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There are still reclusive tinkering inventors today who need to make a living! It's very hard to otherwise compete with an established company who can copy you
by jbay808 5y ago
There are still reclusive tinkering inventors today who need to make a living!
It's very hard to otherwise compete with an established company who can copy your brilliant idea, scale, and distribute it way faster and more cheaply than you can.
- SavantIdiot 5y agoIn 2013 it cost $33,000 to file a software patent: a startup I worked for was trying to file one. There's no way a starving tinkerer would be able to afford a patent. But assume s/he did afford one. Now comes the theft. Amazon steals it, and now our tinkerer needs to cough up millions of dollars to go after a one-trillion dollar company. It lingers in courts for decades. Even pro-bono legal advice would eventually give up. Futile. Patents exist only for companies to wage war for monopolies.
- _vvhw 5y agoYou're assuming that once you have a patent, you're protected. When in fact, you still need capital to defend your patent in litigation. It's turtles all the way down.
- reedjosh 5y agoBeatiful comment.
- unityByFreedom 5y agoThat's better than no protection at all. If you have something really innovative you might be able to get a loan to protect it, or sell or lease it to companies that would help defend it.
- _vvhw 5y agoThe reality is that in software, relative to the vast armada of the patent thicket that could be employed against you, a single patent affords little protection.
- unityByFreedom 5y agoLike elsewhere [1], this thread's context was discussing the usefulness of all patents, and you are talking about software patents. I gather most people in this forum agree that software patents are no good. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29115767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29115767
- _vvhw 5y agoI believe the patent thicket argument holds and has merit, whether you restrict the context to software patents or enlarge the context to most industries. Let's also not forget the broader context here, which is software patents.
- redwall_hp 5y agoAnd it turns out, oops, your thing infringes upon 62 other patents that another company happens to hold. You can either desist or have a nice cross-licensing deal where they get to use your patent for free in exchange for now suing you.
- aranchelk 5y agoThis comment is both true and not. Absolutely right that you can’t count on a patent to magically protect you without litigating (or at least credibly threatening to). It’s not true that you will always need to put up the money yourself. If the patent is sufficiently valuable you can enter into joint ventures, or contingency agreements to have someone else bankroll the fight. Having a large company infringe on a patent also makes it a desirable purchase for any other company with a bone to pick with the infringer.
- _vvhw 5y agoAnd now everybody is distracted, when they could be innovating software. "It’s not true that you will always need to put up the money yourself." I don't believe this was my argument. I simply said "capital".
- aranchelk 5y agoBy “turtles all the way down” I understood you to be saying it’s an endless (or hopeless) process for a small inventor to make use of the patent system. I don’t believe this is accurate.
- diob 5y agoFor the most part, even tinkering inventors are simply forced to sell their big idea / invention to a company at less than face value. Not many have the capital to do anything with their inventions.