

Fed economists propose patents be abolished - koops
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/05/patent-reform-economists_n_2623537.html

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lutusp
It's true that patents are not having their intended effect, and the majority
of revenue arising from the patent system ends up in the pockets of people who
are not themselves innovators. And I emphasize that I agree with the point of
the linked article -- patents should be abolished for the public good.

But consider the alternative of no patent protections. Someone who invented
something like the laser or the transistor would have no protection against
copying by others. The only way to gain an advantage from an invention would
be to keep it secret, and that's not practical in most cases.

Notwithstanding that, I still think patents should be abolished, because on
balance they do much more harm than good, and the alternative (including that
described above) represents a clear improvement in dissemination of technology
and scientific advances.

Here are some examples where an absence of patents would have produced a
better outcome:

1\. Cold Fusion. When Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann published the claim
that they had achieved practical cold fusion, they didn't provide enough
detail because they and their institution hoped to protect the ideas before
full disclosure. The result was that many people wasted much time and effort
trying and failing to duplicate their results. Eventually the claims were
shown to be misguided, but this outcome would have been arrived at much
sooner, were it not for the patent system and the possibility of a monopoly on
the ideas.

2\. The drug industry. The modern drug industry's business model relies almost
entirely on the existence of patents. This has many adverse effects on medical
science, including the introduction of essentially useless drugs, and faux
research that only appears to support the efficacy of drugs that in fact
aren't what they seem. Without patent protection, drug companies would have to
change their business model to accommodate the sale of drugs whose value would
rest with their actual effects rather than their association with a lucrative
patent.

3\. Software and idea patents. When I was issued my first patents years ago,
they could only be granted for ideas that had been reduced to practice, in
physical devices, not ideas, and not mathematics. Most of these rules have
been put aside. In one notorious case, someone patented a "business plan" that
essentially said if demand rose, you could raise prices. The patent was worded
in a convoluted way that concealed the trivial nature of its claims, and the
patent was issued.

The sad fact is that, because of the nature of modern patents and the volume
of applications, the U.S. Patent Office is reduced to glancing at a submission
and, if it's not obviously a scam or a perpetual motion machine, it will be
rubber-stamped, and any consequences from the patent will have to be sorted
out later by the courts.

Bottom line -- patents should be abolished. This is not to say they will be --
because of the social and economic influence of patent holders, that's a
political issue, not a practical one. I can imagine a TV advertisement by a
patent troll firm in which a lawyer in Western garb, tightly gripping a patent
in his hands, says, "You can have my patent when you pry it from my cold dead
fingers."

