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> Patents grant a government protected monopoly in order to encourage people to invent. No they don't. The patent system was developed to encourage inventors

> Patents grant a government protected monopoly in order to encourage people to invent. No they don't. The patent system was developed to encourage inventors to make their inventions public knowledge for the public good. It was never about encouraging invention, the limited monopoly was the means to and end, unlocking trade secrets for the public good. You've confused the means for the motive.

sillysaurus2 13y ago
I think this is correct. For example, the Wright Brothers' sole motivation for inventing the airplane was to patent it and make money. Without patents, they would've either kept it secret or not done it at all.
- yxhuvud 13y ago
  That is quite ridiculous. There were lots and lots of people that tried (increasingly successful) to create aircrafts, both before and after the wright brothers. If there is one high profile invention that would capture the dreams of inventors and invent just for the hell of it, then flying is that invention. The results of the patents the Wright brothers were granted is quite evident if one compares the state of aircraft during the first world war - USA was woefully behind everyone else, mostly because the Wright patent(s?) stopped aircraft innovation there until it expired.
  - sillysaurus2 13y ago
    I have no idea what you're talking about, but the Wright brothers' primary motivation for inventing the airplane was to patent it and make money off it. You don't have to take my word for it. Also, it wasn't at all clear what the way to invent flight was going to be. Most people were trying an approach called something like "inherent stability" where they were trying to design their aircraft so that it couldn't crash. I.e. instead of giving pilots three axis control, they felt it necessary to design their aircraft so that pilots didn't need any control. So it may be obvious in hindsight how to invent flight, but it was extraordinarily non-obvious at the time, as every invention is. We'd certainly like to believe invention happens for the sake of invention, but empirically dollar signs make the world go 'round.
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      That they thought they could make money off of an airplane patent is proof that they understood that airplanes would be useful in their own right. Had they not done it, somebody else would have, with or without patents; it was inevitable. It might have taken a handful of more years, but it was inevitable. A crude though reasonable way to estimate how inevitable a development was is to look at the period of time between when the prerequisites for an idea were created, and when the idea itself was created. Some ideas, such as the phonograph (which could have been created at least a few centuries earlier) have a very large span of time between these two things. These ideas could plausibly have been "missed" if circumstances didn't align. Other ideas were devised shortly after their prerequisites. Liquid fuel rockets burning LOX and LH2 were first considered by Tsiolkovsky just two years after hydrogen was first liquefied. Goddard did not know of Tsiolkovsky but that hardly mattered, that idea was inevitable. He, instead of Tsiolkovsky, went through with the idea. In the case of the Wright brothers, powered controllable airplanes hit the scene quite shortly after suitable engines were feasible. They deserve credit for being the ones that actually did it, but there is really little reason to think that there was ever a risk of a future without planes.
      - WalterBright 13y ago
        I figure that without the Wrights, the problem would have been solved within 5 years or so. But still, the Wrights did it.
        jlgreco 13y ago
        Absolutely agree.
    - WalterBright 13y ago
      Sole motivation? Primary motivation? I don't see the evidence for it. From "The Bishop's Boys", pg. 164: "Wilbur was thirty-two years old in the spring of 1899. He realized that now was the time. He needed a challenge, a measure of himself—a problem that matched his skills and abilities. The recognition that flight was such a problem did not come in a blinding flash of insight, but grew slowly during the years 1896-99." He'd been interested in flight since he was a boy.
  - microcolonel 13y ago
    Thank you, same thing happened with the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard, and again is probably going to happen with Beeline(that lovely technology which helps your brain transition text lines).
- specialist 13y ago
  And how well did that work out for the Wright brothers? While they were busy trying to enforce their patent, they stopped innovating, and their competitors kept moving forward, exploiting the market the Wright brothers created.
  - sangnoir 13y ago
    It didn't work out very well for them (or the U.S. in general. Innovation simply moved to France- further away from harassment by the Wright's. I remember reading an article stating that this is the reason so many parts of the aeroplane have French names (fuselage, aileron, &tc)
guelo 13y ago
The basis for patents and copyrights is this clause in the constitution: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
- gnaritas 13y ago
  Correct, the goal: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", i.e. make trade secrets public, Science is a public endeavor, the goal here is the public good, not the inventors good. The means of obtaining that goal: " by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." They key word here is "by" which makes it clear we're now discussing means and not the goal. The goal is the first phrase of the sentence.
  - dllthomas 13y ago
    In an environment where inventors were not sufficiently motivated to produce sans patents, patents might quite legitimately be "promot[ing] the progress of Science and useful Arts" in part by providing that motivation.
    - gnaritas 13y ago
      That doesn't conflict with anything I said; I never said patents don't motivate inventors; I said motivating inventors was not the purpose of patents, it's merely the side effect of the method used to get inventors to give up their trade secrets.
      - dllthomas 13y ago
        You as much as said it's not a goal at all, whereas it can absolutely be an instrumental goal (which is what I'd read the parent as responding to, and how the issue is often - though not always - framed) without being a terminal goal.
      - guelo 13y ago
blah32497 13y ago
If you can keep something secret, why would you bother patenting it? I think that the most important secondary effect is that it puts all inventions on a more of less level playing field. Inventions that can't be kept secret due to practical limitations(like the cotton gin, or the steam engine) are just as valuable as inventions that can be hidden (computer programs, chemical processes, etc.)
- gnaritas 13y ago
  > If you can keep something secret, why would you bother patenting it? Because you can't know that someone can't reverse engineer what you're doing. The patent gives you legal recourse and a limited legal monopoly.

