8 ms·

Most people support patents because they have this romanticized notion of some little guy in his garage inventing the next light bulb. That’s not representativ

by efitz 4y ago

Most people support patents because they have this romanticized notion of some little guy in his garage inventing the next light bulb. That’s not representative of the mass offensive and defensive patterns of use by modern corporations. We should just end patents, period.

alphanullmeric 4y ago
End intellectual “property” in general. Unfortunately resistance seems to be coming from artists and the like just as much as big corporations.
kahrl 4y ago
Something something baby bathwater.
- efitz 4y ago
  I think that baby died a long time ago.
- zellyn 4y ago
  Something something giant fire-breathing, acid-spewing, tentacle-flinging, city-crushing kaiju bathwater.
dylan604 4y ago
or end the offensive/defensive patterns used by modern corporations? someone invents a thing, someone else uses thing for evil. what to do? we ban the thing!!! yes, of course, that's the solution. don't punish the one that did the evil. <hangsheadinshameatthenotion>
- paulmd 4y ago
  the federal reserve doesn't think there's empirical evidence that patents have positive societal benefits and they think there are very empirical and measurable harms. https://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/more/2012-035 https://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/more/2012-035 this isn't "generally good thing that some people abuse", this is the entire patent system is fundamentally not producing any explicable benefits and significant measurable harm, there is no reason to keep it around. the scenario about the inventor who comes up with the better lightbulb in his garage doesn't happen. if it does, somebody else copies his idea (it's gotta be fairly trivial for someone to make it in a garage) or opens up their own patent portfolios and finds an overbroad patent that describes some trivial component or practice that is widely used, and drags him into litigation that bankrupts him for the rest of his life. in software the example would be that you get dragged by someone who has patented "e-commerce on a website" or "software updates over the internet" and the money to have lawyers fight it while you empty your warchest. no "I would simply..." or "but a law firm would do that pro-bono" is necessary here, either, those are both real-world examples, someone tried to shake down Newegg in 2015 with the e-commerce patent for example. And it worked for a lot of previous victims, none of whom felt like Newegg that it was worth fighting on principle or for direct economic benefit alone. Patents literally kill companies, and they don't actually produce the intended innovations. And that's the federal reserve saying it. There were debates on ending it in the 50s, and they made the wrong decision. > If we did not have a patent system, it would be irresponsible, on the basis of our present knowledge of its economic consequences, to recommend instituting one. But since we have had a patent system for a long time, it would be irresponsible, on the basis of our present knowledge, to recommend abolishing it. The harms have now clearly exceeded the benefits of keeping it. It may not have been worth the trouble of abolishing it in 1958, it is now.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    [flagged]
deelowe 4y ago
I personally know several people who were able to start successful careers solely based on their inventions and the protections afforded to them via patents. This seems extremely short sighted. In fact, the bigger issue to me is that patents don't matter for companies located in countries where they are not recognized (e.g. China). The biggest issue with "some little guy in his garage" inventing stuff these days is that within weeks of selling it on amazon, it'll be copied, cost reduced to a essentially non-functional version, and sold for 1/3 the price all while pushing him down in the search results via borderline illegal SEO strategies. The patent system needs to be fixed, not done away with.
- version_five 4y ago
  A bigger issue with for the little guy is his garage is that if his actually innovation contains some trivial subcomponent that's part of a patent troll or large competitors portfolio, they can can sued into the ground, either to leech of their success or to prevent competition. patents favor big companies and trolls, and as a legal instrument it's basically impossible to change that because the costs and complexity always favor large incumbents. I agree it's time to drop them
  - ROTMetro 4y ago
    Show me where this has happened? You present a theoretical against an actual. I know more people who have been enabled via patents than have been squashed (I know of zero squashed who were actually doing something new/novel).
    - namibj 4y ago
      Arithmetic coding?
  - whichquestion 4y ago
    Would it be better to make patents have shorter lifespans before entering the public domain from companies of a certain size? Maybe that would level out the playing field and allow small players to be more competitive against behemoth corporations and patent trolls.
