The patent system as implemented may be idiotic. In principle, I don't see a problem with granting someone a temporary monopoly for monetizing discoveries that came about as the result of long and difficult work. Society is almost certainly better off if the patent system causes discoveries to be made sooner than when the patent was granted plus the length of the patent term. I'm torn on the gene patent though.One the one hand, a gene is a non-obvious mathematical formalism that offers an explanatory account of heredity. So we don't really have genes in our bodies and any arguments relying on such a claim are dubious. Furthermore, patents do have research exemptions. Now, my intuitions tell me such a patent is wrong but I'd really like to see a solid supportive argument.
How would you presume to measure the impact of patents? How do you know which patents should be granted or not granted? The benefit is for whom?
What about the inventors that got left behind because the other inventors got to monopolized his invention first? He didn't have a chance to try to put it on the market.
The problem is that the patent system cannot possibly account for all the impacts of the patents that affected the economy. The economy is a chaostic complex entity composed of many million of human beings making trillion of decision on the daily basis on what to buy and sell. The free market is astoudingly complex.
You have the audacity to think that you can improve the economy by imposing a monopoly on that one lucky inventor. You have no idea the unseen consequences that would result from your actions. Inventions never created, resource never allocated, and customers unsatisfied. The whole of history that we never knew changed forever by the course of a single patent.
Economic history is awashed with pirates producing books and making the authors rich, fortune ruined by patent ligitation, and untold stories of opportunistic inventors exploiting connections to widen their monopolies.
Interventionism in the free market is never without its cost. You would bet very well that the law of unintended consequences applied to the patent system as much as stupid laws mandating the price of gasolines.
There's a great paper from about a couple of years ago that dives deep into what a gene is and provides historical context. As you'll see, the definition of a genes as being an explanation for heredity is somewhat dated.
"The gene is a union of genomic sequences encoding a coherent set of potentially overlapping functional products."
Personally I've always had issues with the idea of patenting basic biology, and genes are fundamental biology of a species, since no one manufactures genomic sequences. How that biology can be controlled, modified and used for all kinds of purposes is a different story.
I would also argue that patents break down completely in modern science, where there is too much complexity for any one organization or people to control what you can do. It hampers science, it hampers innovation, perhaps even to a degree that it's harming human health. This from someone who believes pharma companies should get more control over their patents with the caveat that "me too" drugs should be thrown out once an extended patent period is in place.
> In principle, I don't see a problem with granting someone a temporary monopoly for monetizing discoveries that came about as the result of long and difficult work.
Why does the amount of work matter?
Me, I don't care where the ideas come from or how much work the person did. I want them disclosed.
Then again - I'm on the greed side of envy vs greed. I want everyone out their working as hard as they can to make my life better. To help them with that task, they need information, aka disclosure. To encourage them, I want other people to pay them lots of money.
its ok to grant a temporary monopoly. yes. But what is not obvious is that the duration of 8 years (and 20 for a more extensive protection) is way way too long for software patents. Most software patents (especially these days) are blatantly obvious and yet granted. What is not taken into account when a patent in granted (again i can only talk of software) is how much "effort"is required to come up with the idea (or rather the method of implementing the idea). Id say any more than 2 years is being too generous and enough to stiffle innovation.
patents give people an incentive to invent. The particular implementation of patent law may be idiotic, but the general idea of patents most certainly is not.
And yes, capitalism worked before patents in the same sense that medicine worked before the discovery of bacteria and germs.
The whole point, whether it concerns patents or property rights, is to give people an incentive to make the world better.
Right, but what incentive do people actually need?
People contribute to Open Source Software. There are many OSS type communities springing up around all kind of interests. People are making the world better every day below the radar of the legal world that patents live in.
I believe that people would make the world better without any need for the artificial incentives that are being discussed.
Curiosity, altruism and personal satisfaction are powerful forces that are being completely ignored in the current debates about patents and copyright.
> Right, but what incentive do people actually need? People contribute to Open Source Software.
While I like software more than most people, I don't think that what works in software tells us anything useful about what works elsewhere.
