5 ms·

I have a patent, so I've touched the system a bit. It doesn't make any sense. There's no way reading a patent helps anyone understand anything, because the who

I have a patent, so I've touched the system a bit. It doesn't make any sense. There's no way reading a patent helps anyone understand anything, because the whole thing is done by lawyers, not engineers. Even reading the patent I applied for does not explain to me, the person who came up with the idea, of how it works. (Long story, not willing to get into it.) The whole idea needs some kind of evidence that it works. We can all imagine that maybe if there weren't patents, certain things wouldn't get invented. But that experiment happens in people's heads, and the outcome depends on how they are invested. And it's not easy to come up with reasonable evidence, there would be a lot of confounding issues, such as whether patents themselves stop certain beneficial things from happening. From what I can see a huge amount of innovation is called off due to patent uncertainty. I have a friend who is an inventor in the medical field, and quite a lot of the ideas he comes up with are junked because he's found some patent in a database that sounds too similar. At the same time he has to pay a tax to the lawyers on a bunch of low probability inventions. It should just be a free-for-all. You see someone with a better mousetrap, you make a better mousetrap. You compete on actually bringing it to market, which is not the same thing as whatever you think the innovation is. Surely that creates the most value for society, or at least should be the default until the quite high hurdle of evidence for patents is cleared. Won't that mean nobody thinks about better mousetraps? No, people will just think of better mousetrap production-and-marketing ideas compatible with this legal environment instead of what we have now.

