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The Case Against Patents (2013)

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Re: The Case Against Patents (2013)

#41

Post by rayiner »

jpadkins wrote: post #36
wtdo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that this would be an efficient use of anyone's time but... Assuming the purpose of patents is 1) to eliminate trade secrets, 2) that patents must be novel, and 3) that patents must be non-obvious to someone skilled in the art, then perhaps a solution would be: take a handful of people skilled in the art, tell half of them to implement the patent and tell the other half only the end goal and see if any of them co…

the costs of your system are probably way more than the value created for society via patents.

That may be true, but I suspect you're underestimating the value created by patents. Three examples:

1) Patents enable "benevolent monopolies." Companies that can afford to splurge on fundamental research because they have a revenue source protected by some sort of barrier to entry or network effect. Xerox PARC, for example, created many of the technologies fundamental to modern computing. PARC was bankrolled by Xerox's near-monopoly on copiers, which was enabled by Xerox's patents. PARC's decline closely tracks what happened after the 1975 consent decree in which Xerox was forced to license its patents to Japanese competitors.

2) Patents enable business models that separate design from production. ARM and MIPS, for example, design chips incorporated into designs from myriad manufacturers. How much value has been enabled by proliferation of these IP cores? You may point to things like RISC V, but that only proves the point. RISC V followed 15 years after the first ARM licenses, and has a fraction of the capital backing it. It's a lot harder to raise capital to build designs with the idea that you're going to give away the work product for free.

3) Patents enable technology sharing. Dozens of different companies have technology that is included in DVD, Blu-Ray, 2G/3G/4G, Wi-Fi, etc. Companies contribute the results of very expensive R&D efforts to these openly-published standards because they can ensure they get a cut of the value created by that technology. If they could not, there would be strong incentives to keep that technology secret instead. You might point to the success of web standards in the absence of patent protections. I'd posit that the web is the exception not the rule, and it's an exception that exists because of how easily the web can be monetized with advertising. That monetization strategy is not widely applicable.

Re: The Case Against Patents (2013)

#42

Post by Retric »

jpadkins wrote: post #36
wtdo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that this would be an efficient use of anyone's time but... Assuming the purpose of patents is 1) to eliminate trade secrets, 2) that patents must be novel, and 3) that patents must be non-obvious to someone skilled in the art, then perhaps a solution would be: take a handful of people skilled in the art, tell half of them to implement the patent and tell the other half only the end goal and see if any of them co…

the costs of your system are probably way more than the value created for society via patents.

Drug patents on their own represent a 1 Trillion dollar industry world wide.

So, I doubt that's true. Really the patent office could spend 100 billion per year and still be a net gain for society. The problem seems to be many people have a lot to gain from a broken patent system, and most people don't care.

Re: The Case Against Patents (2013)

#43

Post by wolfgke »

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…

Or perhaps: let the PTG sue any company that sued any other company/indifidual for patent violations (rightfully or not; enforcing patents is always evil).

Re: The Case Against Patents (2013)

#44

Post by beefield »

jordigh wrote: post #19
beefield wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The public benefit of a patent is that the information is public -- inventions which might previously have been kept secret are instead put into the light where others may use them Can you come up with siginificant patented innovations that are not easy to reverse-engineer? I have thought that the raison d'etre of patents is to foster innovation.

I always mention the Michael Jackson smooth criminal patent. Is it easy to reverse-engineer? I don't know, it seems obvious once you see what it is, but it seems awfully clever if you don't know about it. A lot of people seem to believe that it would involve electromagnets, but the actual invention is more low-tech.

And how much our world would be a worse place if that innovation

1. Was kept secret 2. Had not been made in the first place?

(I had the key word "significant" on purpose)

Re: The Case Against Patents (2013)

#45

Post by rhino369 »

matz1 wrote: post #21
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…

Trade secret is becoming less and less issue these days. Nowdays information spread and leak like crazy.

In some ways they are more powerful than ever since you can hide behind an API.

Re: The Case Against Patents (2013)

#47

Post by SiliconAlley »

hammock wrote: post #24

Drug patents are ten years. It's common to say without patents no drug company would spend the billions it takes to bring one drug to market. But I remember doing the back of the envelope math in college on the socially optimal length of a drug patent based on the cost, profit motive and public benefit, and it worked out to only about three years.

I think it could be argued that the entire mechanics of drug development (and costs) would be fundamentally different in an environment without patents. Without the incentive of monopoly, there might be a lot more evolution (think of forking/branching of open source software projects) of meds, which I imagine would significantly alter the costs/incentives in drug development. These are kind of just my thoughts as a layman, though.

Re: The Case Against Patents (2013)

#48

Post by snarf21 »

jordigh wrote: post #17
snarf21 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I think that all patents aren't created equal. We'd have less issues if software patents were only valid for like 5 years. You still have protection but you get rid of a lot of the trolls and the IBMs of the world having 10K patents. For more physical things, the protection can be longer since it takes longer to recoup your investment.

There often isn't even any "investment" in patents. Richard Feynmann would describe how his superiors would just walk around the labs and say, so! who has some ideas we could patent? And Feynmann's fellow scientists would say, well, you could grab this nuclear reactor and stick it into a submarine to power it, but that's pretty dumb and obvious. "Nonsense!" replied the superiors. "Patent that right away!" I don't kno…

Yeah, that seems like the IBM (and others approach). The problem with 0 software patents is that any small player no longer has a window to be a first mover. Google and FB have thousands of engineers sitting around and if they could just duplicate the new idea without consequence there would be no reason to do their own research and no relief for the little guy.

Re: The Case Against Patents (2013)

#49

Post by dnautics »

wtdo wrote: post #29
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…

Not that this would be an efficient use of anyone's time but... Assuming the purpose of patents is 1) to eliminate trade secrets, 2) that patents must be novel, and 3) that patents must be non-obvious to someone skilled in the art, then perhaps a solution would be: take a handful of people skilled in the art, tell half of them to implement the patent and tell the other half only the end goal and see if any of them co…

What's the incentive on the first group to not just say oh it didn't work and then do their own implementation later?

Re: The Case Against Patents (2013)

#50

Post by dnautics »

matz1 wrote: post #21
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…

Trade secret is becoming less and less issue these days. Nowdays information spread and leak like crazy.

It's actually better in many cases. For processes, in order to enforce the patent, you have to get a warrant (how can you prove from the product that the process was used?). A judge will generally refuse to grant a warrant to search a competitors premises because that would become an open door for anyone to disrupt their competitor's work.
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