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There Are No Good Arguments for Intellectual Property (2010)

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Re: There Are No Good Arguments for Intellectual Property (2010)

#21

Post by kbutler »

samatman wrote: post #6

The argument for patents is simple and clear: the alternative is broader use of trade secrets. In a patent regime, a company can (indeed must) publish their process, in exchange for a temporary monopoly on exploiting it commercially. In return, everyone else can learn it, implement it for research, and improve it, at which point the patent no longer applies. Copyright was also compelling in the technological milieu i…

> a company can (indeed must) publish their process...everyone else can learn it

I used to find this compelling, then I found out that standard practice is to avoid reading patents, because 1) they're not written to instruct, but drafted to claim broad implications and exclude prior art, and 2) exposure to patented material increases liability if you are found to be infringing.

Are there any examples of any inventor using published patents to learn from, rather than just patent searches to help drafting their own patents?

> improve it, at which point the patent no longer applies.

This is generally wrong - the original patent still applies. You can get a separate patent on your improvements, but until the original patent expires, you can't use the foundational invention without licensing the original patent.

Re: There Are No Good Arguments for Intellectual Property (2010)

#22

Post by neilwilson »

giansegato wrote: post #10

There are many things that bear little sense in the absolute, but are a pillar of the world we live in. IP rights are one of them. The part that strikes me the most is the following: "proponents of IP say that without it we wouldn't have movies and medicine, but we had both for centuries without IP". That's just false. True, we had art in the Past, but it was a different time: in the Middle Age everything was the Kin…

"Same goes for medicine, that by the way never reached any meaningful scale before science, IP and capitalism came along."

How did the Oxford/Astrazeneca vaccine come about, and at the low price that it did?

By Fiscal Activism by the UK government.

That's how basic science, research and development comes about - by government fiscal activism making the results freely available. Once that breaches a risk threshold the private sector will jump on it and accelerate the innovation from it. The existence of the Internet shows the power of that approach.

Re: There Are No Good Arguments for Intellectual Property (2010)

#23

Post by snowwrestler »

neilwilson wrote: post #19
samatman wrote: post #6

The argument for patents is simple and clear: the alternative is broader use of trade secrets. In a patent regime, a company can (indeed must) publish their process, in exchange for a temporary monopoly on exploiting it commercially. In return, everyone else can learn it, implement it for research, and improve it, at which point the patent no longer applies. Copyright was also compelling in the technological milieu i…

"The argument for patents is simple and clear: the alternative is broader use of trade secrets." Yet it falls into the neat, plausible and wrong category of ideas. In reality that isn't what happens, and it is based upon the assumption that ideas are unique and only occur once, when we know that ideas are ten a penny, and it is implementations in practice that we are short of - something that is exacerbated when you…

Patents cover implementations, not ideas.

Re: There Are No Good Arguments for Intellectual Property (2010)

#24

Post by dragonwriter »

The arguments for IP (and intangible personal property more generally) are the same as for property in general: giving those who take action which produces value exclusive rights in the value producing thing promotes development of value which benefits the community.

That’s not to say I don’t understand the arguments for generally more limited property rights, but I find right-libertarian, generally property-rights-maximalists, arguing against IP to be…well, not actually surprising given that that faction generally has a fairly arbitrary deontological [0] conception of property rights.

[0] That is, the specific parameters of property rights are fairly directly axiomatic rather than something rationally grounded in a simpler set of general principles.

Re: There Are No Good Arguments for Intellectual Property (2010)

#25

Post by dmitriid »

reissbaker wrote: post #7

medicine have been produced for ages without IP law Er... I think there's a fairly sizable difference between modern medicine, in which we can develop an effective cure for a pandemic within a year of the pandemic starting, and historical medicine in which the Black Death ravaged countries for years and was never cured, only adapted to after countless lives were lost. I don't think the modern medical industry would w…

> I think there's a fairly sizable difference between modern medicine, in which we can develop an effective cure for a pandemic within a year of the pandemic starting, and historical medicine

Yes, there is a difference, and it's striking.

