The Case Against Patents (2013)

I never thought that the case for patents was to increase productivity. I always thought that their purpose was to eliminate trade secrets: people are going to invent stuff whether you want to or not, but without patents, they'll take the secrets to the grave.

My favourite patent of all time is Michael Jackson's smooth criminal patent:

https://mashable.com/2015/03/28/michael-jackson-shoe-patent/...

This is the patent system working as intended. A magician revealing his tricks. Tell us how you did it, and in exchange we promise to not compete with you for a while.

The patent system could work if patent clerks had the time to be a lot more discerning and reject any patent that is obvious or already known. But it takes a lot of work to do that and the deluge of patents makes it impossible to give each application sufficient consideration.

I think the general idea of patents is good, but perhaps it's impossible to execute it correctly.

Edit: Should have read the damn article. They address concern further below and also argue that patents are not revealing any secrets because pattent attorneys are not qualified to judge the merit of patents and because the way patents are written makes it almost impossible to reproduce their results, and sometimes patents are granted for utter nonsense, such as moving "through the fifth dimension".

Re: The Case Against Patents (2013)

#10

Post by enriquto » Tue, Jul 10, 2018, 1:42 PM UTC

jordigh wrote: post #9

I never thought that the case for patents was to increase productivity. I always thought that their purpose was to eliminate trade secrets: people are going to invent stuff whether you want to or not, but without patents, they'll take the secrets to the grave. My favourite patent of all time is Michael Jackson's smooth criminal patent: https://mashable.com/2015/03/28/michael-jackson-shoe-patent/... This is the patent…

> I think the general idea of patents is good

Also, there may be a fundamental difference between physical inventions, where patents seem to make sense, and mathematical theorems (and computer algorithms), where patents do not make sense at all.