
Those litigious men in their flying machines - smacktoward
https://hushkit.net/2020/05/16/those-litigious-men-in-their-flying-machines-the-wright-brothers-why-the-us-wasnt-ready-for-war/
======
WalterBright
Patents have generally failed in their intended purpose. Edison probably spent
half his career in court:

1\. being sued for patent infringement

2\. suing others for patent infringement

3\. being hired by companies to find workarounds for other patents

4\. being an expert witness in a patent case

The patent system should be abolished.

~~~
pkaye
Wouldn't that just result in large companies having a even bigger advantage
over the little guys?

~~~
WalterBright
No, it would be a lesser advantage. Patents are only useful to large
companies, because filing them and suing is an expensive and complex process.
For small companies, a patent is not that useful because the larger company
can afford to steamroll them in court.

As for putting patent trolls out of business, I doubt any will shed a tear.

~~~
ISL
A small company with a valuable patent can rapidly attract large friends.

~~~
WalterBright
"XXXXX with a computer."

"YYYYY on the internet."

------
errantmind
The patent system should be abolished. Here are a number of (convincing)
arguments which refute the central premises of the patent system: "The Case
Against Patents" :
[https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/wp/2012/2012-035.p...](https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/wp/2012/2012-035.pdf)

------
thyrsus
The title aludes to the movie titled "Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying
Machines", a comedy I found entertaining both as a child and adult:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Those_Magnificent_Men_in_the...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Those_Magnificent_Men_in_their_Flying_Machines)

------
perilunar
Interestingly Lawrence Hargrave, the Australian aviation pioneer, opposed
patents:

"Workers must root out the idea [that] by keeping the results of their labours
to themselves[,] a fortune will be assured to them. Patent fees are much
wasted money. The flying machine of the future will not be born fully fledged
and capable of a flight for 1000 miles or so. Like everything else it must be
evolved gradually. The first difficulty is to get a thing that will fly at
all. When this is made, a full description should be published as an aid to
others. Excellence of design and workmanship will always defy competition."

------
_bxg1
It would be interesting if, instead of a patent meaning "you can do whatever
you want including preventing anyone from doing anything with this at all, if
you so please", it only meant "you get X% royalties from anything anyone makes
with this, but they are otherwise free to make those things".

------
peter_d_sherman
"Intellectual property protection and national security have long been
intertwined. For as long as espionage has existed, spies and agents have tried
to steal and copy foreign technology."

What I want to know is:

 _" Which country copied/stole/appropriated (use whatever languaging makes you
feel comfortable) the wheel from which other country, first?"_ <g>

"Intellectual Property Theft", you gotta love it...

It's amazing, because all of Silicon Valley stands on the shoulders of
pioneers; on the shoulders of giants, but not once in those silly interviews
of the latest successful founder, who's only a kid, do they ever, ever _thank
all of the people that made all of the infrastructure_ that made their present
day business able to function... people including, but not limited to: Boole,
Tesla, Turing, Shannon, Von Neumann, Atanasoff, and others too numerous to
count.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pioneers_in_computer_s...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pioneers_in_computer_science)

Also, most so-called intellectual property "secrets" \-- usually appear in
some form or other in academic papers _way before they are snapped up and
patented by some multinational company_ , some multinational company who is
usually not the original researcher or researchers.

Which brings me to another other point... usually the multinational company
profits more, way more, orders of magnitude more, than the original
inventors/researchers, who might not (in some but not all cases) be
compensated at all...

So now the next question is, _who stole what from whom, when?_

a) Did some other country, i.e., China (or whoever) steal intellectual
property from another "Country" (which are actually corporations/corporate
interests in that other country)?

or

b) Did the corporation that was "stole from" \-- steal that intellectual
property from the original inventors/researchers? (You know, via legal means,
paying someone a pittance and calling it a "fair deal" is still stealing...)

or

c) Did the original inventors/researchers steal their idea from ideas that
were already floating about in the academic community and in previous academic
papers, in that field of study?

 _Who stole what from who, when?_

?

That's what I want to know.

And I also want to know which country stole the wheel from which other
country, first... <g>

------
_0ffh
There's Stephan Kinsella's point once again.

------
Animats
In a post-patent world, success is driven by the ability to blow large sums of
money buying market share. We were lucky to have an era where there was enough
venture capital to do that. Thank Softbank and the Saudi Arabia Sovereign
Wealth Fund for being the suckers who made that possible.

In Silicon Valley, up until about 2000, venture capitalists wanted a strong
patent position before funding something. As a group, VCs made money from the
1970s to 2000 or so. In the 2000s, with the push for growth, failures cost
more and VCs, as a group, lost money. Not sure about the 2010s.

