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Honestly the entire patent system should be thrown out / winded down. Nothing but dead weight, especially when huge countries like China completely ignore them.

Honestly the entire patent system should be thrown out / winded down. Nothing but dead weight, especially when huge countries like China completely ignore them. We can find other ways to finance "innovation".

RobotToaster 4y ago
I honestly can't think of a single incidence of the patent system promoting innovation in the last 20 years. For small companies patents are basically worthless, a big company can just play legal ropeadope until they run out of money.
- bdowling 4y ago
  A small company (e.g., a startup) will never sue to enforce its patents because suing is too expensive. Because they won’t sue, they won’t be able to license the patents to anyone. For a startup, however, patents can still have value in at least the following ways: 1. Patents on improvements may discourage larger competitors from suing the startup for infringing the competitors' patents, because the startup may counter-claim infringement of its improvement patents. 2. A potential acquirer may want to acquire the company for its patents. The acquirer may be an established competitor who does have the resources to assert the patents against other competitors, either offensively or defensively. 3. Patents may encourage investors who see patents as residual assets that would be liquidated if the company fails.
  - em3rgent0rdr 4y ago
    Value (1) illustrates the absurdity of the patent system. Innovation, the thing the patent system ostensibly protects, is put at risk by..patents. And so the value of a patent for inventors is to protect their innovation from...patents.
    - bdowling 4y ago
      There are very few places in law where you can legally stake a claim within someone else's territory and exploit it for profit. Our patent system is one of them because it allows one inventor to patent an improvement to another inventor's patented invention. That should (1) encourage early inventors to continue to invest in improving their inventions before someone else does and (2) encourage new inventors to improve on existing, still-patented inventions by giving them ways to profit from their improvements.
      - bdowling 4y ago
        To be clear, that anyone can improve upon anyone else’s invention and claim their improvement as their own, to the exclusion of the prior inventor, is what drives innovation.
- solomatov 4y ago
  >I honestly can't think of a single incidence of the patent system promoting innovation in the last 20 years. Without patents pharmaceutical industry would be nearly impossible, i.e. it's very hard to come up with a compound but very easy to synthesize it as soon as it's known.
  - GabeIsko 4y ago
    I'm not sure that making it harder for people to synthesize medicine is a good thing.
    - giantrobot 4y ago
      If it costs a billion dollars per medicine to develop someone needs to pay that cost. If you don't have some sort of government medicine research branch with a budget of tens of billions to develop medicines then private companies want a way to recoup their investment and then make a profit.
      - malwrar 4y ago
        Is it impossible for government to directly fund research into needed medicines? It’s hard to see a value in this arbitrary middle layer between public interest and research. The amount of money people spend on drugs is staggering.
      - GabeIsko 4y ago
