reward/incentivize and allow the original inventor a monopoly for a period of time to earn back time risk and the development costs, and that monopoly is going to come with higher prices. it's the point of a patent, you can't very well say that patents undermine the ability to undermine them: it's nonsensical! I'm not defending patents nor saying we need them, I'm simply saying you can't say "patents don't work because they do what they were designed to"
- TaylorAlexander 5y ago
  What I am saying about patents is that the supposed benefits are vastly outweighed by the drawbacks. I believe the reason they continue to be popular is that patents benefit large industry players to the detriment of everyone else, but since they have strong influence over policy in the USA and the USA has strong policy influence the world over, we are all suffering for the perceived benefits of patents.
  - Dracophoenix 5y ago
    Patents benefit the inventor (or at least they did until 2013) through compensation for their efforts and society as a whole through disclosure of information. The alternative is that every bit of applicable knowledge is kept as a trade secret.
    - TaylorAlexander 5y ago
      You frame this as a binary: patents or trade secrets. But other options include authorized copying (open source) and copying without express permission (Shanzai style)[1]. As I mentioned in my original comment, both of those modes of development played a crucial role in lowering the price of 3D printers as well as increasing volume. By 2008, Stratasys had shipped 16,000 3D printers in the company history. Now Prusa Research ships that many printers in one month. And Prusa is fully open source and always has been. So clearly trade secrets are not the only alternative to patents. You must understand, when one inventor gets rights over something, now 1000 other inventors working in a similar field cannot easily build on that idea. So one person benefits while 1000 others are restricted. But the market already rewards innovators, so why stop those 1000 would-be innovators because one person filed all the right paperwork? And because people always mention this: investment would still work. Instead of a $10m investment for a big five year project, the investments would be smaller and more frequent. Improve the product and impress buyers with the next version. Is it a flop? Someone else will clone your failed version with the necessary improvements, and next year they will get the investment. Product development happens faster because no one can rest on their laurels, and cost of living goes down because no one can charge a very high price for something that can be cloned for cheap. That faster innovation and lower cost of living is obviously a huge benefit to moving away from patents. This is also a fact rarely acknowledged by those who believe in the standard story about the purpose and benefits of patents. There's billions of people on Earth who need the knowledge we have locked up in patent portfolios. We must not be careless with how we consider this policy. There is a lot at stake. [1] https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=284 https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=284
matheusmoreira 5y ago
> But global patents just prevent huge numbers of people from innovating. Don't know why you're being downvoted. There are many concrete examples of this. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28330810 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28330810 Patent circumvention actively leads to development of new industries in previously ignored locations, leading to prosperity for a huge number of people.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- TaylorAlexander 5y ago
  Patents are sufficiently abstract that most people believe the very basic story we are told about them and they don’t ever learn the true details. It wasn’t until I saw all the work engineering hobbyists did to advance 3D printing that I realized how many people are held back by patents. I do wish people would engage with comments instead of downvotes as I try to make good arguments.
  - drran 5y ago
    In case of 3D printers, patents worked as expected. 3 different methods were invented, patented (opened to public with protection for 20 years), then patent are expired, and general public was able to fruit developed technology and advance it further. Just compare this to commercial secret practice.
    - naasking 5y ago
      Commercial secret practices would have had 3D printers reverse engineered 20 years ago. So yes, maybe they worked as expected, but it's not clear the public benefitted more under that system.
    - TaylorAlexander 5y ago
      You’re describing the basic operation of a patent which is not in dispute. What I am saying is that the societal costs outweigh the benefits and despite the common belief, patents are not actually a net good for society. I describe this in more detail (including alternatives to secrecy) here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28659377 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28659377
kevinmchugh 5y ago
How long does it take to construct and staff a brand new vaccine production facility?
- TaylorAlexander 5y ago
  I don’t know, but I know Bill Gates could do it faster than it has ever been done before if he wanted to. Also they could upgrade existing facilities rather than build brand new ones. For example there are facilities I’ve heard of in India and South America which claim they could manufacture the mRNA vaccines. If the details of the vaccine were shared early on and they had help from Gates, I imagine these facilities could have been producing them by now.
drran 5y ago
You can make your own medicine at home in many countries, but safety testing takes years and costs hundreds of millions. After years of testing, when the result is good and the inventor is lucky, the inventor will have just a few years of protection to recoup costs. How you can improve that without patents?
- TaylorAlexander 5y ago
  I’ve just written a nearby comment that might answer your question. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28664769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28664769 See also a direct link to a chapter in an economics book about the subject: http://dklevine.com/papers/anew09.pdf http://dklevine.com/papers/anew09.pdf

fsckboy 5y ago

> People worldwide would love to make pharmaceuticals more affordable for example well, the purpose of the patent is to both reward/incentivize and allow the original inventor a monopoly for a period of time to earn back time risk and the development costs, and that monopoly is going to come with higher prices. it's the point of a patent, you can't very well say that patents undermine the ability to undermine them: it's nonsensical! I'm not defending patents nor saying we need them, I'm simply saying you can't say "patents don't work because they do what they were designed to"