photochemsyn 4y ago
It's unclear in the technological sector whether the patents or the exclusive licensing of those patents are the real issue. In academic research at universities, patented research is not the problem - it's more the exclusive licensing of those patents (taxpayer-financed, as well) to private interests. A better option would be to allow any interest to use academic patents for something like a flat fee / percentage of profits arrangement. In general though, I agree - intellectual property gives too much power to the financial sector and the lifetime of patents and copyrights should be cut in half.
HDThoreaun 4y ago
Patented seeds have funded GMO research which has saved literally hundreds of millions if not billions of lives through famine reduction. Yes it sucks for farmers, but I can't see how it has been anything other than absolute boon for humanity.
- sethjgore 4y ago
  Absolute boon for “humanity” is a such abstract notion. The reality is that farmers are robbed and food we eat are way less nutrient dense, etc etc. boon…for whom?
  - ROTMetro 4y ago
    Would there be another way to feed 7+ billion people? How many human lives would you trade for more nutrient dense food?
- Cerium 4y ago
  Autocorrect between boon and boondoggle?
- wazoox 4y ago
  > Patented seeds have funded GMO research which has saved literally hundreds of millions if not billions of lives through famine reduction. Sources? References? Sounds like PR bullshit from Syngenta, frankly. For a start, half the world population is living off subsistence agriculture, i.e. not patented nor GMO seeds.
  - whimsicalism 4y ago
    > half the world population is living off subsistence agriculture Doubt GMOs have yet saved hundreds of millions like the green revolution did, but this claim is false.
- jimbob45 4y ago
  >Bad thing is good because it funded good thing I’m not sure your reasoning makes sense to me.
gnarbarian 4y ago
I think the elephant in the room is that China will readily ignore any patents and produce competing products anyway. it's really tough to make money off of hardware when you are immediately undercut by the people you contract out to manufacture your product.
- tchalla 4y ago
  The other elephant in the room is that almost every other country has done the same. Examples : Germany, US and now China. Great powers are built on imitation, then innovation. https://www.discovergermany.com/the-history-of-made-in-germany/ https://www.discovergermany.com/the-history-of-made-in-germa... https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-industrial-espionage-started-americas-cotton-revolution-180967608/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-industrial-esp...
jonhohle 4y ago
Or patents should be assigned to individuals and not companies.
wnevets 4y ago
Patents are still being used to protect smaller companies from much larger corporations. Allowing these large corporations to legally ignore patents will only make things worse for the rest of us. If we need to reform patents, maybe it should be based on revenue generated. Once a company has been successfully "incentivized" for their "innovation" the patent expires sooner.
- dgb23 4y ago
  Wait that actually makes a ton of sense, at least in theory. Never thought about it this way. Though there’s probably a want to amortize risk of failed research projects, failed as in “didn’t contribute to a product”?
- SQueeeeeL 4y ago
  >Patents are still being used to protect smaller companies from much larger corporations. Allowing these large corporations to legally ignore patents will only make things worse for the rest of us. Truly small operations don't have the bandwidth or resources to even file for a patent. So it's pretty much only medium sized companies or those with the backing of powerful groups who take advantage of the patent system.
  - Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago
    The data are readily available.[0] It seems that small businesses actually can file patents. Even small teams and individuals can file patents, and do. I fact, patents per employee seemingly decreases as company size increases. [0]https://cdn.advocacy.sba.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/13092425/Fact-Sheet_Small-Business-Innovation-Measured-by-Patenting-Activity.pdf https://cdn.advocacy.sba.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/1309...
    - outworlder 4y ago
      While that's true, have you tried? It's a full time job.
  - ROTMetro 4y ago
randomdata 4y ago
> We should just end patents, period. In the case of seeds, they could still hide behind plant breeders' rights[1], though. [1] https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/p-14.6/ https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/p-14.6/
AlgorithmicTime 4y ago
[dead]
quantified 4y ago
End patents for anything that lives
Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago
