The Case for Abolishing Patents (Yes, All of Them)

I'd argue software is extremelty expensive to produce, on the basis that distributing software is so insignificantly expensive that it could be called free. Relative to the costs of distribution, paying developers to write an application is extraordinarily expensive. So is maintaining that code, providing support, and advertising the product. I'd "guess" startups are so abundant in the software sector because distribution is so cheap, not because development is. Entering any other market's distribution channels on an international scale is prohibitively expensive for almost anyone but an already successful mid-sized company.

> 2. It is difficult for examiners to find prior art because there is no "official" channel for "publishing" software research that they recognise. There is much know-how that is common knowledge among developers but is never published in any paper, textbook, standard, RFC, etc. The "database" for searching all these sources may end being a web search engine. That is not ideal.

Even more fundamentally, it is hard to find prior art because software is information / knowledge and traditionally (in the context of math at least) we never had patents on it. If you consider the physical properties of software, it is just the presence of absence of charge over billions of indicants. Does the interface that exactly duplicates the ios home screen but has a binary representation that is nothing like the disassembly of it represent infringement, or the instant messenger whose disassembly looks 95% like the ios home screen? What happens when a music track and an android map are 90% binary identical?

> 1. Drugs are very expensive to produce. Not only the research, the equipment, the staff, but compliance with the regulatory regime. There are no protections against bad software to protect users (developers operate in a wild west type atmosphere), but we have many rules about medicines. These are designed to protect patients. Can you imagine an unregulated pharma industry? Profits take precedence over safety. It would be very dangerous for patients.

Absolutely you need to regulate the pharma industry somewhat, but I would also argue it is a consumers responsibility to know what they are putting in their bodies. We expect people to be able to judge their own alcohol consumption, how are prescriptions any different? If you make knowledge easily and readily available on what drugs do and their effects, consumers could make informed decisions. A lot of the fears in the phara industry is in how close-boxed knowledge is - you assume your doctor knows best, and don't investigate the effects of drugs you consume. I'd call it foolish to not understand the risks of what you are consuming.

> 2. There is a littany of journals that public chemical, biological and medical research and they can all be searched easily in combined databases, to which most all pharmaceutical patent owners subscribe. It is not too difficult for examiners to find prior art and establish publication dates.

That doesn't mean that a government granted monopoly on drugs is a good thing. When the expenses of drug research (which end up significantly being the rigorous 3 phase testing drugs need to pass to be allowed to be sold to end users) are so high, and profit motive is involved, drug costs spiral out of control. For Americans like myself without health insurance, we just can't afford to buy any of these drugs even with a prescription because they can cost upwards of $200 or more a bottle. The fact the actual drugs only cost at most a few dollars to produce per bottle, so the rest is profit to recoup research costs, doesn't help the fact that the good is cheap to make and is artificially expensive to recoup tremendous research costs. One (not me, but it is a theoretical) might argue that the R&D of a to-market drug could be just paid in full to whoever developed it, and that the formula itself could be released public domain. Taxes go up, drugs are cheap.

Maemo, Openmoko, and Android all serve as counterexamples to your claim that Apple was the sole driver of recent smartphone innovation. Our smartphones might look a bit different now had Apple not released the iPhone, but they would still exist. Industry consortia were developing higher-bandwidth data standards (a Danish friend told me in 200[012] that 256kbit/s access on cell phones was already widespread), companies were experimenting with different form factors, operating systems were being developed, etc.

In my view, your definition needs to be tighter to cover scenarios such as these.

Perceived scenarios such as these are often a product of missing information.

This is and endless argument, you either acknowledge that they pushed it forward or you don't but there wasn't a significant application platform, touch was nearly nonexistent and even dismissed by RIM, and while many of these things might be dismissed as obvious, Apple made it stick and they beat the entire current crop of competitors to the market.

Everything is easy once you've seen it done...

Take the typical Nokia and Motorola device from 1997 and the typical one from the iPhone launch, biggest improvements? More SMS and the phones got a little bit smaller

The actual marginal cost of each unit of software sold is pretty close to zero. This is what makes it so fantastically profitable compared to almost anything else.