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The idea that we need patents to foster innovation is a self-serving lie. Most of human progress -- everything that got us to where we are now -- happens faster

by ef4 14y ago

The idea that we need patents to foster innovation is a self-serving lie. Most of human progress -- everything that got us to where we are now -- happens faster the more copying everyone does. America industrialized faster than Great Britain thanks to widespread copying -- and this saved countless human lives by lifting millions of people out of poverty faster than otherwise possible. Today China is industrializing faster still by rampant copying, and good for them. This story is just another great example. The patent holder is reluctant to enter the iOS market because they know it will cannibalize their existing very-expensive-device market. Too bad for them. The market should punish them for being slow to serve people in the best possible way. I don't care how much they invested in the idea. That investment has zero value to customers unless it's actually being applied to serve them on the terms they want.

SeanLuke 14y ago
> The idea that we need patents to foster innovation is a self-serving lie. Most of human progress -- everything that got us to where we are now -- happens faster the more copying everyone does. This completely misunderstands the historical reason for patents. Patents do not stifle copying: they encourage copying by transforming a permanent monopoly of secrets into a temporary monopoly of open information. Patents were created to break the back of trade guilds. Trade guilds were organizations whose primary job was to protect (often on pain of death) trade secrets such as how to create gunpowder or how to mix a crucial sealant for a boat. Trade guilds completely stifled the advancement of technology. Patents broke them by offering a government-guaranteed but temporary legal monopoly instead of a permanent monopoly which required constant vigilance. Trade guilds and jealously (and dangerously) guarded secrets still exist in certain trades not protected by patents. Most famously, candy-makers are notoriously vicious in protecting their secrets: indeed, Roald Dahl novelized this fact. And we have the same situation now, don't kid yourself. If patents were to disappear tomorrow, we'd see the elimination of new generic drugs, industrial companies permanently hiding assembly secrets, and an awful lot more security through obscurity in software -- NOT good. China's copying is not happening despite the patent system, but rather because of it. Because patents make secrets open, Chinese companies can see them and copy them (illegally). Without the patent system, companies would be extremely secretive about their processes and China would be still be in the dark ages. [btw, if we're talking about copy cultures, the most famous one by far is Japan, which has been a copy culture for over 2000 years]
- stephen_g 14y ago
  I think the main problem is that the length of protection is far too long for the IT industry - something more like three to five years would be more appropriate in my opinion given how fast it changes. And then there is also the problem that most software patents should fail the prior art or obviousness tests, but it costs so much to fight them that most companies settle...
  - GFischer 14y ago
    Paraphrasing: "Justice in the U.S. costs too much". That doesn't sound very just, and is a larger problem than patents even. Here in Uruguay, lawyers are much cheaper but justice is extremely slow (also not good).
- arjunnarayan 14y ago
  This is correct and I agree with all your statements except for the last: China's copying is not _illegal_. China is not subject to US law. US Patents prevent copying _in the US_, but this restriction doesn't apply within China. You could argue that the uninhibited copying in China is depriving Americans of rightful patent license revenue, but that's still a matter of morality and not legality.
  - regularfry 14y ago
    Exporting copied products back to the US is illegal, though, by my understanding.
  - SiVal 14y ago
    No, for the most part it IS illegal in China. That fact is used by government officials to extort bribes from vendors. When it suits their purposes, the government will pick out a pirate they don't like and literally shoot him in the head, giving themselves something to point at when accused by developed nations of soft on piracy and ensuring that rest of the pirates will keep the bribes coming.
- ef4 14y ago
  I agree that these were historical arguments for the patent system. But I don't think those arguments were entirely valid then, and they're even more suspect today. The end of trade guild secrecy had far more to do with the advent of mass production than with the patent system. Highly trained craftsman could be organized into a guild. But large numbers of easily replaceable workers necessarily couldn't. As for the elimination of generic drugs, the drug makers themselves argue that figuring out how to copy most new molecules is so cheap and easy that they need strong patent protection to recoup their research costs. Reverse engineering drugs is cheap and getting cheaper. Software is not going to get more secretive without patents. It's hardly possible that it could -- almost all commercial source code is already treated like trade secrets. The implication that software developers actually utilize techniques gleaned from patent applications is pretty far-fetched. Security-by-obscurity is orthogonal to the issue of patents. All the peer-reviewed security algorithms that actually get used are unencumbered by patents, which is precisely why they actually get used. (The slow adoption of elliptic curve cryptography has been blamed on the existence of certain patents.) There's no incentive to design your own crypto algorithm and keep it secret -- that's unnecessarily expensive and stupidly risky. People share these techniques out of self interest, not because they enjoy patent protection. The cost of spreading information continues to plummet. Conversely, the cost of keeping secrets continues to increase. I don't think the premise of a permanent monopoly of secrecy is remotely plausible. Even military technology (which of course relies only on secrecy, not patent protection) seems to proliferate on time scales shorter than patent lifetimes, though this is a hard contention to prove.

