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The Patent, Used as a Sword

nytimes.com

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Re: The Patent, Used as a Sword

#61

Post by jacques_chester »

femto wrote: post #60
jacques_chester wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my case, the patent application is a gamble. It's based on work I did for my Honours project. I wrote a bunch of prototype code and a pretty detailed description of its design and operation. But in actual fact the invention is a miniscule part of the work that has to be done to bring it to market. If spending a few thousand dollars now can help me raise hundreds of thousands of dollars later, I view that as a smar…

I'm actually torn on the issue. I can see that a patent has the advantage of conferring exclusivity, but time and money consumed might increase time to market and the "sunk cost" of a patent and might deter a much needed change of direction or technology. I've been touched by patents twice. The first time was as an employee of a start-up based on a patent by a PhD student. In that case I think the company got blinker…

I don't like them for software. But if it helps the business to get started, I will go get one. That's the bottom line for me.

Re: The Patent, Used as a Sword

#62

Post by ChrisLTD »

rayiner wrote: post #34
wissler wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are other ways than patents to get rewards for your work, but patents are a non-starter in principle. Just because you thought of something first does not give you a right to stop someone else from thinking of it second. It's really very simple.

By and large, patents aren't intended for situations where it's likely that two people would think of the same design within the patent term. It's designed to address the situation where I spend time and money researching something, and someone else comes along and takes the results of that research and sells a competing product, undercutting me on price because he never had to invest that time or money.

How the system is intended to work is very different from how it actually works.

Re: The Patent, Used as a Sword

#63

Post by mseebach2 »

tzs wrote: post #30
linuxhansl wrote: post #22

"The suit had cost $3 million, and the financial damage was done." This is the problem. In all other countries (except Great Britain, AFAIK) the loser pays all costs (including the public cost of the trial and the opposing party's legal fees). The loser-pays system has three effects: 1. No frivolous lawsuits. Cost of losing is high. 2. The defending party will defend vigorously if it believes itself to be in the righ…

The problem with doing loser pays in the US is that in the US we use private civil litigation to handle things that would be dealt with by government regulators and agencies in other countries. For instance, we rely on civil litigation to enforce consumer protection and civil rights laws to a larger extent than others do. Loser pays in the US would discourage a lot of meritorious lawsuits from individuals against lar…

As I understand the system, there are usually two mechanisms in place to offset this:

First: The loser pays costs as determined by the court , usually on a preset schedule. It's not like the winner gets to send the loser an invoice for infinity bajillions and they just have to pay up.

Second: You can apply for having the government pay if you loose. You have to file a petition explaining how (a) there's a benefit to society in having the case heard and (b) how you're not financially fit to bear the costs yourself.

Re: The Patent, Used as a Sword

#64

Post by indiecore »

rayiner wrote: post #21
wissler wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can't be reconciled: patents bind another human down from thinking and acting and trading with his fellow human beings. There's no way to justify that; it's blatantly immoral.

Don't be so dramatic. By and large what patents prevent is copying: taking someone's ideas and passing them off as your own. Most people consider this immoral too. Restrictions on unfair competition are literally hundreds of years old--it's not a recent invention. E.g. one of Samsung's biggest problems in the recent patent dispute with Apple was that they were clearly blatantly copying Apple's designs.

> taking someone's ideas and passing them off as your own.

It's incredible stupid that I can get sued for sitting down and working through a problem to a logical end just because someone, somewhere sat down and worked through the same logical steps. Physical inventions and chemical engineering make more sense but software patents...you're trying to patent a logical progression of ideas how does that make any sense at all?

Re: The Patent, Used as a Sword

#65

Post by wissler »

ChrisLTD wrote: post #62
rayiner wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By and large, patents aren't intended for situations where it's likely that two people would think of the same design within the patent term. It's designed to address the situation where I spend time and money researching something, and someone else comes along and takes the results of that research and sells a competing product, undercutting me on price because he never had to invest that time or money.

How the system is intended to work is very different from how it actually works.

