
The Permission Problem: Patents and Anticommons - nickb
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2008/08/11/080811ta_talk_surowiecki
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noonespecial
Few people realize how close a patent troll came to preventing us from having
cars.

<http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aacarsseldona.htm>

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chaostheory
What's sad is that the given examples just related to patents of concrete
things. Now we're in an even worse bind, where we grant patents for both
business processes and what are essentially combinations of algorithms
(software); at this point I wouldn't be surprised if people were granted the
ability to patent cooking recipes.

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jyothi
This has immense implications on how team members are valued and how to
estimate and claim rewards not leading to deadlock. Something to understand
very early on to know what to expect in our careers and broadly life too.

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LogicHoleFlaw
I don't like that the author lumps in IP monopolies with property rights. They
are fundamentally different concepts.

Some of the examples cited deal with actual property, such as power
transmission lines or shared oil fields. But patents and copyright deal with
IP, which has a whole different set of expectations and ramifications.

Still, the author's conclusion seems sound to me:

 _the next time we start handing out new ownership rights—whether via patents
or copyright or privatization schemes—we’d better try to weigh all the good
things that won’t happen as a result._

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Prrometheus
Larry Lessig had an interesting TED talk on the way the law is stifling
creativity. I tried to submit it but Hacker News was buggy. Anyway, you might
find this interesting:

[http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law...](http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity.html)

