7 ms·

I've been thinking of patents as nukes during the Cold War lately. Superpowers (US/USSR, Apple/Google) acquire very large nuclear/patent arsenals under the gui

I've been thinking of patents as nukes during the Cold War lately. Superpowers (US/USSR, Apple/Google) acquire very large nuclear/patent arsenals under the guise of protection/defense. These arsenals are relatively cheap for superpowers to build, but they are expensive for small states (small countries/small businesses) to acquire. The US and USSR were roughly equivalent in their arsenals so it made little sense for either party to act offensively. However, the implied power behind the arsenals gave them a lot of power when dealing with smaller actors. The superpowers benefit greatly from acquiring these arsenals. Even without using them publicly, the threat can always be used behind closed doors (as Jobs has been shown to do). But there's a third actor; the most universally feared actor: terrorists/patent trolls. These actors behave only offensively because they have nothing to defend. These actors are best poised to benefit from nukes and patents and can send an otherwise orderly system into chaos. Anyway, just a fun but flawed analogy to play with in your noodle. :)

houseofshards 12y ago
As a consequence, nuclear scientists/physicists of the Cold War era are analogous to patent lawyers today. Kind of sad don't you think ? :)
- AnthonyMouse 12y ago
  That's the point where the analogy breaks down though, because the actors in the patent case are private actors rather than sovereigns. So if you e.g. abolish software patents the whole problem disappears, but nobody can "abolish" nuclear weapons because they're a consequence of the laws of physics rather than the laws of the United States. If humans had the power to amend the laws of physics to make nuclear weapons impossible and yet nuclear physicists lobbied against it, then they would be in the same position as patent lawyers.
- hhg_az 12y ago
  not quite. The scientists didnt like what they were doing and were driven by making sure that thier side was best equipped. Patent lawyers just make money. Go to trial? Pay up (even if you loose) Need a new patent? Pay up. Want to enforce your existing patent? Pay up. Want to check to see if someone is infringing on your patents? Pay up. The lawyers, more or less are neutral benefactors of the patent wars.
noonespecial 12y ago
That and even if the states that developed them in the first place never intended to use them, they remain in the environment for many years after, poisoning entire regions of the landscape. Sometimes to the point of making those regions uninhabitable.
- Ygg2 12y ago
  On the other hand, regions which make it uninhabitable for humans make it habitable for animals. Chernobyl is now a haven for wildlife.
  - krisgenre 12y ago
    That's interesting. I thought thought radioactivity was harmful to all life forms, any source?
    - hiker 12y ago
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSWWSq714aQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSWWSq714aQ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4923342.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4923342.stm
    - ekianjo 12y ago
      > I thought thought radioactivity was harmful to all life forms The ambient levels of radioactivity are very "livable" in the surroundings of Chernobyl nowadays, plus you have to consider that it's not because radioactivity is detrimental that it prevents animals from breeding and surviving. Only very high levels of radioactivity are known to be fast killers, moderate levels will likely cause more cancers, and low levels are heavily debated (some people saying it causes harm, some others saying it has protective effects on the body as it kills a number of microorganisms).
  - adventured 12y ago
    This isn't accurate. The Chernobyl event has severely degraded the ecosystem for nearly all living things. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/forests-around-chernobyl-arent-decaying-properly-180950075/ http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/forests-around-... "Birds around Chernobyl have significantly smaller brains that those living in non-radiation poisoned areas; trees there grow slower; and fewer spiders and insects—including bees, butterflies and grasshoppers—live there. Additionally, game animals such as wild boar caught outside of the exclusion zone—including some bagged as far away as Germany—continue to show abnormal and dangerous levels of radiation." And there are likely plenty more terrible results we don't yet know about.
