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The Case Against Patents (2013)

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Re: The Case Against Patents (2013)

#131

Post by js8 »

pitaj wrote: post #104
js8 wrote: post #22

I am against (all) patents on the following grounds: The article talks about first-mover advantage.. it seems to me that the case for or against patents depends on how you model it. If you model it as a single-shot prisoner's dilemma, then without patents, there is no incentive to make result of research public. This is a classical argument in favor of patents. On the other hand, if you model it as a many-rounds pris…

IP is fundamentally different from property as me know it. Something is your property if you have exclusive control over it. Since IP is not exclusive (two people can have the same thought), it is not property. Patents are the worse form of IP, since it is possible to accidentally infringe on them. Copyright is almost as bad, especially at current timespans , and because it has such a chilling effect on the internet…

As gowld already pointed out, the distinction between traditional property and "intellectual property" is not as strong as it is often painted.

I would say for the larger part, the exclusivity in both is artificial. As gowld points out, for many physical things there exist fair sharing schemes. And historically, when public lands were enclosured to become private property, it was an artificial process which explicitly created the exclusion. This exclusion wasn't needed from economic point of view.

Re: The Case Against Patents (2013)

#132

Post by dahauns »

rayiner wrote: post #71
derf_ wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great, let's see what the fine article has to say about these things. 1) "In less than 30 years, the flow of patents more than quadrupled. By contrast, neither innovation nor research and development expenditure nor factor productivity have exhibited any particular upward trend." In other words, more patents does not appear to encourage people to splurge on fundamental research in aggregate. But it gets worse, "The c…

> So at least we've identified where some of the money being brought in from all of these monopolies is going (it isn't to the scientists and engineers). You're not trying to minimize litigation costs, but rather maximize R&D investment net of litigation costs. So the question is, if competitors could quickly copy the results of R&D efforts, would R&D investment be more or less than 14% lower? Also, it's not like lit…

>If standards don't embody important technical contributions, then why don't implementers rush to create alternative, unpatented standards? [..] If the choices truly are arbitrary, it should be trivial to avoid the relevant patents [..].

The by far most important aspect of those standards is not of technical nature. It's the host of agreements between the involved parties to not sue each other into oblivion. The patents involved have long ceased to hold the role of drivers of technical innovation, it's about the sheer amount of legal ammunition they can provide, and they have been created in such an image.

Lots of technical fields (esp. in IT) nowadays are a veritable minefield, scattered with a huge amount of incredibly broad and vaguely written patents, often playing mix-n-match with prior art or other kinds of dubious validity (which nevertheless have been granted - while it has gotten better, the allowance rate of the USPTO was close to 100% around the turn of the millenium...), where the attempt to navigate around any violations is a herculanean effort, and hardly possible without a veritable legal team. (And you should let them do the patent search anyway: If you dare to try it yourself and someone sues anyway - hooray for treble damages!)

Re: The Case Against Patents (2013)

#133

Post by dahauns »

notlob wrote: post #125
toasterlovin wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m very open to being wrong here, but for the specific example of CAR-T, Wikipedia mentions that it was initially developed by researchers at a university in Israel. So not the pharmaceutical industry.

UPenn and Novartis brought Kymriah to market and Kite brought Yescarta to market. Universities can be great for discovery and sponsored research, but they are not leading the work needed to get to market and they are certainly not funding it. Universities efforts are the visible tip of the iceberg, pharma efforts are the bulk under the surface.

Although Novartis and Kite brought them to market, aren't - from what I've read in several papers (correct me if I'm mistaken) - the vast majority of clinical trials in this area still publicly funded? (NIH/NCI grants)

Re: The Case Against Patents (2013)

#134

Post by dahauns »

pnw_hazor wrote: post #97
AmIFirstToThink wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost of creating artificial exclusivity, enforced by the state against natural human learning/discovering capabilities, is even higher.

Patents cover stuff that is already invented and put into public use. How does that go against natural learning/discovery? Patents may stop someone from on purpose or accidentally copying someone else invention, but that isn't stopping discovery.

This makes sense when the price for discovery itself is very high compared to putting it into use. In many fields (especially IT/software/algorithms), the discovery/invention often isn't the main part of work (especially not when you look at what are the actual claims of many inventions in those fields), but creating a good implementation and/or improving on it.

There's a reason that software and algorithms weren't deemed patentable for a long time (and still aren't in certain jurisdictions - at least on paper).

Re: The Case Against Patents (2013)

#135

Post by dahauns »

gowld wrote: post #109
pnw_hazor wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For tech startups, patents are very important for staking out their product space. Those first 3-10 patents can be critical for funding or exits strategies. A company that does not have patents around its core technology or products is worth much less than one that does have patents. If your ideas are not worth patenting (e.g., protecting) why should your investors keeping putting money in?

