Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

m.theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 124 posts

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

#111

Post by gnaritas »

columbo wrote: post #106
Suncho wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that there should be protections to stop people from "ripping off your stuff" and selling it without paying you for it. Instead, there should be protections to stop people from copying your idea without you getting credit for it. But there don't need to be legal protections. All you need to do is make your idea public to prevent anyone else from claiming they were first. I'm serious about getting rid of al…

I don't understand. Say I pay a Valve employee a million dollars for the current working source-code of Half-Life 3. I then compile it and release the first couple working levels for $10 a pop... I should easily be able to make 50 million out of that exercise. What protections would Valve have in your no-copyright, no-ip scenario?

Criminal law, it wasn't his to sell, you both broke the law.

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

#112

Post by kansface »

PatentTroll wrote: post #81
cturner wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a big fan of Boldrin/Levine but suspect they're wrong about this. The reason medical investigation is so expensive is because there's so much red tape around it in the form of approvals, and the convoluted systems health coverage in the developed world. It's a classic insiders' club. People got institutionalised into the culture, and then can swap between government and industry. There's no strong incentive for a…

But there is a reasonable expectation that a pill your doctor prescribes will not kill you (with few notable exceptions). This is a good thing. Who is better at safety, the "free market" or the government?

Why do you quote free market and not the government. Neither one has any interest in actually promoting safety- both are only interested in security theater or protecting their bottom line. See the profitable war on drugs or the TSA. I really don't know the answer to the question, but the clear victor certainly isn't the government.

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

#113

Post by zanny »

josephlord wrote: post #66
jacques_chester wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key is that software development is an unavoidable sunk cost. Once it has been paid, it can be ignored in terms of considering per-unit pricing. 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.

The same is true of most drugs. Marginal cost is near zero compared to development cost. In neither case do you necessarily have fantastic profits although if you can sell at scale at a good price it becomes very likely but if you have a drug for a niche market or software in a crowded market it is quite possible to make a loss. This is neither an argument for or against the patent abolition proposition which I am to…

I think in half a century we won't have the backwards investment funding model in industries where units are extremely cheap but R&D id expensive. Instead you would have something akin to crowdfunding with guarantees and insurance against failed investments by those that want the end product, so the motive is not profit, but end product. That people who want a thing fund the creation of the thing, instead of people who want money funding an expensive up front thing that is then unnaturally restricted with patents and copyright to try to profit off the unit sales, when in many cases (pharma) they are near free, or in the case of software (past the first copy being distributed) are absolutely free (if those that have the software willingly share it).

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

#114

Post by columbo »

gnaritas wrote: post #111
columbo wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand. Say I pay a Valve employee a million dollars for the current working source-code of Half-Life 3. I then compile it and release the first couple working levels for $10 a pop... I should easily be able to make 50 million out of that exercise. What protections would Valve have in your no-copyright, no-ip scenario?

Criminal law, it wasn't his to sell, you both broke the law.

Nothing was "stolen".

Without copyright there was nothing that was removed from Valve. It is just a copy.

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

#115

Post by Suncho »

columbo wrote: post #106
Suncho wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that there should be protections to stop people from "ripping off your stuff" and selling it without paying you for it. Instead, there should be protections to stop people from copying your idea without you getting credit for it. But there don't need to be legal protections. All you need to do is make your idea public to prevent anyone else from claiming they were first. I'm serious about getting rid of al…

I don't understand. Say I pay a Valve employee a million dollars for the current working source-code of Half-Life 3. I then compile it and release the first couple working levels for $10 a pop... I should easily be able to make 50 million out of that exercise. What protections would Valve have in your no-copyright, no-ip scenario?

I'm not anti-trade secrets. In your scenario, the source code to Half-Life 3 is a trade secret that the Valve employee is obligated to keep. However, if the code is ever made publicly available to read, it's no longer a secret and no money should be made from selling or licensing it. And even if the source is never public, once binaries are made public, it should be perfectly legal to reverse engineer those binaries.

