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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

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.

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.