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Seven big fixes?Seven big fixes?Posted Jun 20, 2012 9:27 UTC (Wed) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784)Parent article: EFF Launches New Patent Reform Project to Defend Innovation
More like six tweaks and one "run another study" option. It's all very disappointing, especially when fix #4 actually demonstrates why software patents are unethical: if people can stumble across the oh-so-hard solution to a problem independently, why was anyone given a monopoly on it? When this happens all the time, why are these monopolies being systematically issued?
The answer, as it is for almost everything now in the post-industrial economies, is that it's another way to print money and generate economic activity not actually doing something, but instead doing something around that thing in an increasingly tangential fashion. So your power company might not actually generate power itself, but instead be a power trading company, buying up supply and passing it on at a near zero mark-up, relying on pre-payment and financial acrobatics to turn a profit.
The sad thing is that our societies appear to reward such speculation much more than investment in the things that actually generate genuine value.
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"inadvertant infringement" Posted Jun 20, 2012 22:05 UTC (Wed) by dbruce (subscriber, #57948) [Link]
I absolutely agree on that one - if a so-called invention is innovative enough to warrant patent protection, it makes it hard to explain why others wind up inventing the same thing all the time without even being aware of the original "invention" or the patent on it.
Logically, it would make sense for truly independent discovery to be considered grounds to *invalidate* a patent, along the lines of prior art. If the issue is whether something is innovative or not, and someone else truly came up with the same thing independently, ought it not argue against patentability whether the independent discovery occurred before or after the patent? The patent advocates seem to want to have it both ways. They insist that independent creation in no way avoids patent liability, but they don't want to admit that such independent creation is evidence that the patented material is obvious. I don't see how they can hold these two thoughts in their heads at the same time, unless they are simply cynically gaming the system for all it is worth.
("Ought" isn't the same as "Really Does", to be sure, but it is interesting to think of a more ideal state of affairs).
"inadvertant infringement" Posted Jun 20, 2012 23:14 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
to be fair, it's pretty hard to prove that the second inventor had no knowledge of the invention.
In software where nobody looks at patents, being ignorant of someone else's patent is the common case (and combined with the low-quality 'inventions' getting patent approval, it makes for a really bad case)
but the case law was created in a time and environment where it was common for inventors to be very aware of patents that were being approved in their field.
Also, If you can examine something that includes an invention, it's frequently much easier to duplicate it.
Risk aversion Posted Jun 21, 2012 7:09 UTC (Thu) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link]
I think one of the main problems is that societies have become much more risk averse. We want to fix our interest rates, fix our electricity prices, fix food prices, fix resource prices, etc. A we (not just consumers, but businesses and banks) are willing to pay others a premium to take on that risk for us. As a result there's a small group of people getting very rich accepting other people's risk.
And then when the shit hits the fan and this group needs to pay out, it turns out they either spent it all, underestimated the risks or invested the money in other things that turned out to be just as risky.
I'm not sure what you can do about this though, since being able to insure against risks has advantages for society as a whole, but the risks need to be carried by someone somewhere. Who can we trust to do that? Not all risks cancel out.
Risk aversion Posted Jun 21, 2012 13:49 UTC (Thu) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
You might be right about risk and wider society, but the big scam perpetrated by electricity suppliers is the way that mainstream "products" are promoted as giving you power at "cost price", giving the impression that the customer is being "empowered" since they get as favourable a rate as a company with direct access to the market, but this actually means that the customer is having to pay whatever the wildly fluctuating market price is, thus exposing them to risk instead of shielding them from it.
I guess you can negotiate a long-term power rate just as you can fix interest rates on savings or loans for a limited period, but you can imagine what the effect of the more typical customer-provider relationship is on the willingness of providers to act in a sustainable or responsible fashion. Indeed, they just pass on the risk as long as they can sufficiently cushion any sharp rise with their own liquidity and remain in business - something that at least one provider with which I had some experience didn't manage to do.
Meanwhile, who is actually doing the work producing the commodity being priced and investing in capacity? Maybe as commodities become more scarce and the obsession with speculation appears more obviously misguided, people may actually be reminded that other industries exist where the conditions for actual work being done (or output, or whatever you want to call it) have to be carefully maintained and should not occupy a lower position in society's priorities than those peripheral industries whose only role is to assume that the output will keep coming in full measure and to indulge in damaging speculation at everybody else's expense.
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