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Patents shouldn't exist at all, IMO. "But they make innovation thrive by providing an incentive to blah blah blah". Not anymore in this day and age. Money com

Patents shouldn't exist at all, IMO. "But they make innovation thrive by providing an incentive to blah blah blah". Not anymore in this day and age. Money comes mostly from the government, anyway, and plenty of really smart researchers would just be happy to put out their stuff out for the public benefit (and already do, btw). Even if they didn't the current patent system ends up giving them like 1% of profits, lol. The business case for "but I want to protect the market I created" can be sufficiently solved with trade secrets and trademarks. Patents sound nice in theory, but in practice they only hinder innovation, the opposite of what they're supposed to do.

david-gpu 2y ago
How much experience do you have working in research and filing patents? Do you think that companies doing research see a benefit in being able to patent their innovations? I.e. do patent protections provide them an incentive to do that research? What would be the logical consequence of removing that incentive? From the viewpoint of a lowly engineer with a dozen patents or so, I don't think I would have been paid to do all that research if my employers saw less returns for their investment.
- moralestapia 2y ago
  >How much experience do you have working in research and filing patents? 20+ years and counting. >Do patent protections provide them an incentive to do that research? The main incentive is money, patents are seen as a moat to that. (But a very weak one, tbh). >What would be the logical consequence of removing that incentive? On academia, the effect would be negligible. For some business it would matter, of course, but the immense majority of research is publicly funded anyway. >I don't think I would have been paid to do all that research if my employers saw less returns for their investment. As much as I like capitalism, I don't really sympathize with private companies and/or private individuals making money. I would never put their interests over the interests of what's good for society. But to each its own. The argument of "why would I invest 1B in R&D to develop a drug that can be copied the next day it goes into the market" is valid only on a first, and very shallow, glance. That "1B drug" is actually a several trillion drug which was 99% subsidized by the work of researchers in public institutions. I don't see companies making the exact same argument the other way around, i.e. "hey I just made a PCR, this is a really cool technique, I should find out who invented this and send them money because they deserve to be rich". They're in for the money and if they don't make money, boo hoo, why should I care? Richard Stallman had it right with the GPL, I wish something similar existed in science. You (not you-you, the generic you) want to be a dick and close down an open ecosystem of innovation where millions have contributed only to buy yourself a condo and some LEGO sets? Go for it! But do it on your own, with a tech tree that belongs to you.
  - Timwi 2y ago
    > As much as I love capitalism, I don't really sympathize with private companies and/or private individuals making money. As much as I love boxing, I don't really sympathize with athletes smashing each other's heads in.
    - moralestapia 2y ago
      I don't really get what point you're trying to make, if any.
      - Timwi 2y ago
        “private companies and/or private individuals making money” is the core and quintessential foundation of capitalism.
        moralestapia 2y ago
        Oh, I see. Yeah that could be worded better. I really like capitalism but the benefit of some particular private companies and/or private individuals over others is of no real importance for me. I'm (almost) a free market absolutist.
        Timwi 2y ago
        A capitalist free market inevitably leads to monopolies.
        moralestapia 2y ago
        Yes! Hence why I wrote "(almost)" there. Some regulation is needed to make things fairer, and actually better. But in my preferred mix of capitalism, patents wouldn't be a thing.
  - david-gpu 2y ago
    >>How much experience do you have working in research and filing patents? > 20+ years and counting I took a moment to search for Morales Tapia in Google Patents and could not find any matches. You do have an impressive resume, though. > I don't see companies making the exact same argument the other way around, i.e. "hey I just made a PCR, this is a really cool technique, I should find out who invented this and send them money because they deserve to be rich". Is PCR patented, or was it at some point? Companies constantly pay patent royalties for inventions that they want to use, whether the patent is held by an academic institution or not. If the inventors of PCR wanted to receive royalties from it, patent law was there to help them achieve just that. I truly don't understand how somebody who works in research isn't familiar with this process. > You (not you-you, the generic you) want to be a dick and close down an open ecosystem of innovation where millions have contributed only to buy yourself a condo and some LEGO sets? Ew.
- vasco 2y ago
  Most companies reach a certain point and engineering teams get messages from lawyers to schedule meetings "to learn about what you're working on". Those meetings are fishing expeditions to try and see what is patentable. Then they repeat this every once in a while. So the patent is done after the fact as a "since we're here" approach. Completely different from "we're doing this exclusively to patent it".
  - david-gpu 2y ago
    That does not match my experience in any company I worked at. We would solve problems and when we had a decent solution we would discuss with our management whether they thought it was noteworthy enough to start the internal patent application process. The stage of development at which a patent was pursued depended on how much of a breakthrough it was. Of course you don't design something "exclusively to patent it". It would make no sense -- a patent has no real-world value unless the invention itself has a significant expected ROI.
    - aipatselarom 2y ago
      >a patent has no real-world value unless the invention itself has a significant expected ROI Lol. 99% of patents are cruft. And I'd be wildly surprised if revenue from patent licensing at the companies you worked at was more than a single digit percentage; mayyyyyybeeee Qualcomm but am too lazy atm. to dive through their financial statements. Edit: I was off by 2%. See [1]. 1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephenkey/2017/11/13/in-todays-market-do-patents-even-matter/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephenkey/2017/11/13/in-todays...