CamperBob2 12y ago
Personally, I see nukes as more ethical than patents. You can make the argument that MAD-based nuclear deterrence has saved us (at least so far) from a third world war. Not everyone will agree, of course, but a strong case can be made. On the other hand, to defend patents, you have to show that there are things on the market that we can buy that would not have been made available to us if not for patent rights. Nobody can claim that patents have saved us from a catastrophic world war by forcing our leaders to find less destructive ways to disagree. About the most you can say is that without patents, some lifesaving medications for some relatively uncommon conditions wouldn't have been economically feasible to develop. Musk's comparison of patents to land mines is much more apt than comparing them to nukes. Only a psychopath (or a land mine manufacturer) would argue that humanity is better off because land mines exist. Nuclear weapons are a genuine gray area in comparison.
- tempestn 12y ago
  Two things: First, you might want to clarify in the first paragraph that you're talking about the existence of nukes, as opposed to the use of nukes. It's clear from reading your entire comment, but I find it's good to play it safe with that sort of topic! ;) Second, to play devil's advocate, is it possible that landmines could have a net positive impact if they could somehow be properly, globally regulated? For and extreme example, say that only the UN had access to landmines, and they were only deployed as a last resort to enforce DMZs. (Also measures would be taken so that they could be safely removed.) Seems like they could be a positive thing if used correctly. I expect patents are much the same. Certainly overused and abused currently, but not necessarily negative if they could be used 'correctly'.
  - MacsHeadroom 12y ago
    How's this for "correctly?" http://www.defensivepatentlicense.com/ http://www.defensivepatentlicense.com/ Kind of like copyleft- but for patents.
    - tempestn 12y ago
      Hmm, I can see how that sort of thing makes sense given the current state of the patent system, but personally I don't believe that so-called 'offensive' patents are irredeemable. Rather, it seems to me that they are simply far too broadly granted, and generally for far too long a time period. I have no problem with a patent-enforced monopoly if it is granted for a true innovation, and for a reasonable length of time. For example, in the smartphone industry, where a product is old in a year and obsolete in three, it doesn't make sense to me for patents to last decades. On the other hand, it does seem reasonable to reward significant innovation by granting a patent for a long enough time period to establish a strong market position, before opening things up to competition. The tricky thing is, that ideal time period would be highly variable based on the industry and even the specific idea being patented. Still, surely there's room for improvement there.
xianshou 12y ago
Interestingly, this analogy works very much at the company level, but reverses at the country level. For companies, patents represent weapons in an arsenal, in which MAD prevents offensive action, as you've said. For countries, the reverse holds: a country that jettisons its patent architecture, or never evolved a restrictive one to begin with, will be a bastion for innovators. The stable equilibrium is no bad patents - a lack of shallow protectionism - and the only reason patent law in the US has remained constant for so long is because of the other advantages that have given it technological and scientific primacy. As those advantages erode, patent law will loosen to stimulate competition. Perhaps there is an upside to the perception of decline?
- novaleaf 12y ago
