3 ms·

You are right, but it's not the full picture. The government also has agencies dedicated to maintaining monopoly. It is done through patents, copyright, trade

by lcedp 5y ago

You are right, but it's not the full picture. The government also has agencies dedicated to maintaining monopoly. It is done through patents, copyright, trade secret laws. It's important to maintain a balance between completion and monopoly. Monopoly allows collecting huge margins that could be invested into further research that would not be otherwise be feasible financially.

Jensson 5y ago
> The government also has agencies dedicated to maintaining monopoly. It is done through patents, copyright, trade secret laws. Without those laws the big companies would steal and copy every small business idea or IP with no impunity. The laws protect small companies much more than big companies. Of course big companies sits on a lot of patents so they are still powerful, but not as powerful as if they could just abuse espionage etc as much as they wanted. For example, what do you think would happen with the harry potter books? Others would just print their own copies, write their own books with the same characters and names, and the company with the biggest marketing budget to throw around would win and sell the most. That doesn't seem very good for the little guy to me, rather it would make it basically impossible for the little guy to compete.
- mLuby 5y ago
  (Intellectual property) rights depend on your ability to enforce them. Large companies have many resources to throw at enforcement while small companies have few and individuals even fewer. In the past, patents may have worked for the little guy but no longer. I don't know why exactly. On the Harry Potter thing, "the biggest marketing budget would win and sell the most" is indeed what happens, but the original creator still has huge power. For example if George Lucas (who sold the Star Wars IP to Disney) decided to publish his "fan fiction" screenplay for Star Wars Episode VII, Disney would have a massive continuity problem because he's the original creator—no matter how much The Mouse spends on marketing. That is what Disney paid him $4B for, to not do that. Further, isn't "people will write new stories for characters they love" a good thing? We could certainly use fresh ideas rather than this rut of reboots and sequels. In that sense, letting The Market winnow the winners from the chaff would improve consumer offerings. It's happened before: remember that Twilight fan fiction that became a literary sensation and major movie series?
- nostrademons 5y ago
  "write their own books with the same characters and names" Clearly you've never encountered the vibrant and exceptionally large world of Harry Potter fanfiction. Anyway, IP laws usually benefit incumbents simply because small companies have neither the legal budget nor attention to fight a lawsuit. This is a recurring problem in the legal system, where the party most likely to win is usually the one that can hire the highest-priced lawyers. It's also a very hard problem to fix. I would definitely disagree that the laws protect small companies much more than big companies, having both founded small companies and worked at big companies. Big companies steal and copy every small business idea or IP with impunity anyway, because small companies do not have the resources to fight their case in court and still survive in business. I've never once heard of a startup successfully suing a gigantic company over IP rights and later replacing that big company off those IP rights; the best they can hope for is usually a negotiated settlement and an acquisition. Startups that actually want to survive based on IP usually do it by keeping it secret and working on problems that are not obviously a big market.
  - Jensson 5y ago
    > Clearly you've never encountered the vibrant and exceptionally large world of Harry Potter fanfiction. That is the point, it is fanfiction and not books written by giant corporations churning out clones as their main business practice. That makes a huge difference. > Big companies steal and copy every small business idea or IP with impunity anyway No they don't. Without these laws this would happen with every new rising startup: A really good guy applies and wants to work for you. First day he gets to see your code he sends it all in an email to his old company, quits and gets a huge bonus from them. The next day that company launches a clone using your codebase, with your branding and they then start to put a lot of people to use the "embrace, extend extinguish" practice where their part is interopable with your part but yours isn't with theirs. Big companies can't do this today, but if you legalised it then they would do it. Do you see the difference here? And worst is, this is super cheap to do, so big companies could do it for every single startup that gets more than a thousand users, at that point their branding isn't strong enough to protect them from a bigger company taking over their branding entirely. When you search Google for your product the top result would be their perfect clone of it, looking and behaving 100% as it should. > I've never once heard of a startup successfully suing a gigantic company over IP rights and later replacing that big company off those IP rights That is because every single big company already knows where the line is and just toes it, they wont steal things in a too blatant manner since then there are no lawyers good enough to save them. If you move the line they will start to get more blatant about it, if you remove it entirely then they will do what I talked about above.

