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In the article, his responses suggest that he views patents as the first step toward litigation - that suing or being sued is an intended, by design outcome of

In the article, his responses suggest that he views patents as the first step toward litigation - that suing or being sued is an intended, by design outcome of patents existing. It's as though he sees litigation and prosecution as beneficial to our economy, instead of seeing the ways in which it blocks innovation and free market actions.

mullingitover 14y ago
> It's as though he sees litigation and prosecution as beneficial to our economy Well as a lawyer, litigation and prosecution are very beneficial to his local economy.
rayiner 14y ago
Without agreeing with him on this specific point, I do have to note that just because he sees the amount of litigation as a good thing does not mean he thinks that litigation itself is beneficial to the economy. As a general rule, litigation is a sign of activity. The more economic activity you have, the more interactions and transactions you have, the more conflicts that arise, and the more litigation you have to resolve those conflicts. The litigation itself is of course overhead, but the fact that there are many conflicts can be a sign of an industry in which a lot of things are happening.
- nitrogen 14y ago
  The litigation itself is of course overhead, but the fact that there are many conflicts can be a sign of an industry in which a lot of things are happening. As I'm sure you are aware, not everyone thrives in conflict. Some would much rather design a system to prevent it. I can't help but feel that this is similar to claiming that there must be a lot of fun happening on the school playground, because a lot of bullies are beating up the kids who just want to get along (and, occasionally, other bullies).
  - rayiner 14y ago
    Conflict is an unavoidable consequence of human interaction. There are various things you can do to make conflict resolution as quick and efficient as possible, but ultimately if you have X interactions between people, some fairly stable percentage of those interactions will result in conflict that requires litigation to mediate. A more apropos playground analogy might be skinned knees. They are of course not a good thing in and of themselves, but if you have a bunch of kids running around and running into each other, you're going to get skinned knees. The more kids you have running around and the more active they are, the more trips to the nurse's office there are going to be. You can make the playground safer, tell kids to be more careful, etc, but at the end of the day kids getting playground injuries is correlated with kids playing.
    - tolmasky 14y ago
      Conflict may be unavoidable, but that doesn't mean it requires public resources to resolve, nor that it needs resolution at all. Even without patent disputes, there would be a "conflict" between android and iOS -- that doesn't mean we would need the courts to step in and figure out which os is better -- the conflict is kind of the point. We could clearly today have either more or less protections: you can pretty easily imagine a system with less patents or one with more and stricter forms of legal protection. A system with more forms of protection would probably see more legal battles. A system with less protection would see more market battles with focus on winning over consumers vs juries. The system we have today isn't some divinely revealed sweet spot, so the attitude that "conflicts are inevitable and this is how we solve them, thus there's nothing we can do about it" is disingenuous.
    - stephengillie 14y ago
      A more apropos playground analogy might be skinned knees. With the penalty that both the nurse and the injured person receives $1 from the person who caused the skinned knee. You can make the playground safer and tell kids to be more careful, but you'll still see Bruno falling on purpose and blaming Mary to the nurse.
      - 14y ago
- deleted 14y ago
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nitrogen 14y ago
Ah, so the windows are meant to be broken, else how will glassworkers remain employed?

mullingitover 14y ago

> It's as though he sees litigation and prosecution as beneficial to our economy Well as a lawyer, litigation and prosecution are very beneficial to his local economy.

rayiner 14y ago

Without agreeing with him on this specific point, I do have to note that just because he sees the amount of litigation as a good thing does not mean he thinks that litigation itself is beneficial to the economy. As a general rule, litigation is a sign of activity. The more economic activity you have, the more interactions and transactions you have, the more conflicts that arise, and the more litigation you have to resolve those conflicts. The litigation itself is of course overhead, but the fact that there are many conflicts can be a sign of an industry in which a lot of things are happening.

nitrogen 14y ago
The litigation itself is of course overhead, but the fact that there are many conflicts can be a sign of an industry in which a lot of things are happening. As I'm sure you are aware, not everyone thrives in conflict. Some would much rather design a system to prevent it. I can't help but feel that this is similar to claiming that there must be a lot of fun happening on the school playground, because a lot of bullies are beating up the kids who just want to get along (and, occasionally, other bullies).
- rayiner 14y ago
  Conflict is an unavoidable consequence of human interaction. There are various things you can do to make conflict resolution as quick and efficient as possible, but ultimately if you have X interactions between people, some fairly stable percentage of those interactions will result in conflict that requires litigation to mediate. A more apropos playground analogy might be skinned knees. They are of course not a good thing in and of themselves, but if you have a bunch of kids running around and running into each other, you're going to get skinned knees. The more kids you have running around and the more active they are, the more trips to the nurse's office there are going to be. You can make the playground safer, tell kids to be more careful, etc, but at the end of the day kids getting playground injuries is correlated with kids playing.
  - tolmasky 14y ago
    Conflict may be unavoidable, but that doesn't mean it requires public resources to resolve, nor that it needs resolution at all. Even without patent disputes, there would be a "conflict" between android and iOS -- that doesn't mean we would need the courts to step in and figure out which os is better -- the conflict is kind of the point. We could clearly today have either more or less protections: you can pretty easily imagine a system with less patents or one with more and stricter forms of legal protection. A system with more forms of protection would probably see more legal battles. A system with less protection would see more market battles with focus on winning over consumers vs juries. The system we have today isn't some divinely revealed sweet spot, so the attitude that "conflicts are inevitable and this is how we solve them, thus there's nothing we can do about it" is disingenuous.
  - stephengillie 14y ago
    A more apropos playground analogy might be skinned knees. With the penalty that both the nurse and the injured person receives $1 from the person who caused the skinned knee. You can make the playground safer and tell kids to be more careful, but you'll still see Bruno falling on purpose and blaming Mary to the nurse.
    - 14y ago
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

nitrogen 14y ago

Ah, so the windows are meant to be broken, else how will glassworkers remain employed?