That's voodoo perpetuated by VCs, not real value. 99% of granted patents wouldn't hold up in court. Look at the garbage patents Dropbox has, and and the fact that they haven't used those patents to sue competitors out of existence or licensing fees. https://patents.justia.com/assignee/dropbox-inc https://patents.justia.com/patent/8855605 including "logging into your account from your phone" https://patents.justia.com…

>That's voodoo perpetuated by VCs, not real value. 99% of granted patents wouldn't hold up in court.

The crazy thing is - the voodoo works: They don't even have to hold up! The threat of litigation itself and/or the patents being a bargaining chip in such litigations are enough.

I mean, look at the 1-click example: It doesn't matter that many of their claims were deemed invalid years later, the damage (direct: expensive lawsuit, preliminary injunction, settlement; indirect: chilling effect) has been done.

Re: The Case Against Patents (2013)

#136

Post by dahauns »

derf_ wrote: post #73
rayiner wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also find dozens of examples where investors pour billions of dollars into developing technology because they know they can patent it and won’t immediately be undercut by free riders. I’m typing this on a machine that has CPU technology licensed from ARM, GPU technology licensed from Imagination Technologies, and cellular technology licensed from dozens of companies. Those companies did, in fact , invest in a…

The claim wasn't that the system is "unworkable" in the sense that it's causing world hunger or something, but that the system doesn't "work" in the sense that, in aggregate, it's not "promoting progress of the useful arts." People will certainly use patent protection where it is available to them, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't have invested in those technologies solely on the basis of first mover advantage [0]…

>ARM would need a different business model

Why? there's actually legislation specifically tailored to these kinds of problem, and it seems to work well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_Chip_Protection_... (And it's equivalents in other parts of the world)

Re: The Case Against Patents (2013)

#137

Post by notlob »

dahauns wrote: post #133
notlob wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UPenn and Novartis brought Kymriah to market and Kite brought Yescarta to market. Universities can be great for discovery and sponsored research, but they are not leading the work needed to get to market and they are certainly not funding it. Universities efforts are the visible tip of the iceberg, pharma efforts are the bulk under the surface.

Although Novartis and Kite brought them to market, aren't - from what I've read in several papers (correct me if I'm mistaken) - the vast majority of clinical trials in this area still publicly funded? (NIH/NCI grants)

Public funds are used up to proof of concept and sometimes early tox/CMC (often through a CRO), but the bulk of the funding for trials comes from industry.

Re: The Case Against Patents (2013)

#138

Post by notlob »

toasterlovin wrote: post #126
notlob wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UPenn and Novartis brought Kymriah to market and Kite brought Yescarta to market. Universities can be great for discovery and sponsored research, but they are not leading the work needed to get to market and they are certainly not funding it. Universities efforts are the visible tip of the iceberg, pharma efforts are the bulk under the surface.

Thanks for the info. My comment was mostly coming from a place of having read articles like this about how antibiotics don’t really make money for pharmaceutics companies: https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2018/01/02/antibiotics-ar...

I see where you're coming from now. ABX (antibiotics) are a bit unique. New ABX are sparingly profitable because they are usually incremental developments instead of new classes of compounds. A new class would be lucrative. I see this as a reflection that ABX dev is a ridiculously hard problem with many failures. There are many working in this area, but not much to show yet.

Re: The Case Against Patents (2013)

#139

Post by phyzome »

kauffj wrote: post #33

This seems like as good a thread as any to mention one of my favorite unrealized enterprises: Patent Trolling for Good (PTG) The idea is simple: take the traditional model of a patent troll, but alter the settlement terms to create a cascade that ultimately ends or significantly reduces the exclusive ownership of facts (aka IP). Patent Trolling for Good acts like a traditional Patent Troll in that it takes any IP it…

Patent: The Gathering

Re: The Case Against Patents (2013)

#140

Post by AmIFirstToThink »

pnw_hazor wrote: post #97
AmIFirstToThink wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost of creating artificial exclusivity, enforced by the state against natural human learning/discovering capabilities, is even higher.

Patents cover stuff that is already invented and put into public use. How does that go against natural learning/discovery? Patents may stop someone from on purpose or accidentally copying someone else invention, but that isn't stopping discovery.

>How does that go against natural learning/discovery?

Territorial claims, artificially created and maintained at tax-payer expense.

Most patents are straight forward implementations that people would have come up with on their own.

Patent system gives first mover advantage to those filing the claim with patent office. They have started now to give preference to those who file first, over those who can show they invented it first. Goes to show the intention of the system, create an unnatural monetized system over what comes naturally to people... solving their problem with what they know and what they can learn and what they can come up with. If one person solves a problem and files a patent, then in the IntellectualProperty land grab, it doesn't matter how easy the solution was, that person is now entitled to ask for money from anyone else who faces the same problem.

The wheel, the canals, the sewer system, the river wheel it all spread without patent system.

The patent system should come up with a "senior year graduate" challenge. If the kids in final year of college in that field can come up with similar solution comparable to the patent filing, then the patent is invalidated for being obvious. Amazon 'one-click' wouldn't ever have become a patent with this, as it was obvious use of browser cookies.

True invention should be rewarded, not chance occurrence of you coming face to face with a problem before anyone else.

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