

Trade Trade Secrets - DaniFong
http://einfall.wordpress.com/2012/01/23/trade-trade-secrets/

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dashN9ne
Thanks for thoughtful exploration. Here are some of my open questions.

Should patents be abolished and copyright extended to cover non-transcribed
acts of copying (e.g. pharma, creating the same program with different
source)? Is copyright or short term patents (7 years? 15 years?) a viable
alternative?

What are some downsides of not having patents in their current form? In a
shorter term form?

How do we move beyond patents as a society and business community?

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DaniFong
I think that copyright, with a shorter term, is a very reasonable model for
pharmaceuticals given the current FDA process, but it is not complete. The FDA
still frowns upon off label use -- but the challenges in medical regulation
are for another, longer discussion.

I do think that patents allow for a brief period, post product release, of
allowing one to recoup the costs of initial investment. But if I were to
rearrange the terms, I would suggest that the patent expire 3 years post-
initial commercial release, or 15 years after filing -- whichever is
_shorter._

Generally, I think that we should force more creativity out of our thieves. I
think the patent system should revert to something much closer to copyright.

In the meantime, groups of companies could support defensive patent pools, or
the patent pledge.

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dodo53
Would be interesting to be more specific - LightSail actually sounds like the
kind of situation people are more likely support patents in: non-obvious
research work leading to large improvements over existing methods; presumably
it woudld be considerably easier to reverse engineer if you had to the
physical device. And I imagine company could productively use huge investment
to have huge impact but investment might be hard without reassurance of IP.

So you say you have secrets - are there patents on the mechanism itself? Did
investors request/care about those patents?

Maybe is different in this case cos I wouldn't be surprised if author actually
was happy for this technology to be successful even if some other company made
more money out of it.

Also for anyone who hasn't, read around rest of the website also!

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DaniFong
We have several patents issued. Unfortunately, as I explain how law shapes the
business landscape" one cannot simply choose not to patent their work; others
can patent it, or patent "around" it. So we have been forced to play this game
-- and we win the games we are forced to play.

There are several fields though, where the innovations necessary to make a
great product are scattered around many different companies. Unfortunately the
apparatus today makes it difficult to really get the initial consensus to
collect the licenses to test the market.

~~~
dodo53
Interesting, I've not heard much about multiple patent licensing deadlock
before but sounds like it could be common.

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shingen
Watch out for Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, the motivated, sometimes creative,
sometimes brilliant thief that can take your idea further than you ever
dreamed.

There's a huge potential value in some types of 'theft' (maybe not according
to Xerox). The notion that in fact a thief might not be lazy, and in fact
might do radically more with a premise than the originator ever could or would
or dared to try to.

~~~
DaniFong
I do argue that this is neither theft nor transcription, but transformation or
inspiration.

Xerox did, by the way, try to commercialize their technology. They just
misfired massively. The Xerox Star bombed, because execution matters -- a main
point.