by lcedp 5y ago

Jensson 5y ago

> The government also has agencies dedicated to maintaining monopoly. It is done through patents, copyright, trade secret laws. Without those laws the big companies would steal and copy every small business idea or IP with no impunity. The laws protect small companies much more than big companies. Of course big companies sits on a lot of patents so they are still powerful, but not as powerful as if they could just abuse espionage etc as much as they wanted. For example, what do you think would happen with the harry potter books? Others would just print their own copies, write their own books with the same characters and names, and the company with the biggest marketing budget to throw around would win and sell the most. That doesn't seem very good for the little guy to me, rather it would make it basically impossible for the little guy to compete.

mLuby 5y ago
(Intellectual property) rights depend on your ability to enforce them. Large companies have many resources to throw at enforcement while small companies have few and individuals even fewer. In the past, patents may have worked for the little guy but no longer. I don't know why exactly. On the Harry Potter thing, "the biggest marketing budget would win and sell the most" is indeed what happens, but the original creator still has huge power. For example if George Lucas (who sold the Star Wars IP to Disney) decided to publish his "fan fiction" screenplay for Star Wars Episode VII, Disney would have a massive continuity problem because he's the original creator—no matter how much The Mouse spends on marketing. That is what Disney paid him $4B for, to not do that. Further, isn't "people will write new stories for characters they love" a good thing? We could certainly use fresh ideas rather than this rut of reboots and sequels. In that sense, letting The Market winnow the winners from the chaff would improve consumer offerings. It's happened before: remember that Twilight fan fiction that became a literary sensation and major movie series?
nostrademons 5y ago
"write their own books with the same characters and names" Clearly you've never encountered the vibrant and exceptionally large world of Harry Potter fanfiction. Anyway, IP laws usually benefit incumbents simply because small companies have neither the legal budget nor attention to fight a lawsuit. This is a recurring problem in the legal system, where the party most likely to win is usually the one that can hire the highest-priced lawyers. It's also a very hard problem to fix. I would definitely disagree that the laws protect small companies much more than big companies, having both founded small companies and worked at big companies. Big companies steal and copy every small business idea or IP with impunity anyway, because small companies do not have the resources to fight their case in court and still survive in business. I've never once heard of a startup successfully suing a gigantic company over IP rights and later replacing that big company off those IP rights; the best they can hope for is usually a negotiated settlement and an acquisition. Startups that actually want to survive based on IP usually do it by keeping it secret and working on problems that are not obviously a big market.
- Jensson 5y ago
  > Clearly you've never encountered the vibrant and exceptionally large world of Harry Potter fanfiction. That is the point, it is fanfiction and not books written by giant corporations churning out clones as their main business practice. That makes a huge difference. > Big companies steal and copy every small business idea or IP with impunity anyway No they don't. Without these laws this would happen with every new rising startup: A really good guy applies and wants to work for you. First day he gets to see your code he sends it all in an email to his old company, quits and gets a huge bonus from them. The next day that company launches a clone using your codebase, with your branding and they then start to put a lot of people to use the "embrace, extend extinguish" practice where their part is interopable with your part but yours isn't with theirs. Big companies can't do this today, but if you legalised it then they would do it. Do you see the difference here? And worst is, this is super cheap to do, so big companies could do it for every single startup that gets more than a thousand users, at that point their branding isn't strong enough to protect them from a bigger company taking over their branding entirely. When you search Google for your product the top result would be their perfect clone of it, looking and behaving 100% as it should. > I've never once heard of a startup successfully suing a gigantic company over IP rights and later replacing that big company off those IP rights That is because every single big company already knows where the line is and just toes it, they wont steal things in a too blatant manner since then there are no lawyers good enough to save them. If you move the line they will start to get more blatant about it, if you remove it entirely then they will do what I talked about above.