4 ms·

which element do you want me to support?: 1) R&D costs money 2) investors look for return on their investment 3) corporations continuously look to reduce

which element do you want me to support?: 1) R&D costs money 2) investors look for return on their investment 3) corporations continuously look to reduce costs Perhaps it is you who is continuing the echo chamber.

marshray 14y ago
You could start by backing up the statements patents provided the incentive to innovate and $spend on R&D in America, and and now free for all to copy and especially Without patents, smart investors will start to look at where they can most cheaply copy American innovations. It would be especally impressive if you could show that all these putative benefits were, in fact, a net gain over all the very tangible downsides of this idea monopoly casino that is our patent system.
- M8R-fhlcjm 14y ago
  economies of countries with patent rights exceed economies without patents. And at the top is the U.S.A. with strongest patent rights.
  - marshray 14y ago
    Well if you look at regular GDP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28nominal%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28nom... , China is right there at #2. They are hardly known for their strong patent enforcement. To the contrary, they're known for "lax IP" and as a place where anyone can start a factory and start making almost anything for export. They're said to be growing faster than the US too, probably in no small part because it's easier to make things there. If you look at per-captia GDP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29_per_capita http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP... instead, the US is way down at #8, behind Luxembourg, Qatar, Macau, Norway, Singapore, Kuwait, Brunei, Hong Kong, and Switzerland. How many of those countries are known for having "strong patent rights" and $B lawsuits and sales injuctions by patent holders against vendors? Hmm, looks instead like most of those are countries known for their ability to produce things of value and export them to other countries such as the US.
    - AnthonyMouse 14y ago
      Forget about all of that, you're just feeding the troll. The troll's premise is that correlation is causation, i.e. that large economies generally have patent systems and therefore that patent systems cause or are necessary to maintain large economies. This logic leads to the conclusion that an ostentatious capitol building is necessary for economic prosperity, because most major economies have an ostentatious capital building. It's pure rubbish. Try asking it to prove that the economic prosperity is caused by the patent system rather than merely correlated.
      - M8R-fhlcjm 14y ago
        I see, "troll" because I don't conform to your opinion. What is this, slashdot? > Try asking it to prove that the economic prosperity is caused by the patent system rather than merely correlated. About as provable as the opposite.
        marshray 14y ago
        > What is this, slashdot? Ouch! Now that's hitting below the belt.
        AnthonyMouse 14y ago
        >I see, "troll" because I don't conform to your opinion. No, "troll" because you're trolling. Make an argument that isn't a textbook logical fallacy. >About as provable as the opposite. Are you arguing semantics? Absolute proof of anything is impossible? The thing to be proven is insufficiently specified, e.g. whether limited to software patents or to historically vs. in today's economy? That sort of thing? That's extremely pedantic, but I suppose it's technically correct. (The best kind of correct, naturally.) So let's say not proof, just good reasoning supporting the position. Here, I'll start. In the software industry where every individual with a PC and a compiler is a market participant, there are thousands of times more players than there are in most other patent-intensive industries, which vastly increases the cost of the patent system because the cost of clearing and licensing each invention against each patent is O(n^2) in the number of inventions. This number is so large in a market with tens or hundreds of thousands of participants that actually doing the clearances and licensing becomes an impossibility in practice due solely to transaction costs, i.e. the cost of each and every inventor