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The real problem is in people patenting ideas that are of dubious innovation. In fact, the patent office should negate patent applications if identical ones app

• saulrh 15y ago
  This doesn't quite work; some of the most creative, innovative ideas in history bubbled up from the collective unconscious in several minds at the same time. Just look at the number of nobel prizes that get split between people that discovered exactly the same thing at exactly the same time but completely independently.
  • wtallis 15y ago
    You're misunderstanding the purpose of patents. They're not a reward to be granted for every useful invention. Patents exist only to be an incentive for innovation. In almost every case where several inventors are competing to get the invention ready to patent, there is enough natural incentive that the patent is not necessary. In those cases, granting a patent can just as easily slow down the pace of technological progress, by forcing every inventor that didn't get the patent to either stop working in that area or negotiate a patent license before they can continue working to improve the invention.
    • saulrh 15y ago
      They give an incentive for innovation by granting the original inventor time to bring his invention to market before an established entity uses its existing resources to block him out. This model isn't very useful to software, but it works perfectly fine with cars and tractors and other things that take five years from concept to product. One trivial improvement might be to split patents the same way that major research recognitions are split. If two people come up with something simultaneously and independently, why not give it to both of them?
      • quadhome 15y ago
        You're both missing the very important compromise of patents. The temporary monopoly patents give were and are understood to be harmful. But, they're less harmful than a world of trade secrets. Which is what we had, before patents. See: guilds. So, we the public offer intellectual property. And, in return, the details of that property become public from the very beginning. And, after a few years, everyone has freedom and the instructions on how to make or do whatever.
        • teyc 15y ago
          Exactly. If the state of the world is that people can separately come up with the same "trade secrets", then there is a case against it being patentable.
        • rwallace 15y ago
          And that is the fundamental fallacy. Trade secrets are far, far less harmful than patents. If you keep your work a trade secret, your customers still benefit and in the worst case you have at least done no harm. Patent trolls destroy far more value than they steal.
  • afoer 15y ago
    But anything coming from the "collective unconscious" would have been discovered, by definition, anyway, and should not be monopolized by any individual.
• kiba 15y ago
  The patent system is an insanity in the 18th and the 19th century as it is now. You have the same old problem of dubious rent-seeking by entrepreneurs who should be focusing their energy on spreading their inventions, not restricting it. The problem with the patent system is our failure to understand history, our tendency to focus on the present, and our tendency to repeat the same thing in the hope that it will works.
  • Cushman 15y ago
    I think you can simplify that further: If you look at history, change which is not backwards is always good. There are fluctuations up and down, but the trend has always been for the better. And yet at every point in history, most believed that change would be bad-- in fact, maybe we need to move backwards a little.
    • endlessvoid94 15y ago
      I understand what you're saying. But what about people who have always believed change would be bad, and then been proven right on many occasions? We don't hear too much about people who predicted a negative outcome and when it came about, received just as much attention.