  A nice hypothesis, do you have any examples that show this to be true? The realist in me bets that innovation has only a weak relationship to IP laws, and rather a strong relationship to a certain world-view that fosters innovation since childhood (go USA!)
  - publysher 12y ago
    One real example is the Netherlands and the rise of Philips: http://books.google.nl/books?id=sfoujAT3b_YC&lpg=PA104&ots=BVjEuRBYkx&pg=PA104#v=onepage&q&f=false http://books.google.nl/books?id=sfoujAT3b_YC&lpg=PA104&ots=B...
  - poolpool 12y ago
    How does the US foster innovation? It certainly puts the rich (Some of which who were innovators) on pedestals, but the education system certainly does not preach innovation for the first 18 years of a child's life. You could argue that it actually penalizes innovation.
    - novaleaf 12y ago
      I only have two personal anecdotes: My own childhood growing up in Washington State, and my experience in Thailand for the last 7 years. In the USA, we often hear about how our (USA) school systems are too easy/relaxed compared to foreign countries. In Thailand, it's the opposite, in the most terrible way possible. Everything is about test scores, and thus "thinking outside the box" is severely penalized. People in the USA might not have the raw-academics, but the applied problem solving and team collaboration skills absolutely crushes the competition (Though of course that doesn't help manual labor jobs much)
rednukleus 12y ago
Good analogy. But you got the countries around the wrong way with "(US/USSR, Apple/Google)". The resemblence to the cold war is even more striking when you realise that this also parallels planned economy vs free market. It will be interesting to see if we get the same result at the company level as we did at the country level.
- ep103 12y ago
  human culture is a fractal relevant xkcd --> http://xkcd.com/1095/ http://xkcd.com/1095/
Tloewald 12y ago
I think it's a terrible analogy: 1) Nuclear weapons are not even relatively cheap. (Certainly not for the Soviet Union.) ~$640B over the next 10y, and this is during a draw-down in weapons. http://www.ploughshares.org/what-nuclear-weapons-cost-us http://www.ploughshares.org/what-nuclear-weapons-cost-us 2) It's pretty ridiculous to suggest that nuclear powers covertly threatened smaller countries with the threat of their nuclear arsenals, let alone actually attacked smaller powers (unless you count the US bombing of Japan). Using patents doesn't lead to Mutually Assured Destruction, and there are many cases of large organizations using patents to damage or defeat other smaller (or even large) organizations. 3) Many of the patent trolls are surrogates of big players who simply give them plausible deniability. Again, there's no analogy of a big power giving nuclear weapons to terrorists to conduct attacks on its rivals because the downsides are so immense. With surrogate patent trolls it's merely a matter of some bad P.R.
exelius 12y ago
I think nukes are a bad analogy: patents are far more likely to be used because their use is not nearly as destructive. When Apple won a $1 billion judgement against Samsung, it wasn't even remotely damaging to Samsung ($178 billion in revenue in 2013). Really, it's just the inequalities of large markets. In general, it's a bad idea to start up a company in a field that a $100 billion company is expending a lot of effort in. Because they are established, they have the ability to create barriers to entry for you in a lot of different ways (marketing, supply chain, and yes, patents). If patents are no longer a problem, there are still plenty of ways that Google or Apple can keep you from playing in their backyard. If you're talking big companies vs big companies, they're just trying everything they can to make their competition spend more money on lawyers, etc. to reduce their margins even further. Apple has huge margins, Samsung does not, so it hurts Apple less to spend $100 million on patent lawyers than it does Samsung. The patent trolls are a new problem, and one that probably needs a regulatory solution. Technology patents in general are a problem, but solving the patent problem won't instantly change the landscape for smaller companies. They'll still be at a distinct disadvantage in a number of ways to larger companies, and need to pick their battles carefully.