tracking down and negotiating with each and every other inventor holding a potentially relevant software patent. Moreover, as a result of the practical impossibility of actually doing that many clearances, it creates an environment in which everyone is potentially infringing everything. In such an environment, the patent system is inherently not providing the expected incentive to inventors, because there are too many infringers infringing too many patents to even so much as evaluate all of the possible infringement, much less negotiate licenses or litigate it, resulting in no license fees (or monopoly rents through the ability to exclude) from the large majority of infringers. In addition to that, because patents are legally required to be licensed but software cannot rigorously and thoroughly be determined to be non-infringing in any cost-effective manner, an enormous amount of uncertainty about what patents a product may infringe overhangs the prospective market participants, which reduces the amount of funding available for new R&D because prospective investors will only provide funding if the expected returns exceed the risk created by software patents. Worse, because of the enormous amount of de jure infringement which is de facto business as usual, patent trolls with submarine patents can do an enormous amount of damage to anyone who experiences market success, and there is nothing the victim can do to prevent it because of the aforementioned practical impossibility of doing all the necessary patent clearances. This is worse than a normal risk because it occurs exactly to those investments which would otherwise have succeeded, providing an even more powerful disincentive to invest in new product development. The associated litigation creates a further deadweight loss on the economy because not only are those resources not being allocated to research, they're actively being misallocated to wasteful litigation and transaction costs. On top of all of that, the reverse can occur and results in a potentially even larger harm: Rather than a successful company being sued by a non-practicing troll, the successful company can sue anyone who actually makes a product, because they hold enough patents that any nontrivial software infringes some of them. Between large companies this power cancels out, but when the relationship is asymmetric it becomes a club for incumbents to use against newcomers. Anyone who enters an established market segment is subject to suit by incumbents, which reduces the incentive for non-incumbents to innovate, because the cost of the inevitable litigation has to be factored in. Where this effect is sufficiently strong, it can destroy innovation entirely in specific submarkets, because no newcomers enter for fear of incumbents with patents and no incumbents innovate for lack of competition from newcomers. So there you go. Let's hear your rebuttal.
  - fpgeek 14y ago
    You also might ask: How did the US get to the top in the first place? It was not exactly known for respecting English and German patents in the 19th century...
    - M8R-fhlcjm 14y ago
      sure, and now China is repeating history.
    - rustynails77 14y ago
      WWII baby. The US blackmailed the UK out of its patents (in return for assistance) and the US basically took all of Germany's IP as payment. I'll get modded to hell for that - but it had to be said.
      - marshray 14y ago
        I don't think you have to invoke any legal trickery or belief in the power of "Intellectual Property": in 1945 the US was, more or less, the only large industrialized capitalist nation that hadn't been bombed to bits. UK, Germany, and Japan were still stacking their buildings' bricks back on top of each other while the US was figuring out what to do with its absurd postwar excess manufacturing capacity.
  - polshaw 14y ago
    I kind of agreed with your first post; patents mean that the inventor will share with the world how to make the invention. (although, i am generally anti-patent for several reasons; much too great scope and time-length especially for the technical world). But you really lost me here with your rookie 'causation Vs correlation' point. Alternative thesis; powerful corporations (which occur in rich nations) have more government sway to enable protectionism.
  - bluedanieru 14y ago
    Out.