        This is too big of a discussion to have in hacker news comments. But the decline in R&D spending, the amount of grants drug companies accept from the government, the amount of government funded research that goes into new medicines, the current state of healthcare spending in the US compared to other countries, the politics of it, the success of companies such as Cost Plus Drugs, and the amount of new medicines that come from countries that have much higher medical regulations all point to the fact that this is a bad system. I have worked on a few healthcare projects, and the general consensus is that it is unsustainable to have a system where health outcomes decline, even if profits are going up. It has been prevailing wisdom that patents help recoup the (admittedly enormous when you factor in clinical trials) cost of developing new drugs, but it has put the US especially into a really awful healthcare situation compared to other nations. Long story short, there are enough sick people to provide medicine to and have a profitable business through a high volume of care, and governments are much better at providing long term financial stability than private corporations to burden the necessarily regulatory costs.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- moffkalast 4y ago
  Patents aren't there to promote innovation, they usually do the opposite so the original inventor can make bank. There's no competition or incentive to perfect your product because you're a state enforced monopoly. Take FDM 3D printers for example. Stratasys figured out and patented the first one almost 35 years ago and then proceeded to do fuck all with it, selling mediocre garbage for sky high prices. After it expired in 2009 3D printing rapidly became a whole industry with dirt cheap hardware, enabling millions to make things never before thought possible. We could've reached that point in the early 90s if it weren't for patents. Sure one might say, it also forces the patentee to disclose the inns and outs of the invention, but frankly those patent descriptions are often as bare bones as possible and you'd get there reverse engineering any product far sooner than 20 years.
resonious 4y ago
I have a family member who used to work in pharmaceutical R&D. I personally know nothing about the industry so maybe it's nonsense, but she once told me that nobody would make anything in that industry if it wasn't for patents. R&D costs are astronomical. Once you release a drug, it needs high margins in order to make back the R&D costs. But the problem is: once you release your drug it immediately gets reverse engineered and other facilities can mass-produce it and undercut you hard. Anyway it's likely I misunderstood something there since again I know nothing. But after hearing that, I considered that while software patents are obviously bad, maybe they make some sense in other industries.
- CameronNemo 4y ago
  Pharmaceutical research can be funded with public money (and often already are to some degree). Bounty programs, grants, et cetera. A lot easier to manage those than the obtuse patent bureaucracy.
  - nceqs3 4y ago
    Why do people comment so confidently on industries they don't understand?
    - CameronNemo 4y ago
      Why do people jump to defend monopolistic, price-gouging pharmaceutical companies?
      - nickff 4y ago
        The parent didn’t defend anyone.
        CameronNemo 4y ago
        Yeah because the parent comment had nothing material to say. They basically just told me to shut up for no reason other than "you have no idea what you are talking about (but I do)".
nix23 4y ago
>especially when huge countries like China completely ignore them. Excellent point, and it's the same with some proposed AI Laws.
brmgb 4y ago
We need a way to encourage innovation and patents do work for that. The issue is not patent per see, the issue is the US patent office. There is next to zero proper due diligence done for a patent to be awarded and there is no consequence to the office for issuing invalid patents. Just significantly raising examination fees, getting the patent office on the hook for issuance of invalid patents and fining companies filling for frivolous patents would solve most if not all of the current issues. I leave investigating why it's not done as an exercise to the reader.