Which reminds me. Suppose that I figure out a great way to handle NP complete problems. Assuming that you believe that it would be good for me to disclose said "great way", do you really believe that not-patent reasons are adequate motivation?
Then again, I have a patent for a method of branch prediction. Since I'm not an academic, not working at a processor company, and have no interest in starting one, why should I disclose said method?
Well I think a large factor in altruism is whether or not you are getting your needs met.
I know that I am generous when things are going well and stingy when they are not.
I also know that I do see when my actions can create a larger good and I usually go for it.
That said, if your great way to handle NP complete problems has utility then you could make a closed source application with it and make bucks. No problem.
If someone else figures out the same thing on their own and does the same do you feel that it's right that they must pay you?
Not legally correct but right?
I just paid cash money for a closed source program because it had utility for me. There was no open source project anywhere near mature enough so I ponied up.
I realize that things get weird when you are dealing with ideas in capital intensive industries. You can't just go out and start a chip fab to utilize your branch prediction patent.
However "Since I'm not an academic, not working at a processor company, and have no interest in starting one, why should I disclose said method?" Because it's doing nothing right now and someone else who has those interests will rediscover it.
So what then? I don't know but things are at a strange choke point. Industries are using legal means, patents and legislation, to create insurmountable barriers to entry which is at the crux of our economic woes.
I may be full of shit but I design and build products and make a living and I do not patent or design copyright anything formally. My personal belief is that the thieves will take regardless and your only true capital is your reputation and your ability to meet demand.
Put another way. I also own a coffee shop. I can't patent that and if another operator moves in next door there is no mechanism in existence that allows me to prevent them or get licensing fees. If I were to build a hotel or gas station, same deal. Anyone could set up shop across the street. If I make mint coffee, put a mint on the pillow or sell green gas there is no protection available.
> That said, if your great way to handle NP complete problems has utility then you could make a closed source application with it and make bucks. No problem.
There is significant social good in getting me to disclose said method.
> My personal belief is that the thieves will take regardless
I'm not concerned about thieves. I'm concerned about disclosure - I want more of it because the more disclosure there is, the faster things advance. I'm willing to pay "but I rediscovered it independently" for more disclosure. (That said, I think that such cases are overstated and come about mainly because someone was trying to get there first, for the patent, and missed.)
> Industries are using legal means, patents and legislation, to create insurmountable barriers to entry which is at the crux of our economic woes.
Patents are not even close to being at the crux of our economic problems.
> So why are software and ideas any different?
I didn't say that software was different, I said that new ideas were different than old ones. I want to encourage folks to disclose new ideas.
We still don't know how GoreTex is made.
Feel free to caricture my position as "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few".
Actually I agree that we need more disclosure.
I just cannot conceive of any way that locking up knowledge is a healthy thing for a culture or society.
I believe the widespread adoption of the internet has helped compress the lag time between the early adopters and the general population from about 10 years to 5 or less.
If everyone was actually living in the present things would be better.
I disagree. I have a firm belief in that people primarily invent things because they have an idea they just can't silence and NOT because of any future monetary rewards.
There might be individuals who can combine the two to some extent but still it appears to me that most of them would still work on their invention even without the rewards. If the great inventors of all time had been motivated by money they would probably have chosen the financial sector.
Money just places its usual twist into the process of invention. With money comes the idea that an investment in money and time must in the average produce a return, and inventing just doesn't work this way.
Sure it is true that your boss might want to pay you to do research if he can expect you to produce things to be patented, thus giving a company a potential source of future income. But because of the bias towards money and not towards the fundamental answers to the unanswered questions in the inventor's mind, this commonly reduces to aggressively patenting any first thing that you might in some hugely optimistic circumstances consider patentable with regard to PTO's policies. And it seems that this crap rarely brings in any money to the "inventing" company; at best it is just used as fodder in mutual settlements with other companies that have claimed similarly fucked up patents.
I just have a bad, bad feeling about patents. The original idea is noble but I'm not all convinced that it has helped the humankind a single bit over the history of years.