      - david-gpu 2y ago
        Patents provide value well beyond whatever royalties you may get from them. Just think for a moment: why would a for-profit company go through the cost of filing a patent application if they didn't expect to obtain a return? Seriously, give it a moment. Those IP lawyers aren't cheap. It works even if only a small percentage of patents provide the lion's share of the revenue. Look at any settlements between multinationals and see the role that patents play at the negotiation table, for instance. Also, re. Qualcomm, it actually makes the majority of its revenue from IP licensing, not its sale of chips.
- cma 2y ago
  A huge chunk of corporate bio R&D now goes into finding workaround reimplementations for patented publicly funded research. Just opening public research wouldn't help us get remuneration from overseas use though unfortunately.
  - idunnoman1222 2y ago
    And making sure you don’t accidentally violate a patent when you’re just going down the most obvious path
- girvo 2y ago
  > From the viewpoint of a lowly engineer with a dozen patents or so, I don't think I would have been paid to do all that research if my employers saw less returns for their investment. Well I've been paid most of my career to do (some pretty fundamental at times) R&D without having to patent the output, so I'm not sure that holds. Of course I'm likely in a different country to you, and mine has very explicit grants and tax benefits for R&D, but even when we were partnering with IBM we didn't patent the work I was doing (for a production homomorphic encryption implementation in 2014). So I dunno. There are other mechanisms that can arise that still get yourself a job and paid without stifling innovation the way patents currently can do today. The bigger problem is the flat time limit thats not adjusted per-industry. 20 years is a massive amount of time now today in 2024 in a lot of industries. Eons even.
  - david-gpu 2y ago
    > Well I've been paid most of my career to do (some pretty fundamental at times) R&D without having to patent the output, so I'm not sure that holds But I didn't argue that you must file patents in order to do research, or even to be well paid. I argued that the existence of patents incentives research, and that I wouldn't have been paid as much if my work (chip design) didn't lead to patents being granted. > The bigger problem is the flat time limit thats not adjusted per-industry. 20 years is a massive amount of time now today in 2024 in a lot of industries. Eons even. I completely agree with that.
usr1106 2y ago
At least the patent system is completely broken. At least 90% of the granted patents are bullshit. I myself am the "inventor" of a nonsense patent. There is prior art and it lacks any significant new step not obvious for anyone trained in the field. At the time I was working in a big European corporation being the market leader of their field. R&D was required to submit all new product features we were working on. The patent department distilled that into patents, even though we told them there is prior art. Being the market leader we first got it accepted in our home country, then also in EU and US. Only Japan rightfully rejected it. Well, they were our not so successful competitors. One of the reasons I don't want to work for corporations anymore. I vaguely remember some presentation that corporations have the traits of criminals. Should dig that out again...
- 331c8c71 2y ago
  There's a movie "Corporation" (2003) that makes an argument that the corporations behave like psychopaths (in a medical sense i.e. the diagnostic criteria).
impossiblefork 2y ago
The problem for me is that without patents I have no reason to do anything outside my own area. If I don't build it myself and can exploit myself, I get nothing and somebody else gets everything, so why shouldn't I just shut up completely? If I contribute something to the design of nuclear power plants, that the nuclear plant people would never come up with because people from my field, whatever that is, don't look at their stuff, then I obviously can't build my own nuclear power plant to compete with them. The only way to ensure that people have an incentive to invest their time into things outside of the stuff they do to get money is by giving them patents. Another reason patents are nice is that it's that you get something for your actual contribution. This means that it offers particularly skilled people who aren't rich a chance to actually build a company and have something real.
- mqus 2y ago
  > Another reason patents are nice is that it's that you get something for your actual contribution. This means that it offers particularly skilled people who aren't rich a chance to actually build a company and have something real. ... assuming you have the money to defend your patents (or even just find violations). Also, Bigco will just patent adjacent things like production processes and then force your company to trade. How many "small guy" patents were there in the recent years? It just does not fit to our world anymore.
- j1elo 2y ago
  The fact that Open Source Software exists at all, and is a thriving activity in the world of software development by thousands of people everywhere (not that it doesn't have it's problems) means that no, for lots of people an incentive to share their knowledge isn't needed any more than knowing they are making the world a bit better with their contribution. Not everything is about incentives and money, money, money.
  - jart 2y ago
    Open source is a thing because it's the most rewarding path. The respect I earn giving my software away is worth a lot more than any money I could hope to earn selling it. It's not possible to sell software. I also don't want to be in the business of managing other people's personal data, and get regulated to death, which makes SaaS not an option. All the paths to making money on your own in software are packed with stress, sociopaths, and landmines with little hope of striking gold. Software by its nature wants to be free, and most of the ways that exist to change that feel unnatural to me. It's much better to just live frugally and build things you love that you give away. Maybe this isn't the way things should be. If we had a sane and just economic system, then maybe I'd be an entrepreneur. I'm simply following incentives, and express no opinion on what's best or how the system ought to be.

