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This is a very narrow view of reality. 1. It's not vanity or paranoia, ideas do get stolen, bringing down startups and setting back careers. I personally know

This is a very narrow view of reality. 1. It's not vanity or paranoia, ideas do get stolen, bringing down startups and setting back careers. I personally know of startups get ripped off by the big guys as well as entire research papers being ripped off from professors. 2. Reverse engineer Google's or Facebook's infrastructure, if it's that easy. Conversely, I've seen people reverse engineer a product from its wireless signals. It probably took years to build that product, but was reversed inside a week. Similarly, it took Apple years to create and refine the iPhone UI, and it took Android only a year to copy it. How is that fair? Secrecy works only if your advantage is never exposed to the outside world, like when it's hidden away in datacenters. And when it does work, how is that good for advancing the industry? 3. Your view assumes that every inventor can bring the invention to market. Look around you - you are surrounded by technology that requires thousands of different components and suppliers to make (of which of software is just one) and one could invent an improvement to any of them. Example: you thought of a more efficient way to transmit AC over power lines. How do you make, use or sell it? Do not assume you work for a power company.

Filligree 12y ago
"Fairness" was never the point. The original (written, at least) intent of the patent laws was "to advance the state of the art". Fairness to the inventor never enters into it, except to the degree that such a thing is necessary to motivate inventions; if you agree with that, then the patent laws should probably be mostly dismantled.
- throwawaykf05 12y ago
  "Advancing the state of the art" like all things in patent law, was deliberately broadly written because there are thousands of ways to do so and infinite multitudes of nuances to consider. Fairness absolutely was, and always has been, one of the main points. In fact, all property rights concern fairness, and intellectual property rights are no different.

Filligree 12y ago

"Fairness" was never the point. The original (written, at least) intent of the patent laws was "to advance the state of the art". Fairness to the inventor never enters into it, except to the degree that such a thing is necessary to motivate inventions; if you agree with that, then the patent laws should probably be mostly dismantled.

throwawaykf05 12y ago
"Advancing the state of the art" like all things in patent law, was deliberately broadly written because there are thousands of ways to do so and infinite multitudes of nuances to consider. Fairness absolutely was, and always has been, one of the main points. In fact, all property rights concern fairness, and intellectual property rights are no different.