by ef4 14y ago

SeanLuke 14y ago

> The idea that we need patents to foster innovation is a self-serving lie. Most of human progress -- everything that got us to where we are now -- happens faster the more copying everyone does. This completely misunderstands the historical reason for patents. Patents do not stifle copying: they encourage copying by transforming a permanent monopoly of secrets into a temporary monopoly of open information. Patents were created to break the back of trade guilds. Trade guilds were organizations whose primary job was to protect (often on pain of death) trade secrets such as how to create gunpowder or how to mix a crucial sealant for a boat. Trade guilds completely stifled the advancement of technology. Patents broke them by offering a government-guaranteed but temporary legal monopoly instead of a permanent monopoly which required constant vigilance. Trade guilds and jealously (and dangerously) guarded secrets still exist in certain trades not protected by patents. Most famously, candy-makers are notoriously vicious in protecting their secrets: indeed, Roald Dahl novelized this fact. And we have the same situation now, don't kid yourself. If patents were to disappear tomorrow, we'd see the elimination of new generic drugs, industrial companies permanently hiding assembly secrets, and an awful lot more security through obscurity in software -- NOT good. China's copying is not happening despite the patent system, but rather because of it. Because patents make secrets open, Chinese companies can see them and copy them (illegally). Without the patent system, companies would be extremely secretive about their processes and China would be still be in the dark ages. [btw, if we're talking about copy cultures, the most famous one by far is Japan, which has been a copy culture for over 2000 years]

stephen_g 14y ago
I think the main problem is that the length of protection is far too long for the IT industry - something more like three to five years would be more appropriate in my opinion given how fast it changes. And then there is also the problem that most software patents should fail the prior art or obviousness tests, but it costs so much to fight them that most companies settle...
- GFischer 14y ago
  Paraphrasing: "Justice in the U.S. costs too much". That doesn't sound very just, and is a larger problem than patents even. Here in Uruguay, lawyers are much cheaper but justice is extremely slow (also not good).
arjunnarayan 14y ago
This is correct and I agree with all your statements except for the last: China's copying is not _illegal_. China is not subject to US law. US Patents prevent copying _in the US_, but this restriction doesn't apply within China. You could argue that the uninhibited copying in China is depriving Americans of rightful patent license revenue, but that's still a matter of morality and not legality.
- regularfry 14y ago
  Exporting copied products back to the US is illegal, though, by my understanding.
- SiVal 14y ago
  No, for the most part it IS illegal in China. That fact is used by government officials to extort bribes from vendors. When it suits their purposes, the government will pick out a pirate they don't like and literally shoot him in the head, giving themselves something to point at when accused by developed nations of soft on piracy and ensuring that rest of the pirates will keep the bribes coming.
ef4 14y ago
I agree that these were historical arguments for the patent system. But I don't think those arguments were entirely valid then, and they're even more suspect today. The end of trade guild secrecy had far more to do with the advent of mass production than with the patent system. Highly trained craftsman could be organized into a guild. But large numbers of easily replaceable workers necessarily couldn't. As for the elimination of generic drugs, the drug makers themselves argue that figuring out how to copy most new molecules is so cheap and easy that they need strong patent protection to recoup their research costs. Reverse engineering drugs is cheap and getting cheaper. Software is not going to get more secretive without patents. It's hardly possible that it could -- almost all commercial source code is already treated like trade secrets. The implication that software developers actually utilize techniques gleaned from patent applications is pretty far-fetched. Security-by-obscurity is orthogonal to the issue of patents. All the peer-reviewed security algorithms that actually get used are unencumbered by patents, which is precisely why they actually get used. (The slow adoption of elliptic curve cryptography has been blamed on the existence of certain patents.) There's no incentive to design your own crypto algorithm and keep it secret -- that's unnecessarily expensive and stupidly risky. People share these techniques out of self interest, not because they enjoy patent protection. The cost of spreading information continues to plummet. Conversely, the cost of keeping secrets continues to increase. I don't think the premise of a permanent monopoly of secrecy is remotely plausible. Even military technology (which of course relies only on secrecy, not patent protection) seems to proliferate on time scales shorter than patent lifetimes, though this is a hard contention to prove.