I'm not sure that it's so clear cut. I think we should be more strict with accepting new patents however wrt prior work and extending them. Companies should be able to ignore patents as soon as they find prior work. Then it should become the responsibility of the patent holder to prove that there really isn't prior work. And there really shouldn't be a way to extend patents easily if at all. Patents are also benneficial in that they serve as a database of sorts of new discoveries (with pictures!). I can point to the exact US patent of the field effect transistor,[0] for example. [0]https://patents.google.com/patent/US1745175A/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US1745175A/en
ptero 4y ago
To me, a better approach would be to limit the patent time. 5 years of protection should be plenty of time for a company that intends to develop a technology based on its invention to get a commanding lead. Absolutist solutions can backfire in unexpected ways. We should take an iterative approach unless a single jump is the only option. My 2c.
LatteLazy 4y ago
Most people support farmers because they have a romantic idea of "Old Macdonald" instead of modern agri-corps. There is no real reason for someone to care either way in this case. Not that what the average person thinks about a niche, complex, uncertain, issue should matter...
TheRealPomax 4y ago
Do they? Any adult I've ever talked to sees patents as anything ranging from "a necessary evil" to "literally the worst thing". No one thinks it somehow helps the little guy stick it to the big players. The little guy isn't interested in sticking it to the big players, they're interested in selling to the big players.
algoatecorn 4y ago
The real use and value of a patent (or any IP mechanism) is during litigation. It's easy to say "just end patents" until two parties are in court and have nothing to form arguments around.
evdubs 4y ago
Even researchers at the Fed agree > The case against patents can be summarized briefly: there is no empirical evidence that they serve to increase innovation and productivity. There is strong evidence, instead, that patents have many negative consequences. https://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/more/2012-035/ https://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/more/2012-035/
rqtwteye 4y ago
"Most people support patents because they have this romanticized notion of some little guy in his garage inventing the next light bulb. That’s not representative of the mass offensive and defensive patterns of use by modern corporations." I often think that the bigger a company or wealthier a person is they should get less things like tax deductions, patent protection, subsidies and a lot of others.
- twblalock 4y ago
  Penalizing success is a great way to destroy innovation along with the rest of the economy.
  - rqtwteye 4y ago
    I think in total these big organizations and super wealthy people destroy innovation. They produce some cool things but at the expense of suppressing a lot of things smaller players would produce.
jandrese 4y ago
The problem with ending patents is the alternative is medieval guilds that jealously guard their knowledge, sometimes using lethal force. The great thing about patents is that they force people to publish the knowledge so it won't be lost to the sands of time when they close up shop. That said, our current patent system is problematic for sure. The bar for getting a patent has become far too low as systems have become too complex for independent patent examiners to really understand them, which has allowed many companies to amass a huge portfolio of techniques that are obvious to people in the field even if they appear novel to an external observer. At least patents expire in a reasonable amount of time. Copyright is in a far worse place.
- briantakita 4y ago
  > The problem with ending patents is the alternative is medieval guilds that jealously guard their knowledge, sometimes using lethal force. The great thing about patents is that they force people to publish the knowledge so it won't be lost to the sands of time when they close up shop. The government & large corporations use force via the justice system & jealously guard top secrets, to the point of violence as well. Property can be seized. I'd rather have a distribution of power than consolidation, which seems to attract people who are motivated by controlling other people, thereby undermining the supposed benefits. > The bar for getting a patent has become far too low The process is also expensive & serves as a barrier to innovation via market monopolies. The problem with monopolies is that they don't serve the marketplace or consumers. Monopoly is pure rent for the entities that control the monopoly. It is common for a dominant company to buy the rights to a patent only to quash the technology, all to serve the dominant company's stranglehold over a market.
- lordnacho 4y ago
