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And then what? We'll have nothing at all? I'm certainly not in favour of these patent trolls but you have to have a more nuanced approach to intellectual proper
by vertis 14y ago
And then what? We'll have nothing at all? I'm certainly not in favour of these patent trolls but you have to have a more nuanced approach to intellectual property than 'Burn down the House'
It's a balance between encouraging innovation by protecting intellectual property, and discouraging it because of patent abuse (etc).
Destroying the patent system completely would most certainly have a negative effect.
- pyre 14y agoI'm beginning to believe that reforms are not possible and "burn down the house" may be the only option to escape the current mess. There are too many vested interests, and the problems are too abstract/complex for normal people to care (and put pressure on representatives). Even if the general populous put pressure on Congress to do something, Congress would pass some law that at best did nothing, and at worst went in the opposite direction, all while politicians proclaimed 'victory' in reforming the system, and the general populous settles down because 'something' happened, and the technicalities of why it's bad are too hard to understand in a 10 second sound-bite.
- drcube 14y agoNo, these trolls show that the entire basis for patents is absurd. The only difference between "patent trolling" and normal patent litigation is that they target individual users who are ignorant of the process. Big businesses have been doing this to each other for decades. Knowledge simply cannot and should not be owned.
- FuzzyDunlop 14y agoFrom the sounds of it, and in reference to everyone using the term 'patent troll' here, I think this particular instance could be more appropriately labelled as 'patent scamming'.
- mcherm 14y ago> And then what? We'll have nothing at all? No... and then we'll have legislators who are willing to improve the system. > It's a balance between encouraging innovation by protecting intellectual property, and discouraging it because of patent abuse I think that depends on what part of the patent system you are considering. In the world of medical devices, for instance, it is a balance between encouraging innovation and discouraging it. In the world of software patents I honestly do not think that there is anyone who is innovating because of patents (there ARE some who are making money off innovations they would create anyway), so there I do not feel that there is a balance: software patents only discourage innovation.
- dasil003 14y ago> Destroying the patent system completely would most certainly have a negative effect Why are you so sure of this? Government granted monopoly is not the only incentive to create something, but there are definitely countless examples of how patents have been used to squash innovation and disruption. I grant that patents have had some positive effects, but I would not assume they are net-positive. Also, they were primarily designed in a time when there were fewer ideas and getting things into production was much more expensive (this applies to physical things, let along software with zero marginal cost), and it was much easier for an incumbent to steal an idea and crush a startup simply by the barriers to entry to manufacturing and distribution. Since then lobbying efforts have only pushed intellectual property rights in one direction. Even medical research patents which are often held up as necessary create perverse incentives that tie up R&D dollars in unproven new drugs, and making arbitrary tweaks to existing newish medicines in order to secure patent protection, making research into natural or public domain compounds come to a standstill regardless of efficacy. Obviously I'm biased since I work in software, but I think we'd be fine without patents. Trademark and copyright address much more important issues in my opinion.
- wheaties 14y agoMedical treatments, vaccines, and drugs cost enormous amounts of money to bring to market due to all the regulations and requirements we've created ensuring a pill is not fatal. Why would any company in their right mind develop any sort of drug if it cost $100m and anyone after them could take the idea free of cost? Patents are good/needed to promote the quality of medicine. There they're good.
- nasmorn 14y agoActually many of these requirements were created so the cost of creating new drugs is sufficiently high to keep out new companies. The FDA is big pharmas moat.
- dasil003 14y agoYou're just reciting the standard line which I already acknowledged in my comment. My point was that some of the most promising avenues of research are ignored because of the lack of patentability. How do you address that point?
- wpietri 14y agoAnd then we'll figure out what comes next. It's not obvious to me that a 15th-century approach is still the very best option in the coming age of the Internet. There's certainly an awful lot of innovation happening for which patents are irrelevant when they aren't inimical. Whether or not the whole thing gets burned down, I think api is right that only a major crisis will get us the major changes we need.
- mtgx 14y agoAnd it's a shame EU just made it easier to get unitary EU patents in Europe now. Ugh.
- CamperBob2 14y agoyou have to have a more nuanced approach to intellectual property than 'Burn down the House' (Shrug) The house will either burn down, or it will fall apart due to shoddy construction. Better to get it over with sooner than later, so the land it stands on can be put to better use.