The path to hell is paved with "good" intentions. People have a responsibility of thinking through the consequences of their "good intentions."

Re: The Patent, Used as a Sword

#66

Post by chongli »

tjmc wrote: post #5
htf wrote: post #2

I understand that allowing patents for algorithms is bad for innovation. What I don't understand is that people say that and then in the same breath claim that allowing patents for chemical formulas is good for innovation. In both cases, the patent holder gets a monopoly and everyone else is stuck with them as their supplier. I feel a terrible cognitive dissonance trying to reconcile these two positions.

Developing an algorithm doesn't generally cost hundreds of millions. Developing a drug and taking it all the way through clinical trials easily can. I think patents make sense for some sectors. Software just isn't one of them.

Patents work for protecting the investment in development and clinical trials, sure, but do they work optimally? Are there better ways to finance these processes?

Keep in mind that the cost way pay for these patents is a dramatically higher price for life-saving (or life-improving) treatments. Could we not cut out the middle-man and redirect a portion of those higher costs to fund research and clinical trials directly (i.e. in the form of taxes)?

Re: The Patent, Used as a Sword

#67

Post by chongli »

rayiner wrote: post #21
wissler wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can't be reconciled: patents bind another human down from thinking and acting and trading with his fellow human beings. There's no way to justify that; it's blatantly immoral.

Don't be so dramatic. By and large what patents prevent is copying: taking someone's ideas and passing them off as your own. Most people consider this immoral too. Restrictions on unfair competition are literally hundreds of years old--it's not a recent invention. E.g. one of Samsung's biggest problems in the recent patent dispute with Apple was that they were clearly blatantly copying Apple's designs.

>Most people consider this immoral too.

Morality is relative and totally arbitrary (and also influenced by the regime). Let's leave it out of the discussion.

>taking someone's ideas and passing them off as your own.

Everybody knows that we stand on the shoulders of giants. Claiming ownership of most ideas flies in the face of historical fact. Patents try to reconcile this with prior art and tests of non-obviousness but these are often subjective and highly flawed.

Re: The Patent, Used as a Sword

#68

Post by rayiner »

krichman wrote: post #37
wissler wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think nothing less than a revolution in the way humans think is going to solve these problems. I mean, science solves problems better than witchcraft for a reason. Mankind is still using the equivalent of witchcraft in the legal realm.

Complete with arcane mutterings. I know that law has a lot of very specific terms, but is encoding them in Latin necessary?

It's very rare to see Latin in any modern legal document. And legal documents are hardly arcane. They're verbose and specific, full of terminology, but not purposefully arcane.

Re: The Patent, Used as a Sword

#69

Post by rayiner »

rhizome wrote: post #53
pgeorgi wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like they sat together in 1960 and decided to agree upon a set of latin terms for everyday occurrences - these are mostly inherited. The idea is to keep the language reasonably stable that we can still confidently interpret legalese from 1812, and that in 2412 the legal body of 2012 can still be of some use without having historians fight over how we might have meant things. This is particularly true in lett…

At this rate, any of these laws remaining relevant in 2412 is highly optimistic.

Did you know the property law that forms the bedrock of our society dates back to feudal times?

Re: The Patent, Used as a Sword

#70

Post by rayiner »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #52

> Patents are vitally important to protecting intellectual property. More accurately, patents are vitally important to enforcing intellectual monopoly. Terms such as "protection" and "property" are so heavily biased in favour of patents that they nearly block any useful discussion. As long as mainstream journals use those terms, the only way forward will be nearly complete lock-down. Now, "monopoly" is also biased. B…

Yes, because we need even more of our researched funneled through the DoD. That's much more efficient than patent litigstion...

I used to work on a DARPA project, and had some high school field trips funded by the Naval Surface Warfare Lab. The military is a great source of technology, but it's woefully inefficient and it's got a distinct military bent. The DoD can piss away in waste and graft in one month what patent litigation costs in the whole country for a whole year.

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