TaylorAlexander 5y ago
What I am saying about patents is that the supposed benefits are vastly outweighed by the drawbacks. I believe the reason they continue to be popular is that patents benefit large industry players to the detriment of everyone else, but since they have strong influence over policy in the USA and the USA has strong policy influence the world over, we are all suffering for the perceived benefits of patents.
- Dracophoenix 5y ago
  Patents benefit the inventor (or at least they did until 2013) through compensation for their efforts and society as a whole through disclosure of information. The alternative is that every bit of applicable knowledge is kept as a trade secret.
  - TaylorAlexander 5y ago
    You frame this as a binary: patents or trade secrets. But other options include authorized copying (open source) and copying without express permission (Shanzai style)[1]. As I mentioned in my original comment, both of those modes of development played a crucial role in lowering the price of 3D printers as well as increasing volume. By 2008, Stratasys had shipped 16,000 3D printers in the company history. Now Prusa Research ships that many printers in one month. And Prusa is fully open source and always has been. So clearly trade secrets are not the only alternative to patents. You must understand, when one inventor gets rights over something, now 1000 other inventors working in a similar field cannot easily build on that idea. So one person benefits while 1000 others are restricted. But the market already rewards innovators, so why stop those 1000 would-be innovators because one person filed all the right paperwork? And because people always mention this: investment would still work. Instead of a $10m investment for a big five year project, the investments would be smaller and more frequent. Improve the product and impress buyers with the next version. Is it a flop? Someone else will clone your failed version with the necessary improvements, and next year they will get the investment. Product development happens faster because no one can rest on their laurels, and cost of living goes down because no one can charge a very high price for something that can be cloned for cheap. That faster innovation and lower cost of living is obviously a huge benefit to moving away from patents. This is also a fact rarely acknowledged by those who believe in the standard story about the purpose and benefits of patents. There's billions of people on Earth who need the knowledge we have locked up in patent portfolios. We must not be careless with how we consider this policy. There is a lot at stake. [1] https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=284 https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=284

matheusmoreira 5y ago

> But global patents just prevent huge numbers of people from innovating. Don't know why you're being downvoted. There are many concrete examples of this. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28330810 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28330810 Patent circumvention actively leads to development of new industries in previously ignored locations, leading to prosperity for a huge number of people.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
TaylorAlexander 5y ago
Patents are sufficiently abstract that most people believe the very basic story we are told about them and they don’t ever learn the true details. It wasn’t until I saw all the work engineering hobbyists did to advance 3D printing that I realized how many people are held back by patents. I do wish people would engage with comments instead of downvotes as I try to make good arguments.
- drran 5y ago
  In case of 3D printers, patents worked as expected. 3 different methods were invented, patented (opened to public with protection for 20 years), then patent are expired, and general public was able to fruit developed technology and advance it further. Just compare this to commercial secret practice.
  - naasking 5y ago
    Commercial secret practices would have had 3D printers reverse engineered 20 years ago. So yes, maybe they worked as expected, but it's not clear the public benefitted more under that system.
  - TaylorAlexander 5y ago
    You’re describing the basic operation of a patent which is not in dispute. What I am saying is that the societal costs outweigh the benefits and despite the common belief, patents are not actually a net good for society. I describe this in more detail (including alternatives to secrecy) here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28659377 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28659377

kevinmchugh 5y ago

How long does it take to construct and staff a brand new vaccine production facility?

TaylorAlexander 5y ago
I don’t know, but I know Bill Gates could do it faster than it has ever been done before if he wanted to. Also they could upgrade existing facilities rather than build brand new ones. For example there are facilities I’ve heard of in India and South America which claim they could manufacture the mRNA vaccines. If the details of the vaccine were shared early on and they had help from Gates, I imagine these facilities could have been producing them by now.

drran 5y ago

You can make your own medicine at home in many countries, but safety testing takes years and costs hundreds of millions. After years of testing, when the result is good and the inventor is lucky, the inventor will have just a few years of protection to recoup costs. How you can improve that without patents?

TaylorAlexander 5y ago
I’ve just written a nearby comment that might answer your question. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28664769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28664769 See also a direct link to a chapter in an economics book about the subject: http://dklevine.com/papers/anew09.pdf http://dklevine.com/papers/anew09.pdf