
Patents Are An Economic Absurdity - nickb
http://fare.tunes.org/articles/patents.html
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gaius
What _utter_ gibberish. The patent system is designed to work like this:

1) You invest time and money in research and come up not with an idea but a
concrete implementation of that idea.

2) You patent it

3) The patent gives you the exclusive right to use that implementation but
ALSO requires you to divulge everything to the public. That bit is crucial. If
someone wants to use your patent, they license it off you. Before that
everyone had to keep everything secret in order to justify investing in the
research in the first place, which really did harm innovation.

4) When the patent expires, it becomes public property. You HAVE to go on
innovating if you want to make a living in intellectual property.

Now the patent system at present is a little broken, but the author of that
article has fundamentally misunderstood how it's even _supposed_ to work.

I don't think many people, who think of themselves as tech-savvy, really
comprehend that because something can be copied for little or no cost, it cost
nothing to create the first time.

~~~
ksvs
You don't have to build a working implementation. You can patent a design.

~~~
gaius
The point being that you can't patent an idea "do X" you have to have a "way
to do X".

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bbgm
The patent system is clearly broken. Case in point the drug industry where
derivative, "me too" drugs get through a system, and they are clearly not
innovative. Plus some patents are so broad that they completely stiffle
innovation.

Patents, per se, are not necessarily bad, but the current system is so flawed,
it likely hinders innovation rather than helps. I've been in situations where
someone came up with something very interesting but there was the possibility
of patent infringement due to some broad patent, so you had to either license
the technology) or reimplement.

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DabAsteroid
_I've been in situations where someone came up with something very interesting
but there was the possibility of patent infringement due to some broad patent,
so you had to either license the technology) or reimplement._

No. If one can improve upon an existing patent, one can potentially collect
royalties on that improvement.

[http://www.nolo.com/article.cfm/objectId/EFF260E8-76BA-438A-...](http://www.nolo.com/article.cfm/objectId/EFF260E8-76BA-438A-80A7546BC09CA8F0/catID/2D212B35-B211-4FD4-B46D84A00C15CEBF/310/101/134/ART/)

 _You can also get an improvement patent for an innovation that provides a new
use for an existing invention._

A party leveraging the improvement would then simply pay royalties to _both_
the holders of the old broad, and the new less-broad, patents.

~~~
bbgm
Agreed, but the situation was a little different. We licensed software from
academics, and during integration you'd find there were methods that seemingly
ran afoul of an obscure patent, etc. These were not improvements (just general
algorithms)

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gasull
s/Absurdity/Gridlock

[http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/07...](http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/07/the-
gridlock-ec.html)