  > The great thing about patents is that they force people to publish the knowledge so it won't be lost to the sands of time when they close up shop. That works when the patents is some simple thing anyone can understand. Nothing is like that anymore. Every interesting line of research requires a specialist to understand it, and every specialist represents a high opportunity cost. In practice only a few people could hope to benefit from the publication. Throw into that the fact that it's actually lawyers who write patents, and thus they are written in legalese.
GTP 4y ago
I don't think we should end patents, as I think that someone that develops an idea has the right to profit from that idea, if she chooses so (and the same holdsfor companies doing R&D). What I think should be done, is reflecting on patents/copyright duration, as in some cases it seems too long for me, to the point that in some cases we have that the profits end up in the hands of companies that have nothing to do with the original inventor/author.
strbean 4y ago
When the little person in their garage invents the next light bulb, and goes to industry players to try to license it, they just steal their idea and legally stonewall them for the remainder of their lifespan.
outworlder 4y ago
"Of course, salad is no software, and the work of plant breeders has to be protected. Otherwise they might fare like plant breeder Jim Baggett in Oregon, who in 1966 started breeding broccoli with an extra-long stem so it could be harvested more easily. He shared his novel broccoli with researchers and other breeders — until Monsanto-offspring Seminis patented a broccoli with exactly that trait in 2011. Baggett could trace more than a third of the plant material to his work. " Patents at work.
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  Yeah; we need plant patents, because without them Baggett couldn't have patented his broccolli. Oh, wait - he wouldn't have needed to patent his broccolli, because Monsanto wouldn't have been able to patent it against him.
lend000 4y ago
The main problem is that most patents last 20 years. To fix the problem, durations should be dramatically reduced (60% reduction would be a good start) and there should be provisions to protect against patent trolls, i.e. that your lawsuit if frivolous UNLESS you are either the original inventor or can prove an active attempt to commercialize the technology. There is some good to intellectual property -- it's more of a tuning problem that is currently tuned for the slow moving 1800's.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jillesvangurp 4y ago
Easier said then done. Who's "we" here? The handful of idealists that actually understand the legal issues? Or think they do? The main issue with patents is not that they exist but that the system for filing and enforcing them has been eroded to the point where it has become a highly effective tool for big corporations to enforce patents they arguably should not have received against smaller competitors. That's technically illegal but since it is super hard to argue that in a court, companies get away with anti competitive behavior. And of course they are actively supported in this by bought and payed for politicians. In the US that's called lobbying, in much of the rest of the world we'd label that corruption, nepotism, and graft. Not a good thing. But as old as power and politics is. The issue is not patents but the corruption around it. The system in the US is flooded with bull shit patents that would not be acceptable else where. A lot of those have issues with their claims being overly broad, prior art, or a complete and utter lack of novelty. This does not matter. Getting patents rubber stamped is a numbers game. You just send more patents in and eventually a few will get approved. Of course, it costs a money to register and keep patents but once you have them the system is rigged in your favor. Challenging a patent is super expensive relative to filing one. And since patent offices are under staffed, they bias in favor of approving. And also they don't like admitting they were wrong to approve. None of this happened by accident. The system was lobbied into the shape it is in today by the largest patent holders in the US (i.e. every big mega corporation you can name). They use patents as a tool to keep competitors out of the market. And they do so very successfully. To the extent that this is becoming a problem. The solution is fixing the system, not getting rid of it. A big motivation for this could simply be that patents are not globally enforceable. So, you might convince companies in the US to not compete but e.g. Chinese companies will happily take your patented thing and run with it. Good luck complaining about that in a Chinese court of law. And they seem to have bootstrapped a pretty nice high tech industry in recent decades there. Bad patents actually erode the competitive position of US based corporations. While they are tied up in courts being sued by patent trolls, their foreign competitors are free to compete without concern for such things. Great argument for getting politicians off their ass. The problem exists to a lesser extent in other jurisdictions of course. But the US is the most paralyzed by this.

