81–90 of 140 posts
A patent can promote innovation in at least two ways: (1) rewarding the inventors for their toil and risk taking; and (2) by forcing competitors to try to solve the same problem with a different solution.
People seem to forget about the second one.
Question for anti-patent folks. Do you like a system where Chinese companies just copy products listed on Amazon and sell them for less?
This seems like as good a thread as any to mention one of my favorite unrealized enterprises: Patent Trolling for Good (PTG) The idea is simple: take the traditional model of a patent troll, but alter the settlement terms to create a cascade that ultimately ends or significantly reduces the exclusive ownership of facts (aka IP). Patent Trolling for Good acts like a traditional Patent Troll in that it takes any IP it…
> exclusive ownership of facts (aka IP) This is one of the weirdest definitions of IP I have ever seen. You think a story is a fact? Stories are usually copyrighted and usually part of what people mean by "IP". Facts are generally not copyrightable. You want to go and make a phone book or a map, you can. Other existing phone books or maps do not mean you can't make your own. What about a distinctive trademark? Surely…
I do not think it is moral to claim that you own a story or a logo in the same way that one owns a shirt or a cell phone.
(But yes, I think a story or a logo is much more like a fact than property. Though they're certainly less fact-like than other types of facts.)
_Claiming_ to be another company that you are not is something different entirely (fraud) and does not require IP.
This seems like as good a thread as any to mention one of my favorite unrealized enterprises: Patent Trolling for Good (PTG) The idea is simple: take the traditional model of a patent troll, but alter the settlement terms to create a cascade that ultimately ends or significantly reduces the exclusive ownership of facts (aka IP). Patent Trolling for Good acts like a traditional Patent Troll in that it takes any IP it…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPX_Corporation
This is an offensive patent network with the intent of proactively obviating or severely reducing patent enforcement.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The difference is between a specific invention vs. a law of mathematics or nature. The latter absolutely should not be patentable. I do not understand the difference between the two. As a mathematician with an interest in philosophy, I would say that about 50% of mathematicians would agree that algorithms and theorems are discovered, not invented. Thus, your example of RSA as a "good" patent sounds preposterous to…
That's a bit of reductio ad absurdum. The RSA algorithm is a "law of [mathematical] nature" as much as a log cabin is natural. The composition of natural building blocks into something that performs a function is a work of human ingenuity. That said, RSA itself probably would not be patentable today. The Supreme Court's decision in Alice probably precludes pure algorithm patents. You need an algorithm in the context…
Drug patents are ten years. It's common to say without patents no drug company would spend the billions it takes to bring one drug to market. But I remember doing the back of the envelope math in college on the socially optimal length of a drug patent based on the cost, profit motive and public benefit, and it worked out to only about three years.
Also, the US FDA has another restriction called "exclusivity period." An exclusivity period can be anywhere from 6 months to 12 years depending on what kind it is. It runs independent from the patent term (if any)
https://www.fda.gov/drugs/developmentapprovalprocess/ucm0790...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> exclusive ownership of facts (aka IP) This is one of the weirdest definitions of IP I have ever seen. You think a story is a fact? Stories are usually copyrighted and usually part of what people mean by "IP". Facts are generally not copyrightable. You want to go and make a phone book or a map, you can. Other existing phone books or maps do not mean you can't make your own. What about a distinctive trademark? Surely…
Rather than have an argument about categorization I'll instead respond to the core moral question. I do not think it is moral to claim that you own a story or a logo in the same way that one owns a shirt or a cell phone. (But yes, I think a story or a logo is much more like a fact than property. Though they're certainly less fact-like than other types of facts.) _Claiming_ to be another company that you are not is so…
The very term "intellectual property" is troublesome because it indicates the very ownership that you're objecting to. There is no ownership. And there is no property.
A patent is about disclosing inventions. Copyright is about giving the author economic and moral rights. A trademark is about making sure consumers are not deceived. It is a separate law than fraud. You can deceive by abusing trademarks without outright lying.
Patents can be infringed accidentally. You can infringe a patent without ever being aware of it. You cannot accidentally infringe copyright. The plaintiff of a copyright infringement complaint has to prove that you deliberately copied. Independent retelling of a story is fine. Independent rediscovery of a patented invention is not.
It is important to understand these laws, their origin, their purpose, and their nuance, whether you agree with them or not, in terms of the rights they grant and what constitutes infringement. Making the analogy to property and ownership is misleading and leads to the wrong conclusions about how these laws work.
Know thy enemy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> exclusive ownership of facts (aka IP) This is one of the weirdest definitions of IP I have ever seen. You think a story is a fact? Stories are usually copyrighted and usually part of what people mean by "IP". Facts are generally not copyrightable. You want to go and make a phone book or a map, you can. Other existing phone books or maps do not mean you can't make your own. What about a distinctive trademark? Surely…
Rather than have an argument about categorization I'll instead respond to the core moral question. I do not think it is moral to claim that you own a story or a logo in the same way that one owns a shirt or a cell phone. (But yes, I think a story or a logo is much more like a fact than property. Though they're certainly less fact-like than other types of facts.) _Claiming_ to be another company that you are not is so…
Trademarks are also defend-it-or-lose-it. That is why companies aggressively sue to protect their trademarks. If they do not actively defend their marks from infringement they will lose their rights in the undefended marks.
The worst cases are the ones that grant monopolies on common or important technologies. They can completely block the progress in certain areas. Even companies with patents stop with innovation until the patent has run dry, if they do any innovation at all.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Rather than have an argument about categorization I'll instead respond to the core moral question. I do not think it is moral to claim that you own a story or a logo in the same way that one owns a shirt or a cell phone. (But yes, I think a story or a logo is much more like a fact than property. Though they're certainly less fact-like than other types of facts.) _Claiming_ to be another company that you are not is so…
The categorisation is important. Copyright is very different from trademarks is very different from patents. It is important to understand these different laws rather than saying that they're all about owning facts or owning whatever it is you consider "owning" to be. The very term "intellectual property" is troublesome because it indicates the very ownership that you're objecting to. There is no ownership. And there…
Many do not realize that utility patents generally protect how something is done, not what was done. Inventors will often say, we can't patent that because someone else does that thing already. But it is the "how" that matters not the "what."
For example, even though the paper mention Amazon's one-click patent, there are probably 100's of other shopping cart patents that claim different methods of making an ecommerce shopping cart work.