dqpb 5y ago
> We can all imagine that maybe if there weren't patents, certain things wouldn't get invented. But that experiment happens in people's heads, and the outcome depends on how they are invested. Well put!
FL410 5y ago
>It should just be a free-for-all. You see someone with a better mousetrap, you make a better mousetrap. You compete on actually bringing it to market, which is not the same thing as whatever you think the innovation is. Surely that creates the most value for society, or at least should be the default until the quite high hurdle of evidence for patents is cleared. As I understand it, this is how IP is valued in China - not the idea, but the execution. Yes, ultimately it means better mousetraps for the consumer. Maybe even cheaper, better mousetraps. But it sucks for the guy who actually designed and engineered the better, cheaper mousetrap if he doesn't have the knowledge or capital required to actually produce it better/cheaper. So, it seems like neither the idea nor the execution alone carries the full value. There must be some happy medium.
- abfan1127 5y ago
  I have 4-5 patents owned by my companies. It doesn't suck for the guy who originally thought of it because while his competitors are busy trying to duplicate the work, (s)he is out working on the next thing. What it means is we can't invent, then sit back on our laurels and milk a cash cow. Personally, I'd rather continue innovating.
- pfraze 5y ago
  That’s legitimate, but I have two questions in response: 1, How effective are patents at protecting an under-funded inventor? (As I’ve been told by my lawyer) They cost tens of thousands to file and much more to enforce. It seems way more likely that a rich company will railroad you and eat the legal costs later. 2, As execution does matter, don’t patents leave the potential for a concept to be poorly executed and its value wasted during the period it might matter most? The lifetime of a patent is huge in the span of tech. Given those questions and the other negatives, including patent trolls and the really broad assignment of patents, I really have to wonder what benefit we’re getting here.
  - SuoDuanDao 5y ago
    > How effective are patents at protecting an under-funded inventor? My own impression, "less than they used to be". I read patents from time to time, and there's a huge difference between, say, one of Tesla's patents for which he clearly wrote the application himself and a present-day patent, where the writing was clearly done by a professional unrelated to the technical field. That said, I wonder how out of reach the self-filing route really is. My own patent cost me 2000 Canadian in consultant's fees, essentially to have them proofread my draft and make suggestions. I still had to have a bit of back-and-forth with the examiner, but none of it felt out of reach even today. To my way of thinking, the whole idea of a patent hearkens back to a time when kings granted monopolies and the people getting them took care of the rest. It doesn't make much sense for an inventor today, who would ideally want everyone competing to execute on their idea. There are probably a lot of better alternatives to the patenting system that properly harness the tendency of data to be copied. Maybe some form of a value-added tax for getting into new business segments that automatically get remitted to the inventor? To no one's surprise, coming up with a better idea than the patent system isn't the hard part!
amelius 5y ago
The whole idea behind patents is that it opens up trade secrets and makes them available to society. So what we should have is a system where some inventor sells their idea to society (a government institution), which then determines what price they are willing to pay for that invention. So, we should have no more monopolies on a technology for certain periods (what a stupid, stupid idea). Just pay for the invention if you want it to be opened up. Everything else in our society works with dollars, so why not this thing?
- lordnacho 5y ago
  How is the buyer going to know what they are buying?
  - amelius 5y ago
    Working prototype. Or look at how research is funded.
  - ItsMonkk 5y ago
    It should be a rental, more like how TV show residuals, not a one time purchase. So long as the invention keeps providing value to the citizens, the inventor should keep getting paid for it. You could determine the value provided by auctioning off these patents through a Vickrey Auction, an auction that incentivizes people to always bid their true value. I'm fairly sure you could properly set this up such that very few people lost access, the inventor got more money than they could have made, and no one has to ever deal with the bureaucracy that the current system brings.
jimmydddd 5y ago
Re: "It should be a free for all." Currently, if you invent an innovative new mechanical device like a better can opener, and it sells well on Amazon, within a few weeks, low cost Chinese copy cats will flood the market, and you will not be able to make a profit. So, a free-for-all strategy seems to reward low cost copiers over innovators. It just depends on what we want to reward.
- lordnacho 5y ago
  If your product can simply be copied and then delivered in a few weeks, the innovation is not really all that innovative, you've merely discovered a variant of the item that people want that is already within the space of currently manufacturable items. The capability to make the thing already existed. A lot of "low-cost copying" is actually just tuning an existing apparatus to what the market wants. Suppose you discover that people want to buy triangle-shaped plates. Either there's something special about your particular take on it that naturally protects your business, or existing makers of round plates can retool and make triangles and get value out to the customers sooner and in more volume than you. Why not let them have that reward? Also keep in mind that a lot of these low cost manufacturers are actually testing the market themselves with new variants, so it's not like they're not doing anything innovative.
  - jmole 5y ago
    You can copy a song in milliseconds and distribute it instantly - that doesn't mean it's not innovative. There is no alternative system for remuneration, we use intellectual property rights to ensure that people are rewarded for the results of their creative work. Without that right of ownership, the balance of power between capital and labor becomes even more tilted toward capital.
    - errantmind 5y ago
      I'd argue the opposite is true, which is why we need some evidence one way or another that the patent system works at all, and we don't have that. So why do we have a restrictive system that doesn't have any real data to support its existence?
matheusmoreira 5y ago
> The whole idea needs some kind of evidence that it works. > We can all imagine that maybe if there weren't patents, certain things wouldn't get invented. But that experiment happens in people's heads Yeah. These hypotheticals are always brought up whenever someone criticizes patents but the fact is there's actual historical evidence that lack of patents leads to more innovation, more competition, more industry, more prosperity for all nations and especially for developing countries. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28330810 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28330810 All intellectual property is nothing but monopolists trying to maintain their monopoly position. They struck gold once and want to keep extracting value out of that mine forever.

dqpb 5y ago

> We can all imagine that maybe if there weren't patents, certain things wouldn't get invented. But that experiment happens in people's heads, and the outcome depends on how they are invested. Well put!

FL410 5y ago

>It should just be a free-for-all. You see someone with a better mousetrap, you make a better mousetrap. You compete on actually bringing it to market, which is not the same thing as whatever you think the innovation is. Surely that creates the most value for society, or at least should be the default until the quite high hurdle of evidence for patents is cleared. As I understand it, this is how IP is valued in China - not the idea, but the execution. Yes, ultimately it means better mousetraps for the consumer. Maybe even cheaper, better mousetraps. But it sucks for the guy who actually designed and engineered the better, cheaper mousetrap if he doesn't have the knowledge or capital required to actually produce it better/cheaper. So, it seems like neither the idea nor the execution alone carries the full value. There must be some happy medium.