by efitz 4y ago

alphanullmeric 4y ago

End intellectual “property” in general. Unfortunately resistance seems to be coming from artists and the like just as much as big corporations.

kahrl 4y ago

Something something baby bathwater.

efitz 4y ago
I think that baby died a long time ago.
zellyn 4y ago
Something something giant fire-breathing, acid-spewing, tentacle-flinging, city-crushing kaiju bathwater.

dylan604 4y ago

or end the offensive/defensive patterns used by modern corporations? someone invents a thing, someone else uses thing for evil. what to do? we ban the thing!!! yes, of course, that's the solution. don't punish the one that did the evil. <hangsheadinshameatthenotion>

paulmd 4y ago
the federal reserve doesn't think there's empirical evidence that patents have positive societal benefits and they think there are very empirical and measurable harms. https://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/more/2012-035 https://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/more/2012-035 this isn't "generally good thing that some people abuse", this is the entire patent system is fundamentally not producing any explicable benefits and significant measurable harm, there is no reason to keep it around. the scenario about the inventor who comes up with the better lightbulb in his garage doesn't happen. if it does, somebody else copies his idea (it's gotta be fairly trivial for someone to make it in a garage) or opens up their own patent portfolios and finds an overbroad patent that describes some trivial component or practice that is widely used, and drags him into litigation that bankrupts him for the rest of his life. in software the example would be that you get dragged by someone who has patented "e-commerce on a website" or "software updates over the internet" and the money to have lawyers fight it while you empty your warchest. no "I would simply..." or "but a law firm would do that pro-bono" is necessary here, either, those are both real-world examples, someone tried to shake down Newegg in 2015 with the e-commerce patent for example. And it worked for a lot of previous victims, none of whom felt like Newegg that it was worth fighting on principle or for direct economic benefit alone. Patents literally kill companies, and they don't actually produce the intended innovations. And that's the federal reserve saying it. There were debates on ending it in the 50s, and they made the wrong decision. > If we did not have a patent system, it would be irresponsible, on the basis of our present knowledge of its economic consequences, to recommend instituting one. But since we have had a patent system for a long time, it would be irresponsible, on the basis of our present knowledge, to recommend abolishing it. The harms have now clearly exceeded the benefits of keeping it. It may not have been worth the trouble of abolishing it in 1958, it is now.
- dylan604 4y ago
  [flagged]

deelowe 4y ago

I personally know several people who were able to start successful careers solely based on their inventions and the protections afforded to them via patents. This seems extremely short sighted. In fact, the bigger issue to me is that patents don't matter for companies located in countries where they are not recognized (e.g. China). The biggest issue with "some little guy in his garage" inventing stuff these days is that within weeks of selling it on amazon, it'll be copied, cost reduced to a essentially non-functional version, and sold for 1/3 the price all while pushing him down in the search results via borderline illegal SEO strategies. The patent system needs to be fixed, not done away with.

version_five 4y ago
A bigger issue with for the little guy is his garage is that if his actually innovation contains some trivial subcomponent that's part of a patent troll or large competitors portfolio, they can can sued into the ground, either to leech of their success or to prevent competition. patents favor big companies and trolls, and as a legal instrument it's basically impossible to change that because the costs and complexity always favor large incumbents. I agree it's time to drop them
- ROTMetro 4y ago
  Show me where this has happened? You present a theoretical against an actual. I know more people who have been enabled via patents than have been squashed (I know of zero squashed who were actually doing something new/novel).
  - namibj 4y ago
    Arithmetic coding?
- whichquestion 4y ago
  Would it be better to make patents have shorter lifespans before entering the public domain from companies of a certain size? Maybe that would level out the playing field and allow small players to be more competitive against behemoth corporations and patent trolls.

photochemsyn 4y ago

It's unclear in the technological sector whether the patents or the exclusive licensing of those patents are the real issue. In academic research at universities, patented research is not the problem - it's more the exclusive licensing of those patents (taxpayer-financed, as well) to private interests. A better option would be to allow any interest to use academic patents for something like a flat fee / percentage of profits arrangement. In general though, I agree - intellectual property gives too much power to the financial sector and the lifetime of patents and copyrights should be cut in half.