houseofshards 12y ago

As a consequence, nuclear scientists/physicists of the Cold War era are analogous to patent lawyers today. Kind of sad don't you think ? :)

AnthonyMouse 12y ago
That's the point where the analogy breaks down though, because the actors in the patent case are private actors rather than sovereigns. So if you e.g. abolish software patents the whole problem disappears, but nobody can "abolish" nuclear weapons because they're a consequence of the laws of physics rather than the laws of the United States. If humans had the power to amend the laws of physics to make nuclear weapons impossible and yet nuclear physicists lobbied against it, then they would be in the same position as patent lawyers.
hhg_az 12y ago
not quite. The scientists didnt like what they were doing and were driven by making sure that thier side was best equipped. Patent lawyers just make money. Go to trial? Pay up (even if you loose) Need a new patent? Pay up. Want to enforce your existing patent? Pay up. Want to check to see if someone is infringing on your patents? Pay up. The lawyers, more or less are neutral benefactors of the patent wars.

noonespecial 12y ago

That and even if the states that developed them in the first place never intended to use them, they remain in the environment for many years after, poisoning entire regions of the landscape. Sometimes to the point of making those regions uninhabitable.

Ygg2 12y ago
On the other hand, regions which make it uninhabitable for humans make it habitable for animals. Chernobyl is now a haven for wildlife.
- krisgenre 12y ago
  That's interesting. I thought thought radioactivity was harmful to all life forms, any source?
  - hiker 12y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSWWSq714aQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSWWSq714aQ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4923342.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4923342.stm
  - ekianjo 12y ago
    > I thought thought radioactivity was harmful to all life forms The ambient levels of radioactivity are very "livable" in the surroundings of Chernobyl nowadays, plus you have to consider that it's not because radioactivity is detrimental that it prevents animals from breeding and surviving. Only very high levels of radioactivity are known to be fast killers, moderate levels will likely cause more cancers, and low levels are heavily debated (some people saying it causes harm, some others saying it has protective effects on the body as it kills a number of microorganisms).
- adventured 12y ago
  This isn't accurate. The Chernobyl event has severely degraded the ecosystem for nearly all living things. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/forests-around-chernobyl-arent-decaying-properly-180950075/ http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/forests-around-... "Birds around Chernobyl have significantly smaller brains that those living in non-radiation poisoned areas; trees there grow slower; and fewer spiders and insects—including bees, butterflies and grasshoppers—live there. Additionally, game animals such as wild boar caught outside of the exclusion zone—including some bagged as far away as Germany—continue to show abnormal and dangerous levels of radiation." And there are likely plenty more terrible results we don't yet know about.

CamperBob2 12y ago

Personally, I see nukes as more ethical than patents. You can make the argument that MAD-based nuclear deterrence has saved us (at least so far) from a third world war. Not everyone will agree, of course, but a strong case can be made. On the other hand, to defend patents, you have to show that there are things on the market that we can buy that would not have been made available to us if not for patent rights. Nobody can claim that patents have saved us from a catastrophic world war by forcing our leaders to find less destructive ways to disagree. About the most you can say is that without patents, some lifesaving medications for some relatively uncommon conditions wouldn't have been economically feasible to develop. Musk's comparison of patents to land mines is much more apt than comparing them to nukes. Only a psychopath (or a land mine manufacturer) would argue that humanity is better off because land mines exist. Nuclear weapons are a genuine gray area in comparison.

tempestn 12y ago
Two things: First, you might want to clarify in the first paragraph that you're talking about the existence of nukes, as opposed to the use of nukes. It's clear from reading your entire comment, but I find it's good to play it safe with that sort of topic! ;) Second, to play devil's advocate, is it possible that landmines could have a net positive impact if they could somehow be properly, globally regulated? For and extreme example, say that only the UN had access to landmines, and they were only deployed as a last resort to enforce DMZs. (Also measures would be taken so that they could be safely removed.) Seems like they could be a positive thing if used correctly. I expect patents are much the same. Certainly overused and abused currently, but not necessarily negative if they could be used 'correctly'.
- MacsHeadroom 12y ago
  How's this for "correctly?" http://www.defensivepatentlicense.com/ http://www.defensivepatentlicense.com/ Kind of like copyleft- but for patents.
  - tempestn 12y ago
    Hmm, I can see how that sort of thing makes sense given the current state of the patent system, but personally I don't believe that so-called 'offensive' patents are irredeemable. Rather, it seems to me that they are simply far too broadly granted, and generally for far too long a time period. I have no problem with a patent-enforced monopoly if it is granted for a true innovation, and for a reasonable length of time. For example, in the smartphone industry, where a product is old in a year and obsolete in three, it doesn't make sense to me for patents to last decades. On the other hand, it does seem reasonable to reward significant innovation by granting a patent for a long enough time period to establish a strong market position, before opening things up to competition. The tricky thing is, that ideal time period would be highly variable based on the industry and even the specific idea being patented. Still, surely there's room for improvement there.

xianshou 12y ago

Interestingly, this analogy works very much at the company level, but reverses at the country level. For companies, patents represent weapons in an arsenal, in which MAD prevents offensive action, as you've said. For countries, the reverse holds: a country that jettisons its patent architecture, or never evolved a restrictive one to begin with, will be a bastion for innovators. The stable equilibrium is no bad patents - a lack of shallow protectionism - and the only reason patent law in the US has remained constant for so long is because of the other advantages that have given it technological and scientific primacy. As those advantages erode, patent law will loosen to stimulate competition. Perhaps there is an upside to the perception of decline?

