4 ms·

If this is true, it's weird how on HN people tend to be more warm to the idea of patent abolishment even though it's actually less broken than copyright.

mschuster91 3y ago
Because copyright has enough fair-use bypasses that it actually doesn't impede people that much, and where fair-use doesn't apply (e.g. in music with remixes), there is a relatively working and reasonably fair and accessible system that's been established for many decades. It's not perfect as cases like the TV show "Cold Case" demonstrated that wasn't ever distributed on VHS/DVD due to licensing issues involving the soundtracks [1], but these are rare. And even if you stretch the boundaries of the law too much, unless you're a large-scale commercial infringer, it's a few hundreds to a few thousands of dollars in fines and that's it. Patents however? There's reports about lawsuits just about every month or two here on HN [2], more than enough cases of small shops getting sued left and right - and even corporate giants like Apple are virtually defenceless in patent courts. Software patents make the issue even worse. On top of that, patents are useless against China. The only thing Western companies can (and regularly) do is to prevent the sale of infringing stuff in Western markets, but no one in China and many other places of the world gives any fuck about Western patents. Another issue - particularly in pharmaceuticals - is: even if you patent a molecule, say an insulin derivative, you don't have to patent and thus reveal how you produce the stuff. That means that even after the patent for a specific variety of insulin has expired, a generics competitor still can't readily use that patent because the precise steps of manufacture are still proprietary. Meanwhile, the original manufacturer just makes a tiny variation of the insulin molecule, ceases production of the old one, and charges "new medication" prices from insurances because it's technically not the old medication any more. It worked in the past for simple, chemically synthesizable molecules, but it doesn't work for the more complex stuff that needs GMOs as a production/harvest vector. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_Case#Home_media_and_streaming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_Case#Home_media_and_strea... [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=patent%20lawsuit&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
greyface- 3y ago
Almost all of us derive income from copyright. Only some of us derive income from patents.

mschuster91 3y ago

Because copyright has enough fair-use bypasses that it actually doesn't impede people that much, and where fair-use doesn't apply (e.g. in music with remixes), there is a relatively working and reasonably fair and accessible system that's been established for many decades. It's not perfect as cases like the TV show "Cold Case" demonstrated that wasn't ever distributed on VHS/DVD due to licensing issues involving the soundtracks [1], but these are rare. And even if you stretch the boundaries of the law too much, unless you're a large-scale commercial infringer, it's a few hundreds to a few thousands of dollars in fines and that's it. Patents however? There's reports about lawsuits just about every month or two here on HN [2], more than enough cases of small shops getting sued left and right - and even corporate giants like Apple are virtually defenceless in patent courts. Software patents make the issue even worse. On top of that, patents are useless against China. The only thing Western companies can (and regularly) do is to prevent the sale of infringing stuff in Western markets, but no one in China and many other places of the world gives any fuck about Western patents. Another issue - particularly in pharmaceuticals - is: even if you patent a molecule, say an insulin derivative, you don't have to patent and thus reveal how you produce the stuff. That means that even after the patent for a specific variety of insulin has expired, a generics competitor still can't readily use that patent because the precise steps of manufacture are still proprietary. Meanwhile, the original manufacturer just makes a tiny variation of the insulin molecule, ceases production of the old one, and charges "new medication" prices from insurances because it's technically not the old medication any more. It worked in the past for simple, chemically synthesizable molecules, but it doesn't work for the more complex stuff that needs GMOs as a production/harvest vector. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_Case#Home_media_and_streaming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_Case#Home_media_and_strea... [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=patent%20lawsuit&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

greyface- 3y ago

Almost all of us derive income from copyright. Only some of us derive income from patents.