7 ms·

I'm starting to believe that all patents are at best ineffective, and at worse harmful in a globalized world, because it's not like airpods clones off aliexpres

by judge2020 3y ago

I'm starting to believe that all patents are at best ineffective, and at worse harmful in a globalized world, because it's not like airpods clones off aliexpress are actually being stopped at the port all too often.

rocqua 3y ago
I could imagine patents limited to physical designs, with a lifespan of say 5 years to actually be beneficial to innovation. Perhaps also a requirement to license patents at a 'reasonable rate'. I'm thinking of the 'sawstop' and 'festool domino' woodworking tools here. Which are important innovations that were probably motivated by patents, but whose patents have run long.
- xahrepap 3y ago
  I actually think that Sawstop (in general. Might be some details that are bogus) is a great example of the patent system working as intended. The inventor reached out to several saw makers to license his new invention. None of them took it seriously. So he went and started a company with his new patent and became successful. Then other companies (Bosch specifically) tried to rip his tech off after they saw how effective it is, and he got to sue them and win. Also, their patents are about to or have already expired (https://www.reddit.com/r/Tools/comments/p6bhhb/so_are_the_sawstop_patents_really_about_to_expire/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Tools/comments/p6bhhb/so_are_the_sa...) Sounds like the 20 years gave him just enough time to: 1. Attempt to license the product and fail 2. Create a company 3. Market the company / product effectively 4. Exit ( https://www.sawstop.com/news/sawstop-to-be-acquired-by-tts-tooltechnic-systems/ https://www.sawstop.com/news/sawstop-to-be-acquired-by-tts-t... ) And now competition will begin to roll out their similar saws. I think 5 years would've been far too short for him. He would've been squashed. There would've been no motivation for companies to license his tech or buy out his company. They would've just waited 5 measly years and then stomped him. Now. If this was software, this whole thing would've played out in what? 5 years? 10 tops? So 20 years, to me, seems to be about right for some things. but absolutely TERRIBLE for others.
  - Taywee 3y ago
    I think that exemplifies why the patent system should at the very least not have the same rules and terms for physical products as for software, if it should exist for software at all. The time and capital investments to start up are just so dramatically different.
    - xahrepap 3y ago
      I absolutely agree. My point was more that using Saw Stop as an illustration of the broken system is a poor one. Because I think the patent on physical tech enabled a real disruption to the status-quo. Allowing "the little guy" to establish themself as a real competitor to some huge names.
      - shagie 3y ago
        Another "working as intended" patent: Light-reflecting board game https://patents.google.com/patent/US7264242 https://patents.google.com/patent/US7264242 And the lawsuit over it: https://generalpatent.com/professor-s-company-wins-1-6-million-patent-infringement-lawsuit-over-board-games.html https://generalpatent.com/professor-s-company-wins-1-6-milli... > November 26, 2012 - Innovention Toys LLC, a company headed by a Colorado professor named Michael Larson, won its patent infringement lawsuit against MGA, Wal-Mart Stores and Toys "R" Us. A federal jury in New Orleans found that the defendants had infringed Innovention's patent on a strategy board game using lasers and mirrors. --- Back in the days of http://www.gamecabinet.com http://www.gamecabinet.com being one of the primary sources for board games on the web you'll note a search on it: http://www.gamecabinet.com/info/PatentSearch.html http://www.gamecabinet.com/info/PatentSearch.html One of the things this let people do is find games that were patented, but never published. Sid Sackson wrote in A Gamut of Games: > The files of patents that have been granted are a fruitful hunting ground for forgotten games, although going through these files, as anyone who has ever been involved in a patent search well knows, is a time consuming job. Often the patented games are downright silly, such as a set of dominos made of rubber so that they can double as ink erasers (No. 729,489) or a sliding block puzzle with edible pieces so that a player who despairs of a solution can find collation in gratifying his stomach (No. 1,274,294). Often the patents are repetitious: There are over a thousand different baseball games. The publishing of a patent maintains the ideas - even if they never got anywhere. If you know how to look, its an archive of decades of board games rules... written in patentease.
robertlagrant 3y ago
This is a bad example though, because everyone knows who Apple are. There's no point inventing anything as a new company if an existing one can just copy it and outspend your marketing.
- strbean 3y ago
  Patent law doesn't provide you much protection unless you can outspend infringers in court.
  - lazide 3y ago
    And the infringers can be reached/influenced by the court. Random resellers on China have no reason to care about US patents.
- Taywee 3y ago
  And there's no point inventing anything as an established company if you can just aggressively buy IP and leverage existing property. There's a balance to how much IP protection actually encourages innovation, and we're far on one side of it.
  - TimPC 3y ago
    If companies choose not to innovate and purchase their innovation instead that still creates a market for innovation and a source of funds for doing so. I'm far from convinced this is the case as most big tech companies have entire research divisions regularly producing papers and patents and we've seen some big AI products recently launch out of internal big tech initiatives.
- lend000 3y ago
  You need to have enforceable NDA's, keep things as trade secrets, and have a well built organization that simply continuously out-innovates AND out-executes the competition. I think patents are okay, but the maximum duration should be 5 years and there needs to be some proof of utilization of the patent to sue for damages. 20 year patents are ridiculous, and it seems like even in the 1800's that should have been considered a bit extreme.
JamesBarney 3y ago
I don't think this true of all patents. Patents for drugs are obviously necessary in the current environment. But software patents are definitely bogus.
- contravariant 3y ago
  I agree that it is the obvious choice for medicine, but is it really the best option? Do we really have no other methods to fund medicine? Is it worth prioritising new patentable discoveries over other ones like making drugs cheaper or using them more effectively?
  - hutzlibu 3y ago
    "Do we really have no other methods to fund medicine? " We have. Public funded (also via universities) and donation based research. But investment money is kind of big and if it would suddenly disappear, it will hurt current research as most (?) of it is dependant on it. But all that money would not necessarily disappear, when patents suddelny gets abolished, as there is also the option of increased secrecy. Meaning they make effective pills, and work with regulators to test them - but share little about the manufacturing process. I believe that is already happening to some extent, but would likely increase a lot.
    - kelnos 3y ago
      That public funding has to come from somewhere, though, to the tune of quite a few billions of dollars. Do we really believe the tax increases required will be palatable to voters, and politically possible for elected officials? In the US, we can't even get universal public-funded healthcare. Not sure the increased secrecy would help all that much. Is drug manufacturing that complicated that a motivated company could not reverse engineer a new drug solely from its off-the-shelf product, without too much trouble?
      - flangola7 3y ago
        Where is that money coming from right now? Ultimately it's still coming out of the average person's pocket.
loup-vaillant 3y ago
Besides, airpods clones off aliexpress are supposed to be stopped by trademark law to begin with…
- jojobas 3y ago
  They're typically not in breach of trademark, but airpods are protected with a bunch of "design patents" as well. https://www.patentlyapple.com/2020/08/apple-has-been-granted-an-additional-14-design-patents-for-airpods-pro-with-flexible-silicon-tips-and-not.html https://www.patentlyapple.com/2020/08/apple-has-been-granted...
r00fus 3y ago
Patents are a feudalist holdover in a modern capitalist economy.
vxNsr 3y ago
That’s a different problem entirely. It used to be stores had to carefully source the products they sold to make sure they weren’t selling something that wasn’t allowed to be sold in the US, with the advent of Amazon that all went out the window, now the name of the game is defraud everyone you can and claim innocence on the backend when caught. “Our algorithm didn’t catch it, we stopped selling it as soon as we were made aware it was definitely illegal”. The funniest hypocrisy of Silicon Valley/tech culture is that it’s full of people who think the rules and laws don’t apply to them but they vote every year for more and more regulations, that they then brazenly flout and act all indignant that the government has failed to do the things they voted for (and thus we need more government) but then refuse to actually follow.