HDThoreaun 4y ago

Patented seeds have funded GMO research which has saved literally hundreds of millions if not billions of lives through famine reduction. Yes it sucks for farmers, but I can't see how it has been anything other than absolute boon for humanity.

sethjgore 4y ago
Absolute boon for “humanity” is a such abstract notion. The reality is that farmers are robbed and food we eat are way less nutrient dense, etc etc. boon…for whom?
- ROTMetro 4y ago
  Would there be another way to feed 7+ billion people? How many human lives would you trade for more nutrient dense food?
Cerium 4y ago
Autocorrect between boon and boondoggle?
wazoox 4y ago
> Patented seeds have funded GMO research which has saved literally hundreds of millions if not billions of lives through famine reduction. Sources? References? Sounds like PR bullshit from Syngenta, frankly. For a start, half the world population is living off subsistence agriculture, i.e. not patented nor GMO seeds.
- whimsicalism 4y ago
  > half the world population is living off subsistence agriculture Doubt GMOs have yet saved hundreds of millions like the green revolution did, but this claim is false.
jimbob45 4y ago
>Bad thing is good because it funded good thing I’m not sure your reasoning makes sense to me.

gnarbarian 4y ago

I think the elephant in the room is that China will readily ignore any patents and produce competing products anyway. it's really tough to make money off of hardware when you are immediately undercut by the people you contract out to manufacture your product.

tchalla 4y ago
The other elephant in the room is that almost every other country has done the same. Examples : Germany, US and now China. Great powers are built on imitation, then innovation. https://www.discovergermany.com/the-history-of-made-in-germany/ https://www.discovergermany.com/the-history-of-made-in-germa... https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-industrial-espionage-started-americas-cotton-revolution-180967608/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-industrial-esp...

jonhohle 4y ago

Or patents should be assigned to individuals and not companies.

wnevets 4y ago

Patents are still being used to protect smaller companies from much larger corporations. Allowing these large corporations to legally ignore patents will only make things worse for the rest of us. If we need to reform patents, maybe it should be based on revenue generated. Once a company has been successfully "incentivized" for their "innovation" the patent expires sooner.

dgb23 4y ago
Wait that actually makes a ton of sense, at least in theory. Never thought about it this way. Though there’s probably a want to amortize risk of failed research projects, failed as in “didn’t contribute to a product”?
SQueeeeeL 4y ago
>Patents are still being used to protect smaller companies from much larger corporations. Allowing these large corporations to legally ignore patents will only make things worse for the rest of us. Truly small operations don't have the bandwidth or resources to even file for a patent. So it's pretty much only medium sized companies or those with the backing of powerful groups who take advantage of the patent system.
- Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago
  The data are readily available.[0] It seems that small businesses actually can file patents. Even small teams and individuals can file patents, and do. I fact, patents per employee seemingly decreases as company size increases. [0]https://cdn.advocacy.sba.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/13092425/Fact-Sheet_Small-Business-Innovation-Measured-by-Patenting-Activity.pdf https://cdn.advocacy.sba.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/1309...
  - outworlder 4y ago
    While that's true, have you tried? It's a full time job.
- ROTMetro 4y ago

randomdata 4y ago

> We should just end patents, period. In the case of seeds, they could still hide behind plant breeders' rights[1], though. [1] https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/p-14.6/ https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/p-14.6/

