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Practically, this is not how it actually seems to work. Instead, companies create an pipeline of patents, whereupon inventions are locked up indefinitely. Sure

Practically, this is not how it actually seems to work. Instead, companies create an pipeline of patents, whereupon inventions are locked up indefinitely. Sure, the original invention may be available, but in the meantime, new patents were filed for improvements and refinements. Without those, the original patent cannot be made efficiently or cost effective. Plus, the new patents can be weaponized in the courts to drain the resources of anyone experimenting in the area. In other words, patents as implemented effectively enable indefinite monopolies. This may not be true for all patents, but this seems to be a standard playbook these days.

toast0 3y ago
Isn't this the system working as designed? If you want your thing to be protected, you've got to keep improving and refining it. When your 20-year old product is competitive with today's product, you lose your patent protection. As a competitor, you can also try taking the 20-year old product and refining it differently, too. Or if you're aggressive, you can build and refine current competitive products and patent the refinements, but you can't sell the product without a license, so might not be great (otoh, you might trade licensing the refinement for licensing the base product)
- mcphage 3y ago
  > Isn't this the system working as designed? If you want your thing to be protected, you've got to keep improving and refining it. When your 20-year old product is competitive with today's product, you lose your patent protection. Not really—the point of patents is to publish information so that others can use it after a period of exclusivity. But if you can keep filing patents, preventing others from using that information indefinitely, then it defeats the purpose of the patent system.
  - toast0 3y ago
    If you can keep filing new patents, and the new patents are so important that the old patents are worthless, then you're improving the product space tremendously. If you look at video compression, by the time a patented algorithm expires, there's tended to be a new codec that's better, but you can use mpeg-2 as you like now. So we get the incentive to make better codecs, and we get the old codecs.
    - mcphage 3y ago
      If it makes your old patent worthless, because your new stuff is so much better, that’s fine. If it makes your old patent worthless, because it’s hard to use your old patent without running afoul of your new patent, because they’re overlap too much—that’s not working as intended.
- somesortofthing 3y ago
  You only need to generate a single patentable refinement once every twenty years. In a lot of places, this is a horrible pace relative to the organic rate of progress. Compare the progress made since the main patents for FDM 3D printing expired compared to the progress made while it was still under patent.
  - toast0 3y ago
    You might not like the 20-year term; but in the case of FDM; I'm sure there are plenty of patentable refinements, and I'd be surprised if Stratasys only got the initial patent and never any refinements. But when the initial patent expired, there was an explosion of other options as the initial patent was sufficient to enable the ecosystem, even if there was a need to avoid some refinement patents.

toast0 3y ago

Isn't this the system working as designed? If you want your thing to be protected, you've got to keep improving and refining it. When your 20-year old product is competitive with today's product, you lose your patent protection. As a competitor, you can also try taking the 20-year old product and refining it differently, too. Or if you're aggressive, you can build and refine current competitive products and patent the refinements, but you can't sell the product without a license, so might not be great (otoh, you might trade licensing the refinement for licensing the base product)

mcphage 3y ago
> Isn't this the system working as designed? If you want your thing to be protected, you've got to keep improving and refining it. When your 20-year old product is competitive with today's product, you lose your patent protection. Not really—the point of patents is to publish information so that others can use it after a period of exclusivity. But if you can keep filing patents, preventing others from using that information indefinitely, then it defeats the purpose of the patent system.
- toast0 3y ago
  If you can keep filing new patents, and the new patents are so important that the old patents are worthless, then you're improving the product space tremendously. If you look at video compression, by the time a patented algorithm expires, there's tended to be a new codec that's better, but you can use mpeg-2 as you like now. So we get the incentive to make better codecs, and we get the old codecs.
  - mcphage 3y ago
    If it makes your old patent worthless, because your new stuff is so much better, that’s fine. If it makes your old patent worthless, because it’s hard to use your old patent without running afoul of your new patent, because they’re overlap too much—that’s not working as intended.
somesortofthing 3y ago
You only need to generate a single patentable refinement once every twenty years. In a lot of places, this is a horrible pace relative to the organic rate of progress. Compare the progress made since the main patents for FDM 3D printing expired compared to the progress made while it was still under patent.
- toast0 3y ago
  You might not like the 20-year term; but in the case of FDM; I'm sure there are plenty of patentable refinements, and I'd be surprised if Stratasys only got the initial patent and never any refinements. But when the initial patent expired, there was an explosion of other options as the initial patent was sufficient to enable the ecosystem, even if there was a need to avoid some refinement patents.