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In general, I think patents slow innovation. My intuition is trade secrets would work well enough for most industries. It usually takes a significant amount of
by JamesArgo 13y ago
In general, I think patents slow innovation. My intuition is trade secrets would work well enough for most industries. It usually takes a significant amount of time to reverse engineer a product, and in doing so one might gain new insights into how said product can be improved. Drugs are an exception, I admit, but I don't think most of the innovation in medicine this century will be in easily-synthesized drugs as we understand them.
- showerst 13y agoI think I agree with you, but I'm not so sure on the difficulties of reverse engineering. Small electronics are a good example to both our points; once a new device hits a factory in china it's as good as pirated (sometimes it's pirated in the same factory after hours!), but that hasn't terribly hurt the companies cranking out cheap USB drives, and companies like Apple have just moved way the up value chain. I do think they have significant use for things like engines and heavy equipment, where (everything but the metallurgy) is reversible, but they take $BN investments. Software patents (and really all 'business method') patents are total trash, if only because the USPTO can't possibly keep up with the pace, so people get patents for linked lists (in the 90s!) and shopping carts and such.