novaleaf 12y ago
A nice hypothesis, do you have any examples that show this to be true? The realist in me bets that innovation has only a weak relationship to IP laws, and rather a strong relationship to a certain world-view that fosters innovation since childhood (go USA!)
- publysher 12y ago
  One real example is the Netherlands and the rise of Philips: http://books.google.nl/books?id=sfoujAT3b_YC&lpg=PA104&ots=BVjEuRBYkx&pg=PA104#v=onepage&q&f=false http://books.google.nl/books?id=sfoujAT3b_YC&lpg=PA104&ots=B...
- poolpool 12y ago
  How does the US foster innovation? It certainly puts the rich (Some of which who were innovators) on pedestals, but the education system certainly does not preach innovation for the first 18 years of a child's life. You could argue that it actually penalizes innovation.
  - novaleaf 12y ago
    I only have two personal anecdotes: My own childhood growing up in Washington State, and my experience in Thailand for the last 7 years. In the USA, we often hear about how our (USA) school systems are too easy/relaxed compared to foreign countries. In Thailand, it's the opposite, in the most terrible way possible. Everything is about test scores, and thus "thinking outside the box" is severely penalized. People in the USA might not have the raw-academics, but the applied problem solving and team collaboration skills absolutely crushes the competition (Though of course that doesn't help manual labor jobs much)

rednukleus 12y ago

Good analogy. But you got the countries around the wrong way with "(US/USSR, Apple/Google)". The resemblence to the cold war is even more striking when you realise that this also parallels planned economy vs free market. It will be interesting to see if we get the same result at the company level as we did at the country level.

ep103 12y ago
human culture is a fractal relevant xkcd --> http://xkcd.com/1095/ http://xkcd.com/1095/

Tloewald 12y ago

I think it's a terrible analogy: 1) Nuclear weapons are not even relatively cheap. (Certainly not for the Soviet Union.) ~$640B over the next 10y, and this is during a draw-down in weapons. http://www.ploughshares.org/what-nuclear-weapons-cost-us http://www.ploughshares.org/what-nuclear-weapons-cost-us 2) It's pretty ridiculous to suggest that nuclear powers covertly threatened smaller countries with the threat of their nuclear arsenals, let alone actually attacked smaller powers (unless you count the US bombing of Japan). Using patents doesn't lead to Mutually Assured Destruction, and there are many cases of large organizations using patents to damage or defeat other smaller (or even large) organizations. 3) Many of the patent trolls are surrogates of big players who simply give them plausible deniability. Again, there's no analogy of a big power giving nuclear weapons to terrorists to conduct attacks on its rivals because the downsides are so immense. With surrogate patent trolls it's merely a matter of some bad P.R.

exelius 12y ago

I think nukes are a bad analogy: patents are far more likely to be used because their use is not nearly as destructive. When Apple won a $1 billion judgement against Samsung, it wasn't even remotely damaging to Samsung ($178 billion in revenue in 2013). Really, it's just the inequalities of large markets. In general, it's a bad idea to start up a company in a field that a $100 billion company is expending a lot of effort in. Because they are established, they have the ability to create barriers to entry for you in a lot of different ways (marketing, supply chain, and yes, patents). If patents are no longer a problem, there are still plenty of ways that Google or Apple can keep you from playing in their backyard. If you're talking big companies vs big companies, they're just trying everything they can to make their competition spend more money on lawyers, etc. to reduce their margins even further. Apple has huge margins, Samsung does not, so it hurts Apple less to spend $100 million on patent lawyers than it does Samsung. The patent trolls are a new problem, and one that probably needs a regulatory solution. Technology patents in general are a problem, but solving the patent problem won't instantly change the landscape for smaller companies. They'll still be at a distinct disadvantage in a number of ways to larger companies, and need to pick their battles carefully.