marshray 14y ago

You could start by backing up the statements patents provided the incentive to innovate and $spend on R&D in America, and and now free for all to copy and especially Without patents, smart investors will start to look at where they can most cheaply copy American innovations. It would be especally impressive if you could show that all these putative benefits were, in fact, a net gain over all the very tangible downsides of this idea monopoly casino that is our patent system.

M8R-fhlcjm 14y ago
economies of countries with patent rights exceed economies without patents. And at the top is the U.S.A. with strongest patent rights.
- marshray 14y ago
  Well if you look at regular GDP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28nominal%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28nom... , China is right there at #2. They are hardly known for their strong patent enforcement. To the contrary, they're known for "lax IP" and as a place where anyone can start a factory and start making almost anything for export. They're said to be growing faster than the US too, probably in no small part because it's easier to make things there. If you look at per-captia GDP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29_per_capita http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP... instead, the US is way down at #8, behind Luxembourg, Qatar, Macau, Norway, Singapore, Kuwait, Brunei, Hong Kong, and Switzerland. How many of those countries are known for having "strong patent rights" and $B lawsuits and sales injuctions by patent holders against vendors? Hmm, looks instead like most of those are countries known for their ability to produce things of value and export them to other countries such as the US.
  - AnthonyMouse 14y ago
    Forget about all of that, you're just feeding the troll. The troll's premise is that correlation is causation, i.e. that large economies generally have patent systems and therefore that patent systems cause or are necessary to maintain large economies. This logic leads to the conclusion that an ostentatious capitol building is necessary for economic prosperity, because most major economies have an ostentatious capital building. It's pure rubbish. Try asking it to prove that the economic prosperity is caused by the patent system rather than merely correlated.
    - M8R-fhlcjm 14y ago
      I see, "troll" because I don't conform to your opinion. What is this, slashdot? > Try asking it to prove that the economic prosperity is caused by the patent system rather than merely correlated. About as provable as the opposite.
      - marshray 14y ago
        > What is this, slashdot? Ouch! Now that's hitting below the belt.
      - AnthonyMouse 14y ago
        >I see, "troll" because I don't conform to your opinion. No, "troll" because you're trolling. Make an argument that isn't a textbook logical fallacy. >About as provable as the opposite. Are you arguing semantics? Absolute proof of anything is impossible? The thing to be proven is insufficiently specified, e.g. whether limited to software patents or to historically vs. in today's economy? That sort of thing? That's extremely pedantic, but I suppose it's technically correct. (The best kind of correct, naturally.) So let's say not proof, just good reasoning supporting the position. Here, I'll start. In the software industry where every individual with a PC and a compiler is a market participant, there are thousands of times more players than there are in most other patent-intensive industries, which vastly increases the cost of the patent system because the cost of clearing and licensing each invention against each patent is O(n^2) in the number of inventions. This number is so large in a market with tens or hundreds of thousands of participants that actually doing the clearances and licensing becomes an impossibility in practice due solely to transaction costs, i.e. the cost of each and every inventor tracking down and negotiating with each and every other inventor holding a potentially relevant software patent. Moreover, as a result of the practical impossibility of actually doing that many clearances, it creates an environment in which everyone is potentially infringing everything. In such an environment, the patent system is inherently not providing the expected incentive to inventors, because there are too many infringers infringing too many patents to even so much as evaluate all of the possible infringement, much less negotiate licenses or litigate it, resulting in no license fees (or monopoly rents through the ability to exclude) from the large majority of infringers. In addition to that, because patents are legally required to be licensed but software cannot rigorously and thoroughly be determined to be non-infringing in any cost-effective manner, an enormous amount of uncertainty about what patents a product may infringe overhangs the prospective market participants, which reduces the amount of funding available for new R&D because prospective investors will only provide funding if the expected returns exceed the risk created by software patents. Worse, because of the enormous amount of de jure infringement which is de facto business as usual, patent trolls with submarine patents can do an enormous amount of damage to anyone who experiences market success, and there is nothing the victim can do to prevent it because of the aforementioned practical impossibility of doing all the necessary patent clearances. This is worse than a normal risk because it occurs exactly to those investments which would otherwise have succeeded, providing an even more powerful disincentive to invest in new product development. The associated litigation creates a further deadweight loss on the economy because not only are those resources not being allocated to research, they're actively being misallocated to wasteful litigation and transaction costs. On top of all of that, the reverse can occur and results in a potentially even larger harm: Rather than a successful company being sued by a non-practicing troll, the successful company can sue anyone who actually makes a product, because they hold enough patents that any nontrivial software infringes some of them. Between large companies this power cancels out, but when the relationship is asymmetric it becomes a club for incumbents to use against newcomers. Anyone who enters an established market segment is subject to suit by incumbents, which reduces the incentive for non-incumbents to innovate, because the cost of the inevitable litigation has to be factored in. Where this effect is sufficiently strong, it can destroy innovation entirely in specific submarkets, because no newcomers enter for fear of incumbents with patents and no incumbents innovate for lack of competition from newcomers. So there you go. Let's hear your rebuttal.
- fpgeek 14y ago
  You also might ask: How did the US get to the top in the first place? It was not exactly known for respecting English and German patents in the 19th century...
  - M8R-fhlcjm 14y ago
    sure, and now China is repeating history.
  - rustynails77 14y ago
    WWII baby. The US blackmailed the UK out of its patents (in return for assistance) and the US basically took all of Germany's IP as payment. I'll get modded to hell for that - but it had to be said.
    - marshray 14y ago
      I don't think you have to invoke any legal trickery or belief in the power of "Intellectual Property": in 1945 the US was, more or less, the only large industrialized capitalist nation that hadn't been bombed to bits. UK, Germany, and Japan were still stacking their buildings' bricks back on top of each other while the US was figuring out what to do with its absurd postwar excess manufacturing capacity.
- polshaw 14y ago
  I kind of agreed with your first post; patents mean that the inventor will share with the world how to make the invention. (although, i am generally anti-patent for several reasons; much too great scope and time-length especially for the technical world). But you really lost me here with your rookie 'causation Vs correlation' point. Alternative thesis; powerful corporations (which occur in rich nations) have more government sway to enable protectionism.
- bluedanieru 14y ago
  Out.