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There is also the whole patent / copyright trolling issue too. The fact that $BIG_CORP can hire armies of lawyers to freeze competitors and beat them to market

There is also the whole patent / copyright trolling issue too. The fact that $BIG_CORP can hire armies of lawyers to freeze competitors and beat them to market by filing frivolous lawsuits is yet another example of insanity in the whole system.

chongli 3y ago
I recently watched the documentary Fire in the Blood (2013) [1] about the use, by big pharma, of patents and WIPO to obstruct access to affordable antiretrovirals (ARVs) in Africa during the worst years of the AIDS epidemic, leading to over ten million deaths. All of this when the African market for these medications represented less than 1% of the total market, in dollars. It’s absolutely infuriating! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_in_the_Blood_(2013_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_in_the_Blood_(2013_film)
drdaeman 3y ago
It's a problem with legal system (not unique to any specific country, mind you, the problem is global), not patent or copyright system specifically. It grew incredible amounts of complexity so pro se became a sad joke in all but simplest cases, and there's no incentive to fix it - quite the opposite, everyone in the system is all for keeping the status quo, because it generates money.
- jrumbut 3y ago
  But there are specific problems with copyright and patent law that could be improved without a global systemic overhaul that may never happen. We have to take some small wins even in the presence of big problems.
  - drdaeman 3y ago
    Of course. I'm just saying that the core problem is larger than just the copyright and patent law.
- TaylorAlexander 3y ago
  Personally I don’t think patents do what people believe they do (encourage innovation). It’s a bigger discussion but briefly, the only literal function of a patent is to discourage innovation by legally barring anyone from using a patented idea as part of a new innovation. The idea we have is that the secondary effects of this will be increased profits for inventors and therefore more innovation. But actually there’s loads of secondary effects and often many of them outweigh the effect of increased profit. For every one inventor that gets a patent there might be 100 prevented from using that idea in a different and innovative way. A classic example is 3D printers. Stratasys spent 15 years selling printers that cost tens of thousands of dollars. It wasn’t until the patent expired that people figured out how to make them for $250. Those cheaper printers are enabling mechanical engineers and designers to accelerate their process and make other new innovations faster. Stratasys had such a powerful patent they never bothered innovating down in price, instead rested on their laurels selling $25k printers to big customers. So how many inventions were delayed or shelved because the inventors couldn’t afford a $25,000 3D printer, and $250 printers didn’t exist yet? Both Stratasys and IBM held patents related to 3D printing and they had to cross license to go in to production, so how many others would have come up with 3D printing in the 1990’s if they had not been patented? Would first mover advantage in a free market have been enough to stimulate development of 3D printers? Could we have had $2000 3D printers in the early 2000’s (Stratasys sold theirs for $30k) instead of ten years later? How many engineers would have invented new gadgets faster if they had a 3D printer ten years earlier?
  - PartiallyTyped 3y ago
    Another possible example is the x86 and x86-64 ISAs locked between AMD and Intel. I don’t think Intel would have become complacent had there been more competitors… … or the whole “oracle vs google” over the java API.

chongli 3y ago

I recently watched the documentary Fire in the Blood (2013) [1] about the use, by big pharma, of patents and WIPO to obstruct access to affordable antiretrovirals (ARVs) in Africa during the worst years of the AIDS epidemic, leading to over ten million deaths. All of this when the African market for these medications represented less than 1% of the total market, in dollars. It’s absolutely infuriating! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_in_the_Blood_(2013_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_in_the_Blood_(2013_film)

drdaeman 3y ago

It's a problem with legal system (not unique to any specific country, mind you, the problem is global), not patent or copyright system specifically. It grew incredible amounts of complexity so pro se became a sad joke in all but simplest cases, and there's no incentive to fix it - quite the opposite, everyone in the system is all for keeping the status quo, because it generates money.

jrumbut 3y ago
But there are specific problems with copyright and patent law that could be improved without a global systemic overhaul that may never happen. We have to take some small wins even in the presence of big problems.
- drdaeman 3y ago
  Of course. I'm just saying that the core problem is larger than just the copyright and patent law.
TaylorAlexander 3y ago
Personally I don’t think patents do what people believe they do (encourage innovation). It’s a bigger discussion but briefly, the only literal function of a patent is to discourage innovation by legally barring anyone from using a patented idea as part of a new innovation. The idea we have is that the secondary effects of this will be increased profits for inventors and therefore more innovation. But actually there’s loads of secondary effects and often many of them outweigh the effect of increased profit. For every one inventor that gets a patent there might be 100 prevented from using that idea in a different and innovative way. A classic example is 3D printers. Stratasys spent 15 years selling printers that cost tens of thousands of dollars. It wasn’t until the patent expired that people figured out how to make them for $250. Those cheaper printers are enabling mechanical engineers and designers to accelerate their process and make other new innovations faster. Stratasys had such a powerful patent they never bothered innovating down in price, instead rested on their laurels selling $25k printers to big customers. So how many inventions were delayed or shelved because the inventors couldn’t afford a $25,000 3D printer, and $250 printers didn’t exist yet? Both Stratasys and IBM held patents related to 3D printing and they had to cross license to go in to production, so how many others would have come up with 3D printing in the 1990’s if they had not been patented? Would first mover advantage in a free market have been enough to stimulate development of 3D printers? Could we have had $2000 3D printers in the early 2000’s (Stratasys sold theirs for $30k) instead of ten years later? How many engineers would have invented new gadgets faster if they had a 3D printer ten years earlier?
- PartiallyTyped 3y ago
  Another possible example is the x86 and x86-64 ISAs locked between AMD and Intel. I don’t think Intel would have become complacent had there been more competitors… … or the whole “oracle vs google” over the java API.