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The root causeThe root causePosted Jul 16, 2012 22:13 UTC (Mon) by steffen780 (guest, #68142)In reply to: The root cause by giraffedata Parent article: Akademy: Defensive publications
AIUI "invention" is simply a subset of "idea". In practice the notion of "subset" is becoming increasingly irrelevant, everywhere in the world. As for the quote, yes, it's a great one. In my opinion it is one of the best arguments against patents in the real world - they don't actually protect just the perspiration. If someone else has the same inspiration independently and also does all the perspiration, they're still legally prohibited from profiting from it.
Copyright is for protecting the perspiration - patents protect the inspiration. I'm not a big fan of copyright either, but I suppose I could conceive a copyright system that would at least be worth considering, but whilst a patent system satisfying my constraint a) might be conceivable, I cannot see one that satisfies b), not even with c).
Take medicines as an example - why should a company be barred from taking your patent, doing all the safety studies and so on (thereby doing the perspiration), and then selling the drug? Sure it'd be inefficient, but these kind of inefficiencies are a given in capitalism. Its point is competition - who can do the same task most efficiently.
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The root cause Posted Jul 18, 2012 3:25 UTC (Wed) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] If someone else has the same inspiration independently and also does all the perspiration, they're still legally prohibited from profiting from it. I believe that is only for reasons of practicality. The principle of patents does not require that independent invention be considered a patent infringement (quite the opposite), but we know it would be extremely difficult to tell whether someone's invention was independent if the work happened after the patent holder's work was published. I don't see that as an essential part of patents; if the law merely presumed a post-patent practice of the invention was a copy and allowed the second inventor to prove it was independent, that would still be a patent system. My point is that this quirk of patents isn't enough to oppose the entire concept. Incidentaly, assuming a patent system does not grant patents for obvious inventions, there isn't really much incentive for re-inventing. If Pfizer knows that Merck can and will spend $100M to duplicate Pfizer's $100M invention, Pfizer will offer to license it to Merck for $50M and both companies win.
The root cause Posted Aug 3, 2012 21:50 UTC (Fri) by steffen780 (guest, #68142) [Link]
Sorry but now you seem to mixing things up. Patents without assuming that independent discovery was a copy are pointless. We have copyright for that.
The root cause Posted Aug 5, 2012 3:06 UTC (Sun) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] Patents without assuming that independent discovery was a copy are pointless. We have copyright for that. How do you figure? The point of patents is to protect inventions, which is something copyright can't do, because it protects only expressions. How do you suppose copyright would stop Merck from manufacturing and selling a drug that Pfizer invented? Assume that Pfizer could prove Merck learned how from Pfizer's paper on the subject, so that independent discovery is not an issue.
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