AlgorithmicTime 4y ago

[dead]

quantified 4y ago

End patents for anything that lives

Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago

I'm not sure that it's so clear cut. I think we should be more strict with accepting new patents however wrt prior work and extending them. Companies should be able to ignore patents as soon as they find prior work. Then it should become the responsibility of the patent holder to prove that there really isn't prior work. And there really shouldn't be a way to extend patents easily if at all. Patents are also benneficial in that they serve as a database of sorts of new discoveries (with pictures!). I can point to the exact US patent of the field effect transistor,[0] for example. [0]https://patents.google.com/patent/US1745175A/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US1745175A/en

ptero 4y ago

To me, a better approach would be to limit the patent time. 5 years of protection should be plenty of time for a company that intends to develop a technology based on its invention to get a commanding lead. Absolutist solutions can backfire in unexpected ways. We should take an iterative approach unless a single jump is the only option. My 2c.

LatteLazy 4y ago

Most people support farmers because they have a romantic idea of "Old Macdonald" instead of modern agri-corps. There is no real reason for someone to care either way in this case. Not that what the average person thinks about a niche, complex, uncertain, issue should matter...

TheRealPomax 4y ago

Do they? Any adult I've ever talked to sees patents as anything ranging from "a necessary evil" to "literally the worst thing". No one thinks it somehow helps the little guy stick it to the big players. The little guy isn't interested in sticking it to the big players, they're interested in selling to the big players.

algoatecorn 4y ago

The real use and value of a patent (or any IP mechanism) is during litigation. It's easy to say "just end patents" until two parties are in court and have nothing to form arguments around.

evdubs 4y ago

Even researchers at the Fed agree > The case against patents can be summarized briefly: there is no empirical evidence that they serve to increase innovation and productivity. There is strong evidence, instead, that patents have many negative consequences. https://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/more/2012-035/ https://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/more/2012-035/

rqtwteye 4y ago

"Most people support patents because they have this romanticized notion of some little guy in his garage inventing the next light bulb. That’s not representative of the mass offensive and defensive patterns of use by modern corporations." I often think that the bigger a company or wealthier a person is they should get less things like tax deductions, patent protection, subsidies and a lot of others.

twblalock 4y ago
Penalizing success is a great way to destroy innovation along with the rest of the economy.
- rqtwteye 4y ago
  I think in total these big organizations and super wealthy people destroy innovation. They produce some cool things but at the expense of suppressing a lot of things smaller players would produce.

jandrese 4y ago

The problem with ending patents is the alternative is medieval guilds that jealously guard their knowledge, sometimes using lethal force. The great thing about patents is that they force people to publish the knowledge so it won't be lost to the sands of time when they close up shop. That said, our current patent system is problematic for sure. The bar for getting a patent has become far too low as systems have become too complex for independent patent examiners to really understand them, which has allowed many companies to amass a huge portfolio of techniques that are obvious to people in the field even if they appear novel to an external observer. At least patents expire in a reasonable amount of time. Copyright is in a far worse place.

briantakita 4y ago
> The problem with ending patents is the alternative is medieval guilds that jealously guard their knowledge, sometimes using lethal force. The great thing about patents is that they force people to publish the knowledge so it won't be lost to the sands of time when they close up shop. The government & large corporations use force via the justice system & jealously guard top secrets, to the point of violence as well. Property can be seized. I'd rather have a distribution of power than consolidation, which seems to attract people who are motivated by controlling other people, thereby undermining the supposed benefits. > The bar for getting a patent has become far too low The process is also expensive & serves as a barrier to innovation via market monopolies. The problem with monopolies is that they don't serve the marketplace or consumers. Monopoly is pure rent for the entities that control the monopoly. It is common for a dominant company to buy the rights to a patent only to quash the technology, all to serve the dominant company's stranglehold over a market.
lordnacho 4y ago
> The great thing about patents is that they force people to publish the knowledge so it won't be lost to the sands of time when they close up shop. That works when the patents is some simple thing anyone can understand. Nothing is like that anymore. Every interesting line of research requires a specialist to understand it, and every specialist represents a high opportunity cost. In practice only a few people could hope to benefit from the publication. Throw into that the fact that it's actually lawyers who write patents, and thus they are written in legalese.