rocqua 3y ago

I could imagine patents limited to physical designs, with a lifespan of say 5 years to actually be beneficial to innovation. Perhaps also a requirement to license patents at a 'reasonable rate'. I'm thinking of the 'sawstop' and 'festool domino' woodworking tools here. Which are important innovations that were probably motivated by patents, but whose patents have run long.

xahrepap 3y ago
I actually think that Sawstop (in general. Might be some details that are bogus) is a great example of the patent system working as intended. The inventor reached out to several saw makers to license his new invention. None of them took it seriously. So he went and started a company with his new patent and became successful. Then other companies (Bosch specifically) tried to rip his tech off after they saw how effective it is, and he got to sue them and win. Also, their patents are about to or have already expired (https://www.reddit.com/r/Tools/comments/p6bhhb/so_are_the_sawstop_patents_really_about_to_expire/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Tools/comments/p6bhhb/so_are_the_sa...) Sounds like the 20 years gave him just enough time to: 1. Attempt to license the product and fail 2. Create a company 3. Market the company / product effectively 4. Exit ( https://www.sawstop.com/news/sawstop-to-be-acquired-by-tts-tooltechnic-systems/ https://www.sawstop.com/news/sawstop-to-be-acquired-by-tts-t... ) And now competition will begin to roll out their similar saws. I think 5 years would've been far too short for him. He would've been squashed. There would've been no motivation for companies to license his tech or buy out his company. They would've just waited 5 measly years and then stomped him. Now. If this was software, this whole thing would've played out in what? 5 years? 10 tops? So 20 years, to me, seems to be about right for some things. but absolutely TERRIBLE for others.
- Taywee 3y ago
  I think that exemplifies why the patent system should at the very least not have the same rules and terms for physical products as for software, if it should exist for software at all. The time and capital investments to start up are just so dramatically different.
  - xahrepap 3y ago
    I absolutely agree. My point was more that using Saw Stop as an illustration of the broken system is a poor one. Because I think the patent on physical tech enabled a real disruption to the status-quo. Allowing "the little guy" to establish themself as a real competitor to some huge names.
    - shagie 3y ago
      Another "working as intended" patent: Light-reflecting board game https://patents.google.com/patent/US7264242 https://patents.google.com/patent/US7264242 And the lawsuit over it: https://generalpatent.com/professor-s-company-wins-1-6-million-patent-infringement-lawsuit-over-board-games.html https://generalpatent.com/professor-s-company-wins-1-6-milli... > November 26, 2012 - Innovention Toys LLC, a company headed by a Colorado professor named Michael Larson, won its patent infringement lawsuit against MGA, Wal-Mart Stores and Toys "R" Us. A federal jury in New Orleans found that the defendants had infringed Innovention's patent on a strategy board game using lasers and mirrors. --- Back in the days of http://www.gamecabinet.com http://www.gamecabinet.com being one of the primary sources for board games on the web you'll note a search on it: http://www.gamecabinet.com/info/PatentSearch.html http://www.gamecabinet.com/info/PatentSearch.html One of the things this let people do is find games that were patented, but never published. Sid Sackson wrote in A Gamut of Games: > The files of patents that have been granted are a fruitful hunting ground for forgotten games, although going through these files, as anyone who has ever been involved in a patent search well knows, is a time consuming job. Often the patented games are downright silly, such as a set of dominos made of rubber so that they can double as ink erasers (No. 729,489) or a sliding block puzzle with edible pieces so that a player who despairs of a solution can find collation in gratifying his stomach (No. 1,274,294). Often the patents are repetitious: There are over a thousand different baseball games. The publishing of a patent maintains the ideas - even if they never got anywhere. If you know how to look, its an archive of decades of board games rules... written in patentease.

