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On one hand I believe the theoretical patent is very important to promote innovation. If you, the inventor, can get guarantees on your sales for 10 years (which
by Test0129 4y ago
On one hand I believe the theoretical patent is very important to promote innovation. If you, the inventor, can get guarantees on your sales for 10 years (which is reasonable, imo) then it'll encourage people to make more stuff. I don't think patents are wrong.
However, the way patents are filed is wrong. There's so many issues with first to file. It's a good system when your office sees 100 patents a year. All of them are likely to be novel, and likely to be made by independent inventors. The problem we have now is there are entire companies (IBM, Google, RAND, TI, etc) that exist solely to farm patents. In fact, there are so many patent farms disguised as businesses I challenge you to sit, think of something, and search for a patent for it. I guarantee you one exists. Moreover, pursue the patent office if you never have. The definition of invention, especially in tech, is so vague it may as well not exist. Vomit some smart sounding stuff on paper with drawings and you've got yourself a patent that, if written correctly, will almost certainly produce a profit. Hell, take a cat and draw a stereo speaker on top of it. Call it "animal sound machine". I guarantee you if it hasn't already been done someone will do it. Better, draw a cat with a USB stick duct taped to it and call it "IP over Feline". Devise a stupid protocol. Then sue every idiot who thought it'd be funny to make one. This is seriously how lame modern patent law is. You might even be infringing on a patent with IP over Feline because someone already "invented" transportable storage.
I don't have a solution to the problem. Part of me wants to say one patent, per inventor, per term (10 years). You have the option of canceling a patent to put a new one in. But this seems like it's too strong. Maybe there's another way that legitimate inventors for an appropriate amount of time, and also disincentivizes patent trolls through some measure. Maybe we could start with "common good" patents (as determined by a board of smart people) being invalidated.
- alexforster 4y ago> In fact, there are so many patent farms disguised as businesses I challenge you to sit, think of something, and search for a patent for it. Nice try, Opposing Counsel.
- dontlaugh 4y agoHeh. Don't read patents.
- guhidalg 4y agoI agree, at least for my own mental health. For the rest of the universe, if you read patents then you are liable for willful infringement instead of accidental infringement, the penalties for willful infringement are much higher. This is why you should never read through patents without a specific purpose in mind if you have any plans of filing your own.
- pmontra 4y agoOn the other side, inventors are going to invent anyway for the sake of it and to have something to sell. They could be outspent and out marketed by established companies and end up working for them. Similar dynamic to startup entrepreneurs which get acquihired by an incumbent.
- number6 4y agoThis is a very useful metaphor. Thanks!
- bawolff 4y agoThe point of the patent was less about ensuring people invent, and more about ensuring people invent in the open so other people can (eventually) build on it. The thought goes, that without patents, people will be super secretive about their inventions and the general public will never find out how they work, and thus nobody would ever be able to improve on other people's inventions.
- maxvu 4y agoI'm skeptical. The Constitution says "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts".
- VanTheBrand 4y agoI’m skeptical too but what OP describes would “promote progress” (by promoting openness vs secrecy). I agree that I’ve always had it explained as “promote progress [by incentivizing creation] but it doesn’t technically specify what he’s implying or what we are.
- M2Ys4U 4y agoBecause as we all know there is only one constitution in the whole world, and what it says holds true about everything everywhere for all time...
- blendergeek 4y agoFrom Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia: > A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention. Patents have always been about "promoting the progress of science and useful arts" by promoting disclosure of inventions. The two are intricately linked. More disclosure = more progress.
- c0balt 4y agoI think IP over Feline might be be an awesome network traffic simulation, e.g. show a packet (or a batch) as a cat that travels along the connections
- carbonatedmilk 4y agoPrior art: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/02/24/telegraph-cat/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/02/24/telegraph-cat/
- bubblethink 4y agoWhat's the point of this wall of text ? It discusses nothing about the article. The article is about opus and whether this firm has a valid basis to claiming patents that are used by opus but were presumably not known to opus.
- nullc 4y agoA big problem is that you don't get a choice. It would be one thing if you could just take or leave the patented technique and benefit or not from it. If you could then the holder of the patent monopoly could only extract the marginal value of the patent. Unfortunately, patent holders frequently act to create hold up to extract far more than their share and prevent users of technology from being able to choose to not do business with them (at least without severe collateral damage). You might find this now 11 year old writeup informative: https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/public_comments/request-comments-and-announcement-workshop-standard-setting-issues-project-no.p111204-00020%C2%A0/00020-60532.pdf https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/public_com... But even that assumes that there is some actual valid patent, in this case no patents are identified on the website, they're simply "calling" for patents.
- vasco 4y ago> Maybe we could start with "common good" patents (as determined by a board of smart people) being invalidated. Solutions which require "choose the right people" usually degenerate into corruption.
- Kim_Bruning 4y agoProbably do, at that. However, patents have been known to stifle innovation at critical junctures in history. Patent pools seem to have been one way to patch that over wrt "common good" kinds of patents.(though at the time it was too little too late) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers_patent_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers_patent_war
- gruez 4y ago>The problem we have now is there are entire companies (IBM, Google, RAND, TI, etc) that exist solely to farm patents. Google exists "solely" to farm patents? I'd think they exist to sell advertising, but that's just my uninformed opinion as a layman. Am I missing something here?