david-gpu 2y ago

How much experience do you have working in research and filing patents? Do you think that companies doing research see a benefit in being able to patent their innovations? I.e. do patent protections provide them an incentive to do that research? What would be the logical consequence of removing that incentive? From the viewpoint of a lowly engineer with a dozen patents or so, I don't think I would have been paid to do all that research if my employers saw less returns for their investment.

moralestapia 2y ago
>How much experience do you have working in research and filing patents? 20+ years and counting. >Do patent protections provide them an incentive to do that research? The main incentive is money, patents are seen as a moat to that. (But a very weak one, tbh). >What would be the logical consequence of removing that incentive? On academia, the effect would be negligible. For some business it would matter, of course, but the immense majority of research is publicly funded anyway. >I don't think I would have been paid to do all that research if my employers saw less returns for their investment. As much as I like capitalism, I don't really sympathize with private companies and/or private individuals making money. I would never put their interests over the interests of what's good for society. But to each its own. The argument of "why would I invest 1B in R&D to develop a drug that can be copied the next day it goes into the market" is valid only on a first, and very shallow, glance. That "1B drug" is actually a several trillion drug which was 99% subsidized by the work of researchers in public institutions. I don't see companies making the exact same argument the other way around, i.e. "hey I just made a PCR, this is a really cool technique, I should find out who invented this and send them money because they deserve to be rich". They're in for the money and if they don't make money, boo hoo, why should I care? Richard Stallman had it right with the GPL, I wish something similar existed in science. You (not you-you, the generic you) want to be a dick and close down an open ecosystem of innovation where millions have contributed only to buy yourself a condo and some LEGO sets? Go for it! But do it on your own, with a tech tree that belongs to you.
- Timwi 2y ago
  > As much as I love capitalism, I don't really sympathize with private companies and/or private individuals making money. As much as I love boxing, I don't really sympathize with athletes smashing each other's heads in.
  - moralestapia 2y ago
    I don't really get what point you're trying to make, if any.
    - Timwi 2y ago
      “private companies and/or private individuals making money” is the core and quintessential foundation of capitalism.
      - moralestapia 2y ago
        Oh, I see. Yeah that could be worded better. I really like capitalism but the benefit of some particular private companies and/or private individuals over others is of no real importance for me. I'm (almost) a free market absolutist.
        Timwi 2y ago
        A capitalist free market inevitably leads to monopolies.
        moralestapia 2y ago
        Yes! Hence why I wrote "(almost)" there. Some regulation is needed to make things fairer, and actually better. But in my preferred mix of capitalism, patents wouldn't be a thing.
- david-gpu 2y ago
  >>How much experience do you have working in research and filing patents? > 20+ years and counting I took a moment to search for Morales Tapia in Google Patents and could not find any matches. You do have an impressive resume, though. > I don't see companies making the exact same argument the other way around, i.e. "hey I just made a PCR, this is a really cool technique, I should find out who invented this and send them money because they deserve to be rich". Is PCR patented, or was it at some point? Companies constantly pay patent royalties for inventions that they want to use, whether the patent is held by an academic institution or not. If the inventors of PCR wanted to receive royalties from it, patent law was there to help them achieve just that. I truly don't understand how somebody who works in research isn't familiar with this process. > You (not you-you, the generic you) want to be a dick and close down an open ecosystem of innovation where millions have contributed only to buy yourself a condo and some LEGO sets? Ew.
