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> Fuck the patents, they just make the drugs. > Drug patents are bad. The pragmatic good in the short term is that they got us the covid vaccine, and will get

> Fuck the patents, they just make the drugs. > Drug patents are bad. The pragmatic good in the short term is that they got us the covid vaccine, and will get us malaria, and better flu shots and probably personalised cancer treatments. All of that should be nationalised, and made available worldwide for public good. > Fuck the shareholders. I wonder if you have any experience at all in a non-trivial business where heavy investment is a necessary precursor to getting something to market. For example, a hypothetical where you have to invest a million dollars cash and a year of work by a team of ten well-paid professionals (which is expensive) to get a product to market. I say this because anyone who has this experience would not say the things you are saying. Not because you altruistic sentiment is wrong. It isn't. At all. Your perspective is rooted in public good for the greatest number of people. Again, nothing wrong with that at all. The issue is one related to business reality. If the prevailing mode of operation is for society to just take what you develop through heavy investment of cash and time and give it to everyone, the problem quickly becomes evident: Nobody is going to take the risk or make the investment. "Fuck the patents, they just make the drugs" is a commendable position that can only be held by those who do not have to make the investment necessary to create and support those drugs or products. From that perspective, it is easy to steal anything. Yes, it is stealing when you take someone's work-product and do not compensate them at all. To use an imperfect example to illustrate the idea, it's like a situation where you spend five years saving money and slowly using it to build a house, only to have a bunch of people move-in and take it once built...and they don't pay you anything for it. In parts of the world this kind of thing actually happens, I know someone who had this problem in South America. It's fine to want better things for everyone. However, these ideas have to be rooted in reality. If everyone steals nobody is going to have any interest or motivation to take risks and build better things.

AlbertCory 3y ago
Thanks. Somehow it's not even possible to talk about "software patents" without someone insisting on dragging in "drug patents." Why would you deliberately make yourself a target for one of the biggest lobbies in DC? They are separate discussions.
- robomartin 3y ago
  What? I am literally replying to someone who said: > Drug patents are bad. Not sure what twist you might be referring to. Look, I agree. I, mostly don’t like patents. I think most everything being patented are implementations, not inventions. Implementation, in this context, means that if I ask a group of reasonably-trained engineers to create an LED light with multiple color channels that can be controlled individually, they will instantly reach for any a range of well known techniques —like PWM— and just implement it. Yet, years ago the USPTO granted lots of patents on this very topic to a scammer under the company name “Color Kinetics”. Complete horseshit, and yet the USPTO thought they actually invented something any engineer could implement in a day or two. Where patents make sense is in any work that represents real invention and requires non-trivial investment and work to bring to market. Any patent. Type should not matter so long as the USPTO competently filters for real invention. It should be hard, very hard, to get past that filter. And, if it was that difficult it deserves recognition and protection for a period sufficiently long to both allow the inventor to justify the risk, effort and investment and motivate them to take the leap. Without this engineers and companies will choose to create ways for people to click ads and pass on the hard stuff anyone can steal. It isn’t as simple as “I hate patents”, one has to understand how and why things are created and what it costs.

AlbertCory 3y ago

Thanks. Somehow it's not even possible to talk about "software patents" without someone insisting on dragging in "drug patents." Why would you deliberately make yourself a target for one of the biggest lobbies in DC? They are separate discussions.

robomartin 3y ago
What? I am literally replying to someone who said: > Drug patents are bad. Not sure what twist you might be referring to. Look, I agree. I, mostly don’t like patents. I think most everything being patented are implementations, not inventions. Implementation, in this context, means that if I ask a group of reasonably-trained engineers to create an LED light with multiple color channels that can be controlled individually, they will instantly reach for any a range of well known techniques —like PWM— and just implement it. Yet, years ago the USPTO granted lots of patents on this very topic to a scammer under the company name “Color Kinetics”. Complete horseshit, and yet the USPTO thought they actually invented something any engineer could implement in a day or two. Where patents make sense is in any work that represents real invention and requires non-trivial investment and work to bring to market. Any patent. Type should not matter so long as the USPTO competently filters for real invention. It should be hard, very hard, to get past that filter. And, if it was that difficult it deserves recognition and protection for a period sufficiently long to both allow the inventor to justify the risk, effort and investment and motivate them to take the leap. Without this engineers and companies will choose to create ways for people to click ads and pass on the hard stuff anyone can steal. It isn’t as simple as “I hate patents”, one has to understand how and why things are created and what it costs.