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Without patents, secrecy would be the norm. Instead of revealing drug formulas, companies would lock them up forever and sue people who stole them. Patents serv

by aneth 15y ago

Without patents, secrecy would be the norm. Instead of revealing drug formulas, companies would lock them up forever and sue people who stole them. Patents serve a purpose, even if they are terribly broken right now.

aristidb 15y ago
For those things that aren't likely to be independently invented and can be kept secret, secrecy IS the norm. It also isn't like engineers or scientists would read patents to see which things have been invented. From knowledge implying higher damages to pure lack of readability, there are many reasons.
rwmj 15y ago
At one time it was very hard to reverse engineer chemicals and hardware. Nowadays, finding out the composition of chemicals and drugs is routine, even if it's not simple. Reverse-engineering widgets isn't much of a problem. Disassembling computer programs is trivial. If this is your reason to keep patents, it's not a very good one.
- justinsb 15y ago
  I think you've missed the point here: without patents, we'd devise something else to protect drugs. It's not the case that just because you can reverse engineer something, it's good for society that you're allowed to copy it. At least in the current system drug formulas are freely published, and we don't make everyone jump through the hoop of reverse-engineering. The argument is essentially "new medicines are good for society but expensive to develop, drug companies will only spend the money to develop new drugs if they can make a lot of money on the successes, drug companies won't make money if other people can copy the successes." If you remove patents, we'll have some other law to give drug companies their profits. Probably something along the lines of the DMCA, which effectively strengthened copyright to deal with technological developments, but was a huge step backwards in terms of what interested parties could do with copyrighted material.
deleted 15y ago
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polymatter 15y ago
The key use I see for patents is as a demonstrable unit of innovation. I can justify my team's innovation by using number of patents as a proxy to senior managers. "They are smart, motivated people who we can't afford to lose to a competitor on the basis of a pay rise. Look at all their patents!" Secrecy without patents is fine. I find it hard to believe that any invention will not be re-invented within 20 years, even if there is no cross-contamination of ideas or any reverse engineering.

by aneth 15y ago

aristidb 15y ago

For those things that aren't likely to be independently invented and can be kept secret, secrecy IS the norm. It also isn't like engineers or scientists would read patents to see which things have been invented. From knowledge implying higher damages to pure lack of readability, there are many reasons.

rwmj 15y ago

At one time it was very hard to reverse engineer chemicals and hardware. Nowadays, finding out the composition of chemicals and drugs is routine, even if it's not simple. Reverse-engineering widgets isn't much of a problem. Disassembling computer programs is trivial. If this is your reason to keep patents, it's not a very good one.

justinsb 15y ago
I think you've missed the point here: without patents, we'd devise something else to protect drugs. It's not the case that just because you can reverse engineer something, it's good for society that you're allowed to copy it. At least in the current system drug formulas are freely published, and we don't make everyone jump through the hoop of reverse-engineering. The argument is essentially "new medicines are good for society but expensive to develop, drug companies will only spend the money to develop new drugs if they can make a lot of money on the successes, drug companies won't make money if other people can copy the successes." If you remove patents, we'll have some other law to give drug companies their profits. Probably something along the lines of the DMCA, which effectively strengthened copyright to deal with technological developments, but was a huge step backwards in terms of what interested parties could do with copyrighted material.

deleted 15y ago

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polymatter 15y ago

The key use I see for patents is as a demonstrable unit of innovation. I can justify my team's innovation by using number of patents as a proxy to senior managers. "They are smart, motivated people who we can't afford to lose to a competitor on the basis of a pay rise. Look at all their patents!" Secrecy without patents is fine. I find it hard to believe that any invention will not be re-invented within 20 years, even if there is no cross-contamination of ideas or any reverse engineering.