GTP 4y ago

I don't think we should end patents, as I think that someone that develops an idea has the right to profit from that idea, if she chooses so (and the same holdsfor companies doing R&D). What I think should be done, is reflecting on patents/copyright duration, as in some cases it seems too long for me, to the point that in some cases we have that the profits end up in the hands of companies that have nothing to do with the original inventor/author.

strbean 4y ago

When the little person in their garage invents the next light bulb, and goes to industry players to try to license it, they just steal their idea and legally stonewall them for the remainder of their lifespan.

outworlder 4y ago

"Of course, salad is no software, and the work of plant breeders has to be protected. Otherwise they might fare like plant breeder Jim Baggett in Oregon, who in 1966 started breeding broccoli with an extra-long stem so it could be harvested more easily. He shared his novel broccoli with researchers and other breeders — until Monsanto-offspring Seminis patented a broccoli with exactly that trait in 2011. Baggett could trace more than a third of the plant material to his work. " Patents at work.

denton-scratch 4y ago
Yeah; we need plant patents, because without them Baggett couldn't have patented his broccolli. Oh, wait - he wouldn't have needed to patent his broccolli, because Monsanto wouldn't have been able to patent it against him.

lend000 4y ago

The main problem is that most patents last 20 years. To fix the problem, durations should be dramatically reduced (60% reduction would be a good start) and there should be provisions to protect against patent trolls, i.e. that your lawsuit if frivolous UNLESS you are either the original inventor or can prove an active attempt to commercialize the technology. There is some good to intellectual property -- it's more of a tuning problem that is currently tuned for the slow moving 1800's.

deleted 4y ago

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jillesvangurp 4y ago

Easier said then done. Who's "we" here? The handful of idealists that actually understand the legal issues? Or think they do? The main issue with patents is not that they exist but that the system for filing and enforcing them has been eroded to the point where it has become a highly effective tool for big corporations to enforce patents they arguably should not have received against smaller competitors. That's technically illegal but since it is super hard to argue that in a court, companies get away with anti competitive behavior. And of course they are actively supported in this by bought and payed for politicians. In the US that's called lobbying, in much of the rest of the world we'd label that corruption, nepotism, and graft. Not a good thing. But as old as power and politics is. The issue is not patents but the corruption around it. The system in the US is flooded with bull shit patents that would not be acceptable else where. A lot of those have issues with their claims being overly broad, prior art, or a complete and utter lack of novelty. This does not matter. Getting patents rubber stamped is a numbers game. You just send more patents in and eventually a few will get approved. Of course, it costs a money to register and keep patents but once you have them the system is rigged in your favor. Challenging a patent is super expensive relative to filing one. And since patent offices are under staffed, they bias in favor of approving. And also they don't like admitting they were wrong to approve. None of this happened by accident. The system was lobbied into the shape it is in today by the largest patent holders in the US (i.e. every big mega corporation you can name). They use patents as a tool to keep competitors out of the market. And they do so very successfully. To the extent that this is becoming a problem. The solution is fixing the system, not getting rid of it. A big motivation for this could simply be that patents are not globally enforceable. So, you might convince companies in the US to not compete but e.g. Chinese companies will happily take your patented thing and run with it. Good luck complaining about that in a Chinese court of law. And they seem to have bootstrapped a pretty nice high tech industry in recent decades there. Bad patents actually erode the competitive position of US based corporations. While they are tied up in courts being sued by patent trolls, their foreign competitors are free to compete without concern for such things. Great argument for getting politicians off their ass. The problem exists to a lesser extent in other jurisdictions of course. But the US is the most paralyzed by this.