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This whole debate kind of seems like a livelock with no obvious solution. If you make patents too powerful, you get people 'patent trolling' and producing a lo
by anonjon 17y ago
This whole debate kind of seems like a livelock with no obvious solution.
If you make patents too powerful, you get people 'patent trolling' and producing a lot of vague patents with no intentions of implementing/putting to use/selling the IP involved; instead hoping to be able to sue someone for violating it.
If you make patents too weak, people invest heavily in reverse engineering instead of innovation/invention and take other people's ideas and make money off of them.
I find this to be a very frustrating and disheartening position to be in.
I almost think that there is something wrong with the idea of patents (not the idea of intellectual property) because it seems that they fail at both ends of the spectrum with regards to protecting people who actually produce useful things for our society and continue to push us forward.
- sp332 17y agoIsn't reverse engineering also protected against by patents?
- anonjon 17y agoSure, of course. I guess my point is: Think of the patent debate as a continuum where at one end you have 'strong patents' and at the other end you have 'weak patents'. At the strong patents end you have a prevalence of IP trolling. At the weak/no patents end you have a prevalence of reverse engineering and heavily reduced incentive to innovate (might as well just copy and produce/market cheaper/better). IP trolling and reverse engineering are kind of edge-case exploits. It isn't clear to me that anything in the middle of the continuum (defends against both edge cases) is really consistent with what we think of as a patent, or that there is anything in the middle that is actually possible enforce in a fair and consistent matter.
- grellas 17y agoYes, it is. The patent system is predicated on the idea of disclosure (indeed, the very word "patent" derives from a Latin word meaning "open"). The idea is that inventors will add their innovative knowledge to the public domain, for which they will receive a temporary monopoly on its commercial exploitation. Most proprietary software is protected by trade secret laws, which are vulnerable to reverse engineering. Patented software is not, since it has already been disclosed in the public record and is nonetheless protected during the term of the patent by virtue of its monopoly status.
- timwiseman 17y agoI think you have all of your facts right, but a different conclusion seems to make sense. It seems like all of that simply means that we need to make sure the balance is struck in the right place. And no matter what balance is struck, it will create some problems and make some people unhappy, but getting it at least close to right is likely to be good for society as a whole.