abfan1127 5y ago
I have 4-5 patents owned by my companies. It doesn't suck for the guy who originally thought of it because while his competitors are busy trying to duplicate the work, (s)he is out working on the next thing. What it means is we can't invent, then sit back on our laurels and milk a cash cow. Personally, I'd rather continue innovating.
pfraze 5y ago
That’s legitimate, but I have two questions in response: 1, How effective are patents at protecting an under-funded inventor? (As I’ve been told by my lawyer) They cost tens of thousands to file and much more to enforce. It seems way more likely that a rich company will railroad you and eat the legal costs later. 2, As execution does matter, don’t patents leave the potential for a concept to be poorly executed and its value wasted during the period it might matter most? The lifetime of a patent is huge in the span of tech. Given those questions and the other negatives, including patent trolls and the really broad assignment of patents, I really have to wonder what benefit we’re getting here.
- SuoDuanDao 5y ago
  > How effective are patents at protecting an under-funded inventor? My own impression, "less than they used to be". I read patents from time to time, and there's a huge difference between, say, one of Tesla's patents for which he clearly wrote the application himself and a present-day patent, where the writing was clearly done by a professional unrelated to the technical field. That said, I wonder how out of reach the self-filing route really is. My own patent cost me 2000 Canadian in consultant's fees, essentially to have them proofread my draft and make suggestions. I still had to have a bit of back-and-forth with the examiner, but none of it felt out of reach even today. To my way of thinking, the whole idea of a patent hearkens back to a time when kings granted monopolies and the people getting them took care of the rest. It doesn't make much sense for an inventor today, who would ideally want everyone competing to execute on their idea. There are probably a lot of better alternatives to the patenting system that properly harness the tendency of data to be copied. Maybe some form of a value-added tax for getting into new business segments that automatically get remitted to the inventor? To no one's surprise, coming up with a better idea than the patent system isn't the hard part!

amelius 5y ago

The whole idea behind patents is that it opens up trade secrets and makes them available to society. So what we should have is a system where some inventor sells their idea to society (a government institution), which then determines what price they are willing to pay for that invention. So, we should have no more monopolies on a technology for certain periods (what a stupid, stupid idea). Just pay for the invention if you want it to be opened up. Everything else in our society works with dollars, so why not this thing?

lordnacho 5y ago
How is the buyer going to know what they are buying?
- amelius 5y ago
  Working prototype. Or look at how research is funded.
- ItsMonkk 5y ago
  It should be a rental, more like how TV show residuals, not a one time purchase. So long as the invention keeps providing value to the citizens, the inventor should keep getting paid for it. You could determine the value provided by auctioning off these patents through a Vickrey Auction, an auction that incentivizes people to always bid their true value. I'm fairly sure you could properly set this up such that very few people lost access, the inventor got more money than they could have made, and no one has to ever deal with the bureaucracy that the current system brings.

jimmydddd 5y ago

Re: "It should be a free for all." Currently, if you invent an innovative new mechanical device like a better can opener, and it sells well on Amazon, within a few weeks, low cost Chinese copy cats will flood the market, and you will not be able to make a profit. So, a free-for-all strategy seems to reward low cost copiers over innovators. It just depends on what we want to reward.

lordnacho 5y ago
If your product can simply be copied and then delivered in a few weeks, the innovation is not really all that innovative, you've merely discovered a variant of the item that people want that is already within the space of currently manufacturable items. The capability to make the thing already existed. A lot of "low-cost copying" is actually just tuning an existing apparatus to what the market wants. Suppose you discover that people want to buy triangle-shaped plates. Either there's something special about your particular take on it that naturally protects your business, or existing makers of round plates can retool and make triangles and get value out to the customers sooner and in more volume than you. Why not let them have that reward? Also keep in mind that a lot of these low cost manufacturers are actually testing the market themselves with new variants, so it's not like they're not doing anything innovative.
- jmole 5y ago
  You can copy a song in milliseconds and distribute it instantly - that doesn't mean it's not innovative. There is no alternative system for remuneration, we use intellectual property rights to ensure that people are rewarded for the results of their creative work. Without that right of ownership, the balance of power between capital and labor becomes even more tilted toward capital.
  - errantmind 5y ago
    I'd argue the opposite is true, which is why we need some evidence one way or another that the patent system works at all, and we don't have that. So why do we have a restrictive system that doesn't have any real data to support its existence?

matheusmoreira 5y ago

> The whole idea needs some kind of evidence that it works. > We can all imagine that maybe if there weren't patents, certain things wouldn't get invented. But that experiment happens in people's heads Yeah. These hypotheticals are always brought up whenever someone criticizes patents but the fact is there's actual historical evidence that lack of patents leads to more innovation, more competition, more industry, more prosperity for all nations and especially for developing countries. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28330810 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28330810 All intellectual property is nothing but monopolists trying to maintain their monopoly position. They struck gold once and want to keep extracting value out of that mine forever.