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The fundamental problem seems to be that in practice, mere novelty is enough to get a patent. I don't think a company should be granted a 20-year monopoly just
by DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
The fundamental problem seems to be that in practice, mere novelty is enough to get a patent.
I don't think a company should be granted a 20-year monopoly just because they were the first to write an idea down. I don't see how patents on run-of-the-mill innovations further innovation in the economy as a whole.
Even if there were no such thing as patents, companies would have begun compressing individual channels prior to de-bayering, because it makes sense and is a fairly obvious thing to try. The patent system didn't spur innovation in this case. It just allowed one company to demand a rent from everyone else.
- atq2119 4y agoCompletely agreed, for the way the patent system actually works in practice. There is a theory that patent rights can encourage inventors to publish their invention, so that everybody benefits in the long run. This is a nice theory, except it doesn't hold up in practice (at least in the tech industry) because (1) patent language is so obfuscated that it is not a useful source of knowledge; and (2) the threat of triple damages means that no (honest) practitioner in their right mind would ever read a patent other than their own. It is possible that in other, slower moving industries, people do get some minor value from reading expired patents. Though somehow I doubt it: in our industry, the useful inventions spread through other channels, and I suspect the same is true everywhere.