In a no-copyright world, Valve's business model would certainly have to change, but your particular example would work mostly the same as it does now. The major difference is that you wouldn't be able to make 50 million dollars. Once those levels were released, people would be able to share them freely among themselves. Only the first person has to pay the $10, which means if you're willing to pay a million dollars for illegal access to secret source code, you should probably have a better plan for what to do with it. =P

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

#116

Post by columbo »

Suncho wrote: post #115
columbo wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand. Say I pay a Valve employee a million dollars for the current working source-code of Half-Life 3. I then compile it and release the first couple working levels for $10 a pop... I should easily be able to make 50 million out of that exercise. What protections would Valve have in your no-copyright, no-ip scenario?

I'm not anti-trade secrets. In your scenario, the source code to Half-Life 3 is a trade secret that the Valve employee is obligated to keep. However, if the code is ever made publicly available to read, it's no longer a secret and no money should be made from selling or licensing it. And even if the source is never public, once binaries are made public, it should be perfectly legal to reverse engineer those binaries.…

> Once those levels were released, people would be able to share them freely among themselves

> In a no-copyright world, Valve's business model would certainly have to change

Yes it would have to change. Honestly I don't think you've thought this all the way through.

You need to show how companies like Apple, Microsoft, Valve and the thousands of smaller software makers (Adobe, Autodesk, Bethesda, Roxio, Zynga, IBM, Oracle, Blizzard, Symantec, Norton, SalesForce.com, Konami, Blackboard...) can still make as much money as they do today and have the same protections they have today.

If you can't well, then we may as well sit around discussing what the world would be like if there was no war, or what kind of tidal waves two moons would generate.

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

#117

Post by refurb »

cwp wrote: post #103
tsotha wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>For example, grant a company some limited exclusive rights for commerce/sale of a drug they have funded through clinical trials. Eh, isn't that the textbook definition of a patent?

Not quite. A patent is granted for the invention of a drug, not the testing. If the monopoly were tied to the approval process, it would be limited to the country where the approval was granted. So shepherding a drug through the FDA approval process would get you a monopoly in the US, but not other countries. Also, you can patent drugs that haven't been approved, which makes it basically impossible for anyone else to…

They do that now (to an extent).

If you get your drug approved by the FDA, you get 5 years of market exclusivity (12 years of it's a biologic). However, it has to be determined by the FDA to be a NCE (new chemical entity). Right now, a company called Amarin is trying to get a drug approved that has no patent and they are hope to get the FDA to recognize their drug as an NCE.

If it for a very rare disease (orphan drug), you get 7 years of exclusivity (still 12 if it's a biologic).

During that time, no other application for the same NCE and indication will be approved by the FDA, giving the first applicant de facto market exclusivity in lieu of a actual patent.

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

#118

Post by gnaritas »

columbo wrote: post #114
gnaritas wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Criminal law, it wasn't his to sell, you both broke the law.

Nothing was "stolen". Without copyright there was nothing that was removed from Valve. It is just a copy.

False, a trade secret was stolen, and said employee did not have the right to copy it or disclose it.

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

#119

Post by cwp »

refurb wrote: post #117
cwp wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite. A patent is granted for the invention of a drug, not the testing. If the monopoly were tied to the approval process, it would be limited to the country where the approval was granted. So shepherding a drug through the FDA approval process would get you a monopoly in the US, but not other countries. Also, you can patent drugs that haven't been approved, which makes it basically impossible for anyone else to…

They do that now (to an extent). If you get your drug approved by the FDA, you get 5 years of market exclusivity (12 years of it's a biologic). However, it has to be determined by the FDA to be a NCE (new chemical entity). Right now, a company called Amarin is trying to get a drug approved that has no patent and they are hope to get the FDA to recognize their drug as an NCE. If it for a very rare disease (orphan drug…

That's awesome. In my mind, that lets a lot of air out of the pharmaceutical argument for patents.

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

#120

Post by columbo »

gnaritas wrote: post #118
columbo wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing was "stolen". Without copyright there was nothing that was removed from Valve. It is just a copy.

False, a trade secret was stolen, and said employee did not have the right to copy it or disclose it.

Wait a sec... so get rid of patents, copyrights but leave the concept of trade secrets? How does that make sense?
Post reply on HN