vasco 2y ago
Most companies reach a certain point and engineering teams get messages from lawyers to schedule meetings "to learn about what you're working on". Those meetings are fishing expeditions to try and see what is patentable. Then they repeat this every once in a while. So the patent is done after the fact as a "since we're here" approach. Completely different from "we're doing this exclusively to patent it".
- david-gpu 2y ago
  That does not match my experience in any company I worked at. We would solve problems and when we had a decent solution we would discuss with our management whether they thought it was noteworthy enough to start the internal patent application process. The stage of development at which a patent was pursued depended on how much of a breakthrough it was. Of course you don't design something "exclusively to patent it". It would make no sense -- a patent has no real-world value unless the invention itself has a significant expected ROI.
  - aipatselarom 2y ago
    >a patent has no real-world value unless the invention itself has a significant expected ROI Lol. 99% of patents are cruft. And I'd be wildly surprised if revenue from patent licensing at the companies you worked at was more than a single digit percentage; mayyyyyybeeee Qualcomm but am too lazy atm. to dive through their financial statements. Edit: I was off by 2%. See [1]. 1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephenkey/2017/11/13/in-todays-market-do-patents-even-matter/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephenkey/2017/11/13/in-todays...
    - david-gpu 2y ago
      Patents provide value well beyond whatever royalties you may get from them. Just think for a moment: why would a for-profit company go through the cost of filing a patent application if they didn't expect to obtain a return? Seriously, give it a moment. Those IP lawyers aren't cheap. It works even if only a small percentage of patents provide the lion's share of the revenue. Look at any settlements between multinationals and see the role that patents play at the negotiation table, for instance. Also, re. Qualcomm, it actually makes the majority of its revenue from IP licensing, not its sale of chips.
cma 2y ago
A huge chunk of corporate bio R&D now goes into finding workaround reimplementations for patented publicly funded research. Just opening public research wouldn't help us get remuneration from overseas use though unfortunately.
- idunnoman1222 2y ago
  And making sure you don’t accidentally violate a patent when you’re just going down the most obvious path
girvo 2y ago
> From the viewpoint of a lowly engineer with a dozen patents or so, I don't think I would have been paid to do all that research if my employers saw less returns for their investment. Well I've been paid most of my career to do (some pretty fundamental at times) R&D without having to patent the output, so I'm not sure that holds. Of course I'm likely in a different country to you, and mine has very explicit grants and tax benefits for R&D, but even when we were partnering with IBM we didn't patent the work I was doing (for a production homomorphic encryption implementation in 2014). So I dunno. There are other mechanisms that can arise that still get yourself a job and paid without stifling innovation the way patents currently can do today. The bigger problem is the flat time limit thats not adjusted per-industry. 20 years is a massive amount of time now today in 2024 in a lot of industries. Eons even.
- david-gpu 2y ago
  > Well I've been paid most of my career to do (some pretty fundamental at times) R&D without having to patent the output, so I'm not sure that holds But I didn't argue that you must file patents in order to do research, or even to be well paid. I argued that the existence of patents incentives research, and that I wouldn't have been paid as much if my work (chip design) didn't lead to patents being granted. > The bigger problem is the flat time limit thats not adjusted per-industry. 20 years is a massive amount of time now today in 2024 in a lot of industries. Eons even. I completely agree with that.

