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The wright brothers patent was not on wing warping, it was on controlling a vehicle in the air. In short the Wright brothers did not invent the aeroplane they i

• mulmen 1mo ago
  > And you don't think they deserve exclusive exploitation rights to that discipline for the next 20 years? 20 years is the midpoint between the Wright Brother’s flight and operational jet fighters. They won the race but it was very much a competition. If Orville and Wilbur didn’t cross the line first then Maxim or Langley would have. They all built on George Cayley’s work. So no, I don’t think the first one to file a plausible patent should get exclusive rights. It should at least extend to contemporaries. And we should consider the cost to innovation when breakthroughs are artificially constrained for what amounts to multiple technological generations.
  • natpalmer1776 1mo ago
    Very much this. The incentive to create and invent is often largely financial, however that incentive need not be constructed as “winner takes all” rather we should lift each other up in our mutual accomplishments. Unfortunately in my own ruminating on the topic the only practical alternatives seem to be one or more variations on the scary boogey man of socialism.
    • WalterBright 1mo ago
      > The incentive to create and invent is often largely financial, however that incentive need not be constructed as “winner takes all” rather we should lift each other up in our mutual accomplishments. The Wrights definitely were in it for the money. The government project was the Langley Prototype, which cost 20 times more than what the Wrights spent, and fell into the Potomac like a sack of wet cement. > the scary boogey man of socialism For good reason. Socialism's track record is pretty bad. They're always running out of other peoples' money.
      • natpalmer1776 1mo ago
        Certainly socialism is a heavy and dangerous solution to most problems, the critiques of it are many, and of the many most are fair. I say boogeyman not to imply it is without problems but rather to say that in the problem spaces that it is often deplored the incumbent alternative is often categorically worse for all those who do not directly benefit from it, which is usually a supermajority at a minimum. Thus, to make the incumbent more tolerable a caricature of an idea is brought forth to scare those who would otherwise support an aspirational idealist into backing the known “lesser” evils.
      • robocat 1mo ago
        > Socialism's track record is pretty bad However the track record for developed countries communally sharing "intellectual property" is much much better. Universities, open source, and public domain all have some crossover with the ideals of socialism. Yes, communism has repeatedly failed spectacularly. The softer socialism of public welfare has worked (so far) for many countries including the US. Although I'm skeptical about the future given modern demographics and our governments' choices to appease a majority. The governments of most developed countries smell socialist to me. I'm from New Zealand and most private income/property is taxed up the wahoo to pay for our social welfare programs: it doesn't take much squinting to see my own society as broadly socialist. Somehow I see people in the US complaining that the Chinese are beating the US at capitalism (regular complaints of price undercutting and monopolistic behaviours) - what's weird since the Chinese are supposed to be pinkos.
  • WalterBright 1mo ago
    The Wrights were about 5 years ahead of their time. The Wrights went about it as an R+D project and calculated what the design must be, while the other developers were doing seat-of-the-pants designs which worked about as expected.
    • benj111 1mo ago
      Except we don't do wing warping anymore, or take many design cues from the wrights at all. Hard to say they were ahead when they were in an evolutionary dead end.
      • WalterBright 1mo ago
        Wright accomplishments that were crucial to making a working airplane: 1. First propeller theory, which got them a propeller that was 90% efficient rather than the 50% efficiency of contemporary propellers. The theory has only been slightly improved today. 2. First 3 axis control system, copied by everyone else. Yes, ailerons are a better system, but it's the same idea. 3. First aviation engine with a power/weight ration double anyone else's. 4. First research and development project where the problems of flight were identified and then prototypes developed to solve each of the problems. 5. Extensive use of a wind tunnel to determine the optimal cross-section shape of the wing. 6. Use of calculations to determine the size and lift of the wing, and how much power was needed from the engine. All airplane designs trace their lineage back to the 1903 Flyer, not anybody else's airplane.
• Dylan16807 1mo ago
  Of course you shouldn't be able to patent an entire discipline! I can't comprehend your point of view here. And a million people had the idea of "controlling a vehicle in the air". Patents aren't for vague ideas, they're for specific mechanisms.
  • benj111 1mo ago
    > I can't comprehend your point of view here It isn't their pov. 90% of computing patents are basically 'X on a computer' Eg the Amazon 1 click buy patent
    • Hugsbox 1mo ago
      Sure, things within the discipline of computing can be patented, but imagine if somebody just patented the entire discipline of computing. Somehow 1 click buy doesn't quite feel like it's in the same category as humanity conquering the skies.
      • philipallstar 1mo ago
        They didn't patent the equivalent, the entire discipline of flying. They patented "angular relations of the lateral margins of the aeroplanes may be varied in opposite directions with respect to the normal planes of said aeroplanes"
        • Dylan16807 1mo ago
          On my part, I'm not entirely sure what a lateral margin is, so I just answered somat's question which is about the entire discipline of controlling a plane.
• boomlinde 1mo ago
  I don't think patent law should be concerned with what inventors "deserve" in some moral sense. I think their purpose should be socially practical. The socially practical effect of working patent law is that it incentivizes inventors to publicly document their inventions by offering limited exclusive rights to the invention. To that end, an overly broad claim to hypothetical inventions which are not actually documented in the patent is detrimental and instead stifles innovation.
  • pessimizer 1mo ago
    > I don't think patent law should be concerned with what inventors "deserve" in some moral sense. "Deserve" in itself is a meaningless word, a tribal signal. It's interesting to figure out what different people actually mean by "deserve" when they say it (followed the procedure, fulfilled the agreement, expended a sufficient amount of effort, suffered, were responsible in some way for its existence, is alive, has not taken from others, is loved) but there's nothing really there to base anything on. It's a political word. The real world equivalent is "is entitled to." edit: it doesn't help that the philosophical area that focuses on what people "deserve" is called "desert." It's one of the cases where where English sorely needs Spanish-style accent markers. "Desért."
    • boomlinde 1mo ago
      What someone "is entitled to" is of course also largely a political phenomenon, a social construct. Just like the idea of what someone deserves it supposes a principle according to which that can be said. For example, ideas of what people deserve according to moral principles often precede legal principles that entitle them to that. But it is only in terms of those moral principles that someone can deserve that, and in terms of those legal principles that someone can be entitled to it.
• gosub100 1mo ago
  It's a false dichotomy you must have exclusive rights to be profitable. What about the claim that you are "the first and the original X"?