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The purpose of patents aren't reward hard work, but to promote innovation. You have to ask, if the patent system were dramatically changed (shortened, the scop
by learc83 14y ago
The purpose of patents aren't reward hard work, but to promote innovation.
You have to ask, if the patent system were dramatically changed (shortened, the scope of not obvious widened etc...)--would Apple still have innovated?
The answer is a resounding yes.
According to the verdict Samsung copied apple. Yet Apple still made hundreds of billions of dollars, of course they would have still created the iPhone, even if they had no patent protection whatsoever.
- smokeyj 14y agoI wish we could validate (or invalidate) the benefits of IP and copyright protection, given people speak about the benefits as if it's fact. Too often I hear garbage along the lines of: Without patents there would be no innovation! Without copyrights there would be no art!
- luriel 14y agoMost evidence indicates the net value of so called "intellectual property" is negative: http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/against.htm http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/against.h...
- sophacles 14y agoWell, until copyright and patents were invented in the 1600s, there were no paintings, books, plays, or devices in the world.
- prodigal_erik 14y agoTo be fair, there weren't as many per capita as now, and far fewer professionals making them full-time. I'm just not sure that more works each accessible to fewer people (those who can afford to license it) is an overall win.
- learc83 14y agoThere are so many other variables that have dramatically changed over the last 400 years that there is no way to test whether this was a result of ip protection or not.
- sophacles 14y agoHow much of that is technological copying/distribution? The printing press caused an explosion of bible and other book/flyer distribution, including an amazing new (at the time) work called "the novel". And that's even without copyright type protections. And music was always available, we just don't know as much about popular music from the old days because documenting it was hard, and the church (major source of writing) sort of focused on the music written by and for it...
- 001sky 14y agoAgree. We need to quantify. Here is a link to an earlier discussion. Articulating a framework.The orders of magnitude are really what's of interest. 100:10:1 etc. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4435971 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4435971
- lttlrck 14y agoIf patents and copyright never existed, where would society be today? What impact would it have had on the industrial revolution? clock making? pharmaceuticals? material science and genetics? Would we have been set back a century? A year? Or developed even farther? How much farther and at what cost? Of course nobody knows, all I know is it's useful to remember it goes far beyond Apple and the RIAA... and things will change incrementally as they always have.
- lttlrck 14y ago"The purpose of patents aren't reward hard work, but to promote innovation." Ok, that's right. But you follow it by asking the wrong question. It's not "would Apple still have innovated?" it's "would Apple have innovated more" and I think that is harder to answer, because it's not just about innovating it's about leveraging innovation for profit. The chances are they would have innovated the about the same but held back on releasing features and been far more strategic (more than they already are) because they would have been very well aware of the enhanced threat of copying!!! Is this obvious? Is that a net gain or a net loss?
- dgreensp 14y agoYou're drawing a valid but subtle distinction, and I think it's the same one I dug into by asking whether we feel Apple should have some expectation of patent protection for this sort of innovation, of all kinds. Superficially, promoting innovation means making the activity of innovation advantageous (i.e. rewarding R&D).