RobotToaster 4y ago

I honestly can't think of a single incidence of the patent system promoting innovation in the last 20 years. For small companies patents are basically worthless, a big company can just play legal ropeadope until they run out of money.

bdowling 4y ago
A small company (e.g., a startup) will never sue to enforce its patents because suing is too expensive. Because they won’t sue, they won’t be able to license the patents to anyone. For a startup, however, patents can still have value in at least the following ways: 1. Patents on improvements may discourage larger competitors from suing the startup for infringing the competitors' patents, because the startup may counter-claim infringement of its improvement patents. 2. A potential acquirer may want to acquire the company for its patents. The acquirer may be an established competitor who does have the resources to assert the patents against other competitors, either offensively or defensively. 3. Patents may encourage investors who see patents as residual assets that would be liquidated if the company fails.
- em3rgent0rdr 4y ago
  Value (1) illustrates the absurdity of the patent system. Innovation, the thing the patent system ostensibly protects, is put at risk by..patents. And so the value of a patent for inventors is to protect their innovation from...patents.
  - bdowling 4y ago
    There are very few places in law where you can legally stake a claim within someone else's territory and exploit it for profit. Our patent system is one of them because it allows one inventor to patent an improvement to another inventor's patented invention. That should (1) encourage early inventors to continue to invest in improving their inventions before someone else does and (2) encourage new inventors to improve on existing, still-patented inventions by giving them ways to profit from their improvements.
    - bdowling 4y ago
      To be clear, that anyone can improve upon anyone else’s invention and claim their improvement as their own, to the exclusion of the prior inventor, is what drives innovation.
solomatov 4y ago
>I honestly can't think of a single incidence of the patent system promoting innovation in the last 20 years. Without patents pharmaceutical industry would be nearly impossible, i.e. it's very hard to come up with a compound but very easy to synthesize it as soon as it's known.
- GabeIsko 4y ago
  I'm not sure that making it harder for people to synthesize medicine is a good thing.
  - giantrobot 4y ago
    If it costs a billion dollars per medicine to develop someone needs to pay that cost. If you don't have some sort of government medicine research branch with a budget of tens of billions to develop medicines then private companies want a way to recoup their investment and then make a profit.
    - malwrar 4y ago
      Is it impossible for government to directly fund research into needed medicines? It’s hard to see a value in this arbitrary middle layer between public interest and research. The amount of money people spend on drugs is staggering.
    - GabeIsko 4y ago
      This is too big of a discussion to have in hacker news comments. But the decline in R&D spending, the amount of grants drug companies accept from the government, the amount of government funded research that goes into new medicines, the current state of healthcare spending in the US compared to other countries, the politics of it, the success of companies such as Cost Plus Drugs, and the amount of new medicines that come from countries that have much higher medical regulations all point to the fact that this is a bad system. I have worked on a few healthcare projects, and the general consensus is that it is unsustainable to have a system where health outcomes decline, even if profits are going up. It has been prevailing wisdom that patents help recoup the (admittedly enormous when you factor in clinical trials) cost of developing new drugs, but it has put the US especially into a really awful healthcare situation compared to other nations. Long story short, there are enough sick people to provide medicine to and have a profitable business through a high volume of care, and governments are much better at providing long term financial stability than private corporations to burden the necessarily regulatory costs.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
moffkalast 4y ago
Patents aren't there to promote innovation, they usually do the opposite so the original inventor can make bank. There's no competition or incentive to perfect your product because you're a state enforced monopoly. Take FDM 3D printers for example. Stratasys figured out and patented the first one almost 35 years ago and then proceeded to do fuck all with it, selling mediocre garbage for sky high prices. After it expired in 2009 3D printing rapidly became a whole industry with dirt cheap hardware, enabling millions to make things never before thought possible. We could've reached that point in the early 90s if it weren't for patents. Sure one might say, it also forces the patentee to disclose the inns and outs of the invention, but frankly those patent descriptions are often as bare bones as possible and you'd get there reverse engineering any product far sooner than 20 years.

resonious 4y ago

I have a family member who used to work in pharmaceutical R&D. I personally know nothing about the industry so maybe it's nonsense, but she once told me that nobody would make anything in that industry if it wasn't for patents. R&D costs are astronomical. Once you release a drug, it needs high margins in order to make back the R&D costs. But the problem is: once you release your drug it immediately gets reverse engineered and other facilities can mass-produce it and undercut you hard. Anyway it's likely I misunderstood something there since again I know nothing. But after hearing that, I considered that while software patents are obviously bad, maybe they make some sense in other industries.

CameronNemo 4y ago
Pharmaceutical research can be funded with public money (and often already are to some degree). Bounty programs, grants, et cetera. A lot easier to manage those than the obtuse patent bureaucracy.
- nceqs3 4y ago
  Why do people comment so confidently on industries they don't understand?
  - CameronNemo 4y ago
    Why do people jump to defend monopolistic, price-gouging pharmaceutical companies?
    - nickff 4y ago
      The parent didn’t defend anyone.
      - CameronNemo 4y ago
        Yeah because the parent comment had nothing material to say. They basically just told me to shut up for no reason other than "you have no idea what you are talking about (but I do)".

nix23 4y ago

>especially when huge countries like China completely ignore them. Excellent point, and it's the same with some proposed AI Laws.

brmgb 4y ago

We need a way to encourage innovation and patents do work for that. The issue is not patent per see, the issue is the US patent office. There is next to zero proper due diligence done for a patent to be awarded and there is no consequence to the office for issuing invalid patents. Just significantly raising examination fees, getting the patent office on the hook for issuance of invalid patents and fining companies filling for frivolous patents would solve most if not all of the current issues. I leave investigating why it's not done as an exercise to the reader.