- jebblue 14y ago>>(Shrug) The house will either burn down, or it will fall apart due to shoddy construction. It has helped to build the most powerful and most popular nation on the planet in the history of the planet.
- hn-miw-i 14y agoPowerful and Popular? Oh I see you mean China! Patents don't mean too much there...
- CamperBob2 14y agoYeah, but China achieved its success by ignoring other nations' intellectual property laws. That was hardly the case with the US. (guffaw)
- CamperBob2 14y agoPost Hoc, meet Propter Hoc. You two have a lot to talk about.
- veidr 14y agoGenocide and slavery also helped build the USA. Doesn't mean we shouldn't have stopped doing those things.
- jebblue 14y agoPatents are not related to human atrocities, it is truly sad that you made such a comparison.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- skreech 14y agoA more nuanced approach would be to stop software patents and lawsuits brought on by non-practicing entities. That way you don't have to pull the carpet from under drug companies and suchlike, or 'burn down the entire house'. Just the rotten parts of it.
- ori_b 14y ago> A more nuanced approach would be to stop software patents and lawsuits brought on by non-practicing entities. ARM, MIPS, and many research universities would count as non-practicing entities. As they are, they only produce "intellectual property", and sell licenses to it to fund their operations. They would be forced to find an alternative business model. Universities have alternative funding sources, and they might not be affected too heavily. Whether this is a good or a bad thing is open to debate, but it's clear to me that non-practicing entities that produce valuable results do exist.
- skreech 14y agoGood point, and IANAL etc, but since we as humans can more or less clearly see the difference between patent trolls and such institutions, there has to be a way to encode those nuances in legalese. But I guess the real problem isn't whether the patents usually involved will hold up in court, but the costs involved in setting up a defense and disproving the accusations.
- jlgreco 14y ago> there has to be a way to encode those nuances in legalese. How about: more than 50% of your employees are lawyers, or the lawyers in your organization make more than 50% of the money (to prevent a few lawyers from "hiring" a dozen or so highschoolers at minimum wage. Patents should protect engineers, not lawyers.
- ori_b 14y agoThe nuances are in the patents themselves. Are they non-trivial? Are they innovative? Did they require any significant amount of effort to come up with? I'm of the opinion that two measures will help fix the patent system, and this applies to most fields. First, the duration of patents needs to be cut. 5 or so years would probably suffice. Second, there needs to be an incentivized prior art busting effort. Perhaps the party filing the patent could put $1000 or so into escrow for a 1 month waiting period, and if someone manages to find valid prior art, they get the money.
- belorn 14y agoThe patent system is one of the two laws still in existence that since its creation during the 17th century, it still have not been updated to even 19th century government procedural style. Around the 17th and early 18th century, laws was made to be simple. Process required to be made simple. If you stole a horse, you got the same jail time as every other horse thieves. Taxes was the exact same as for everyone (at least for the poor), and there was no books after books with exceptions, rules, and additional judgement calls needed to be made. Everything everyone needed to know about the government could be read in a rather tiny book, written almost like a novel. But by the late 18th century, governments changed in a radical way in how it worked. Laws got complex. procedures was created to have someone who made a judgement call on goverment actions on however something benefited society or if it did more harm than good. They started to do cost-benefit analysis. One by one, all but two areas (copyright and patent), was changed in how they was issues, and how to balance the public good vs desired benefits. But giving people 20 years government enforced monopolies has so far evaded any form of cost-benefit evaluations. In contrast, it has just been expanded to cover more and more, for a longer time, and for less money. Destroying the patent system completely would force a cost-benefit analysis on the whole system of patents and how to maximalistly create incentives for inventions, without costing society more than it gets. Given that its the government that pay's for and enforces said monopolies, one might consider a cost-benefit analysis on the whole system a something that it should do.
- hetman 14y agoThe patent system is not for encouraging innovation, it is for encouraging people to share the secrets of their innovation. Without a patent system we would go back to the guild system of the middle ages, in other words, the protection of trade secrets. You're right of course, we're much better off with a working patent system than with the system that came before it. However I'm personally not convinced that the patent system in its current form (at least in the US thought possibly in some other places too) is either working, or better for innovation than no system at all.
- linuxhansl 14y agoI disagree. Only inventions that need a lot of money to be"invented" need any form of legal protection. You'd have to prove that without patents the incentive for R&D would be diminished to the point where it would no longer take place.