sillysaurus2 13y ago

I think this is correct. For example, the Wright Brothers' sole motivation for inventing the airplane was to patent it and make money. Without patents, they would've either kept it secret or not done it at all.

yxhuvud 13y ago
That is quite ridiculous. There were lots and lots of people that tried (increasingly successful) to create aircrafts, both before and after the wright brothers. If there is one high profile invention that would capture the dreams of inventors and invent just for the hell of it, then flying is that invention. The results of the patents the Wright brothers were granted is quite evident if one compares the state of aircraft during the first world war - USA was woefully behind everyone else, mostly because the Wright patent(s?) stopped aircraft innovation there until it expired.
- sillysaurus2 13y ago
  I have no idea what you're talking about, but the Wright brothers' primary motivation for inventing the airplane was to patent it and make money off it. You don't have to take my word for it. Also, it wasn't at all clear what the way to invent flight was going to be. Most people were trying an approach called something like "inherent stability" where they were trying to design their aircraft so that it couldn't crash. I.e. instead of giving pilots three axis control, they felt it necessary to design their aircraft so that pilots didn't need any control. So it may be obvious in hindsight how to invent flight, but it was extraordinarily non-obvious at the time, as every invention is. We'd certainly like to believe invention happens for the sake of invention, but empirically dollar signs make the world go 'round.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    That they thought they could make money off of an airplane patent is proof that they understood that airplanes would be useful in their own right. Had they not done it, somebody else would have, with or without patents; it was inevitable. It might have taken a handful of more years, but it was inevitable. A crude though reasonable way to estimate how inevitable a development was is to look at the period of time between when the prerequisites for an idea were created, and when the idea itself was created. Some ideas, such as the phonograph (which could have been created at least a few centuries earlier) have a very large span of time between these two things. These ideas could plausibly have been "missed" if circumstances didn't align. Other ideas were devised shortly after their prerequisites. Liquid fuel rockets burning LOX and LH2 were first considered by Tsiolkovsky just two years after hydrogen was first liquefied. Goddard did not know of Tsiolkovsky but that hardly mattered, that idea was inevitable. He, instead of Tsiolkovsky, went through with the idea. In the case of the Wright brothers, powered controllable airplanes hit the scene quite shortly after suitable engines were feasible. They deserve credit for being the ones that actually did it, but there is really little reason to think that there was ever a risk of a future without planes.
    - WalterBright 13y ago
      I figure that without the Wrights, the problem would have been solved within 5 years or so. But still, the Wrights did it.
      - jlgreco 13y ago
        Absolutely agree.
  - WalterBright 13y ago
    Sole motivation? Primary motivation? I don't see the evidence for it. From "The Bishop's Boys", pg. 164: "Wilbur was thirty-two years old in the spring of 1899. He realized that now was the time. He needed a challenge, a measure of himself—a problem that matched his skills and abilities. The recognition that flight was such a problem did not come in a blinding flash of insight, but grew slowly during the years 1896-99." He'd been interested in flight since he was a boy.
- microcolonel 13y ago
  Thank you, same thing happened with the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard, and again is probably going to happen with Beeline(that lovely technology which helps your brain transition text lines).
specialist 13y ago
And how well did that work out for the Wright brothers? While they were busy trying to enforce their patent, they stopped innovating, and their competitors kept moving forward, exploiting the market the Wright brothers created.
- sangnoir 13y ago
  It didn't work out very well for them (or the U.S. in general. Innovation simply moved to France- further away from harassment by the Wright's. I remember reading an article stating that this is the reason so many parts of the aeroplane have French names (fuselage, aileron, &tc)

guelo 13y ago

The basis for patents and copyrights is this clause in the constitution: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

gnaritas 13y ago
Correct, the goal: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", i.e. make trade secrets public, Science is a public endeavor, the goal here is the public good, not the inventors good. The means of obtaining that goal: " by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." They key word here is "by" which makes it clear we're now discussing means and not the goal. The goal is the first phrase of the sentence.
- dllthomas 13y ago
  In an environment where inventors were not sufficiently motivated to produce sans patents, patents might quite legitimately be "promot[ing] the progress of Science and useful Arts" in part by providing that motivation.
  - gnaritas 13y ago
    That doesn't conflict with anything I said; I never said patents don't motivate inventors; I said motivating inventors was not the purpose of patents, it's merely the side effect of the method used to get inventors to give up their trade secrets.
    - dllthomas 13y ago
      You as much as said it's not a goal at all, whereas it can absolutely be an instrumental goal (which is what I'd read the parent as responding to, and how the issue is often - though not always - framed) without being a terminal goal.
    - guelo 13y ago

blah32497 13y ago

If you can keep something secret, why would you bother patenting it? I think that the most important secondary effect is that it puts all inventions on a more of less level playing field. Inventions that can't be kept secret due to practical limitations(like the cotton gin, or the steam engine) are just as valuable as inventions that can be hidden (computer programs, chemical processes, etc.)

gnaritas 13y ago
> If you can keep something secret, why would you bother patenting it? Because you can't know that someone can't reverse engineer what you're doing. The patent gives you legal recourse and a limited legal monopoly.