robertlagrant 3y ago

This is a bad example though, because everyone knows who Apple are. There's no point inventing anything as a new company if an existing one can just copy it and outspend your marketing.

strbean 3y ago
Patent law doesn't provide you much protection unless you can outspend infringers in court.
- lazide 3y ago
  And the infringers can be reached/influenced by the court. Random resellers on China have no reason to care about US patents.
Taywee 3y ago
And there's no point inventing anything as an established company if you can just aggressively buy IP and leverage existing property. There's a balance to how much IP protection actually encourages innovation, and we're far on one side of it.
- TimPC 3y ago
  If companies choose not to innovate and purchase their innovation instead that still creates a market for innovation and a source of funds for doing so. I'm far from convinced this is the case as most big tech companies have entire research divisions regularly producing papers and patents and we've seen some big AI products recently launch out of internal big tech initiatives.
lend000 3y ago
You need to have enforceable NDA's, keep things as trade secrets, and have a well built organization that simply continuously out-innovates AND out-executes the competition. I think patents are okay, but the maximum duration should be 5 years and there needs to be some proof of utilization of the patent to sue for damages. 20 year patents are ridiculous, and it seems like even in the 1800's that should have been considered a bit extreme.

JamesBarney 3y ago

I don't think this true of all patents. Patents for drugs are obviously necessary in the current environment. But software patents are definitely bogus.

contravariant 3y ago
I agree that it is the obvious choice for medicine, but is it really the best option? Do we really have no other methods to fund medicine? Is it worth prioritising new patentable discoveries over other ones like making drugs cheaper or using them more effectively?
- hutzlibu 3y ago
  "Do we really have no other methods to fund medicine? " We have. Public funded (also via universities) and donation based research. But investment money is kind of big and if it would suddenly disappear, it will hurt current research as most (?) of it is dependant on it. But all that money would not necessarily disappear, when patents suddelny gets abolished, as there is also the option of increased secrecy. Meaning they make effective pills, and work with regulators to test them - but share little about the manufacturing process. I believe that is already happening to some extent, but would likely increase a lot.
  - kelnos 3y ago
    That public funding has to come from somewhere, though, to the tune of quite a few billions of dollars. Do we really believe the tax increases required will be palatable to voters, and politically possible for elected officials? In the US, we can't even get universal public-funded healthcare. Not sure the increased secrecy would help all that much. Is drug manufacturing that complicated that a motivated company could not reverse engineer a new drug solely from its off-the-shelf product, without too much trouble?
    - flangola7 3y ago
      Where is that money coming from right now? Ultimately it's still coming out of the average person's pocket.

loup-vaillant 3y ago

Besides, airpods clones off aliexpress are supposed to be stopped by trademark law to begin with…

jojobas 3y ago
They're typically not in breach of trademark, but airpods are protected with a bunch of "design patents" as well. https://www.patentlyapple.com/2020/08/apple-has-been-granted-an-additional-14-design-patents-for-airpods-pro-with-flexible-silicon-tips-and-not.html https://www.patentlyapple.com/2020/08/apple-has-been-granted...

r00fus 3y ago

Patents are a feudalist holdover in a modern capitalist economy.

vxNsr 3y ago

That’s a different problem entirely. It used to be stores had to carefully source the products they sold to make sure they weren’t selling something that wasn’t allowed to be sold in the US, with the advent of Amazon that all went out the window, now the name of the game is defraud everyone you can and claim innocence on the backend when caught. “Our algorithm didn’t catch it, we stopped selling it as soon as we were made aware it was definitely illegal”. The funniest hypocrisy of Silicon Valley/tech culture is that it’s full of people who think the rules and laws don’t apply to them but they vote every year for more and more regulations, that they then brazenly flout and act all indignant that the government has failed to do the things they voted for (and thus we need more government) but then refuse to actually follow.