usr1106 2y ago

At least the patent system is completely broken. At least 90% of the granted patents are bullshit. I myself am the "inventor" of a nonsense patent. There is prior art and it lacks any significant new step not obvious for anyone trained in the field. At the time I was working in a big European corporation being the market leader of their field. R&D was required to submit all new product features we were working on. The patent department distilled that into patents, even though we told them there is prior art. Being the market leader we first got it accepted in our home country, then also in EU and US. Only Japan rightfully rejected it. Well, they were our not so successful competitors. One of the reasons I don't want to work for corporations anymore. I vaguely remember some presentation that corporations have the traits of criminals. Should dig that out again...

331c8c71 2y ago
There's a movie "Corporation" (2003) that makes an argument that the corporations behave like psychopaths (in a medical sense i.e. the diagnostic criteria).

impossiblefork 2y ago

The problem for me is that without patents I have no reason to do anything outside my own area. If I don't build it myself and can exploit myself, I get nothing and somebody else gets everything, so why shouldn't I just shut up completely? If I contribute something to the design of nuclear power plants, that the nuclear plant people would never come up with because people from my field, whatever that is, don't look at their stuff, then I obviously can't build my own nuclear power plant to compete with them. The only way to ensure that people have an incentive to invest their time into things outside of the stuff they do to get money is by giving them patents. Another reason patents are nice is that it's that you get something for your actual contribution. This means that it offers particularly skilled people who aren't rich a chance to actually build a company and have something real.

mqus 2y ago
> Another reason patents are nice is that it's that you get something for your actual contribution. This means that it offers particularly skilled people who aren't rich a chance to actually build a company and have something real. ... assuming you have the money to defend your patents (or even just find violations). Also, Bigco will just patent adjacent things like production processes and then force your company to trade. How many "small guy" patents were there in the recent years? It just does not fit to our world anymore.
j1elo 2y ago
The fact that Open Source Software exists at all, and is a thriving activity in the world of software development by thousands of people everywhere (not that it doesn't have it's problems) means that no, for lots of people an incentive to share their knowledge isn't needed any more than knowing they are making the world a bit better with their contribution. Not everything is about incentives and money, money, money.
- jart 2y ago
  Open source is a thing because it's the most rewarding path. The respect I earn giving my software away is worth a lot more than any money I could hope to earn selling it. It's not possible to sell software. I also don't want to be in the business of managing other people's personal data, and get regulated to death, which makes SaaS not an option. All the paths to making money on your own in software are packed with stress, sociopaths, and landmines with little hope of striking gold. Software by its nature wants to be free, and most of the ways that exist to change that feel unnatural to me. It's much better to just live frugally and build things you love that you give away. Maybe this isn't the way things should be. If we had a sane and just economic system, then maybe I'd be an entrepreneur. I'm simply following incentives, and express no opinion on what's best or how the system ought to be.