For example, despite the pandemic the wealthy countries have voted overwhelmingly against waiving patents on the long-needed vaccine: https://www.msf.org/countries-obstructing-covid-19-patent-wa...

> I don't think the modern medical industry would work without IP law.

No. Modern medical industry preys on IP law.

Re: There Are No Good Arguments for Intellectual Property (2010)

#26

Post by aaron695 »

There's zero substance to this is quick blog.

> artworks and medicine have been produced for ages without IP law;

This is bullshit. What are they even talking about? I think medicine and movies/art and IP were invented around the same time. Last 100 may be 200 years years.

In our 100,000 year history that links them pretty well.

Wikipedia - "The modern concept of intellectual property developed in England in the 17th and 18th centuries"

That's obviously older than medicine. Are they including leaches and prayer and birth control which is just a light dose of poison? Well good luck to their world were you die at 40 and art is a few shitty books you'll never get to read.

I assume they build on other crappy (10 year old) blogs and think living in the old days was amazing where everyone lived to 90, because the 'infants' died young that they had such a low life expectancy and everyone had split sleeps and short work days.

Lots of countries have little enforcement of Intellectual Property. What are their living conditions like? How many good local movies do they make? (And if you say Nollywood, you have to explain how it's not just a gangsta related flex)

Re: There Are No Good Arguments for Intellectual Property (2010)

#27

Post by moonchild »

samatman wrote: post #6

The argument for patents is simple and clear: the alternative is broader use of trade secrets. In a patent regime, a company can (indeed must) publish their process, in exchange for a temporary monopoly on exploiting it commercially. In return, everyone else can learn it, implement it for research, and improve it, at which point the patent no longer applies. Copyright was also compelling in the technological milieu i…

> In a patent regime, a company can (indeed must) publish their process

Must they? From what I have heard, a number of technologies have not been patented, simply because the potential liability from keeping it as a trade secret was less than the liability of the process being made public

Re: There Are No Good Arguments for Intellectual Property (2010)

#28

Post by [deleted] »

snowwrestler wrote: post #23
neilwilson wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The argument for patents is simple and clear: the alternative is broader use of trade secrets." Yet it falls into the neat, plausible and wrong category of ideas. In reality that isn't what happens, and it is based upon the assumption that ideas are unique and only occur once, when we know that ideas are ten a penny, and it is implementations in practice that we are short of - something that is exacerbated when you…

Patents cover implementations, not ideas.

[deleted]

Re: There Are No Good Arguments for Intellectual Property (2010)

#29

Post by dmitriid »

aaron695 wrote: post #26

There's zero substance to this is quick blog. > artworks and medicine have been produced for ages without IP law; This is bullshit. What are they even talking about? I think medicine and movies/art and IP were invented around the same time. Last 100 may be 200 years years. In our 100,000 year history that links them pretty well. Wikipedia - "The modern concept of intellectual property developed in England in the 17th…

This comment is the single most compelling argument why STEM must include liberal arts/humanities studies

Re: There Are No Good Arguments for Intellectual Property (2010)

#30

Post by redis_mlc »

moonchild wrote: post #27
samatman wrote: post #6

The argument for patents is simple and clear: the alternative is broader use of trade secrets. In a patent regime, a company can (indeed must) publish their process, in exchange for a temporary monopoly on exploiting it commercially. In return, everyone else can learn it, implement it for research, and improve it, at which point the patent no longer applies. Copyright was also compelling in the technological milieu i…

> In a patent regime, a company can (indeed must) publish their process Must they? From what I have heard, a number of technologies have not been patented, simply because the potential liability from keeping it as a trade secret was less than the liability of the process being made public

> Must they?

Yes, if they want to patent it. (You misread the GP.)

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