Film: "Patent absurdity"
Film: "Patent absurdity"
Posted Apr 19, 2010 1:24 UTC (Mon) by dlang (guest, #313)In reply to: Film: "Patent absurdity" by bojan
Parent article: Film: "Patent absurdity"
in terms of other fields, it doesn't even need to be david vs goliath, any new idea is a risk.
again, using the safety pin example, even a large company is taking a significant risk in gearing up and pushing a new product, there are always other large companies that could dilute, if not beat you on any one product. in some cases it may be size related (say Vons supermarkets vs Wallmart), but in other cases it may just be that you have enough competitors, each of who could copy your success without having to take any risk of failure (think auto manufacturers, one may have a new idea, but if it works, every other company will have it in their vehicles the next year)
the way to eliminate patents on things like anti-gravity machines is to require a working model be available for examination and testing. the patent office used to have this requirement.
Posted Apr 19, 2010 2:09 UTC (Mon)
by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
[Link] (17 responses)
Great example. Now, let's take Hyundai and Mercedes-Benz, for example.
Let's say that Hyundai can take all of Mercedes-Benz patents and use them tomorrow, free of charge. Do you honestly think that they would be making the same cars as Mercedes-Benz, just by having those patents available and for the money you pay today for current Hyundai models? That they could just take over that part of the market by virtue of having the same patent pool? I just don't see that happening in a hurry. It takes a lot more than that.
Coming back to the Nokia v. Apple thing. You know, Nokia have N900, they have X6, they have N97 and probably a half dozen other models. And yet, none of them are iPhone. It just isn't the same, because there are so many things to a great product that has charisma, not just patents.
Posted Apr 19, 2010 2:38 UTC (Mon)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link] (16 responses)
If Mercedes had the ability to use all of Hyundai's patents at no charge, how would Hyundai fight back?
say Hyundai developed a new engine design that gave them twice the power and MPG of existing engines for the same cost, weight and size. Don't you think that they should be able to license the design rather than just have it copied by Mercedes?
As for the Nikia v. Apple, I'm not sure what in the iphone should be patentable. it's good engineering, and it has nice polished software in it, but is that really novel enough to qualify for a patent? the engineering isn't patentable, they are assembling components purchased from others and packaging them nicely. As for the software, what is in the software that hasn't been done somewhere else by someone else first? They may have been the first to put multi-touch into a phone, but how is that substantially different than multi-touch interfaces on another computer system?
Not every successful product needs to have a patentable invention behind it.
Posted Apr 19, 2010 3:40 UTC (Mon)
by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
[Link] (11 responses)
I think they should be able to come to the market with it first. Which they could, if they played their cards close to their chest.
The others would not able to use that immediately. They would have to figure out what it was, make prototypes, test, build production to do it etc. This takes time. In the meantime, Hyundai would be taking away their market share, provided they ran their business properly.
And again coming back to Nokia v. Apple, Nokia _is_ trying to do what Apple are doing. They have a music store, they have an application store, they have and control smartphone OS (several, in fact). But the problem is that Apple right now does it _better_, so they win. Same with everything else.
There are many products that have these great ideas in them, but otherwise suck. Most people stay away from them, in my experience.
Posted Apr 19, 2010 4:43 UTC (Mon)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link] (10 responses)
If that's your position we will just need to agree to disagree.
Posted Apr 19, 2010 5:43 UTC (Mon)
by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
[Link] (6 responses)
Because industrial espionage is usually a breach of contract or some kind of law. Reverse engineering is not.
Patents come from a very dubious place - a very old law called Statute of Monopolies, which essentially limited crown given monopolies to new inventions only. I'm sure it was very progressive in 1623. Whether this remains the case in 2010 is a subject of many debates.
I can understand that there could be areas that are helped by giving out monopolies. However, we should do that sparingly. Current practice where every man and his dog can patent practically everything has gone way out of hand.
PS. I'm not sure why there would generally be a problem with using other people's ideas. Humans learn by copying. If we were stripped of that ability, we would not be ourselves any more. I cannot see why it should follow that whenever someone has an original thought, it should not be available to others freely. In fact, in many fields of endeavour this is the norm.
Posted Apr 19, 2010 6:04 UTC (Mon)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link] (5 responses)
the entire idea of the patent system is to make it so that those ideas are available for other people to use freely after the patent expires. If there was not such a system then there would be the risk of such ideas being lost, or locked up through trade secrets (with all the inefficiencies involved with maintaining such secrets, even where they are possible) for much longer time periods.
Our world today is what it is due to technologies that could have been locked up with trade secrets that are instead now freely available to use. Think of such things as how we make Steel or Aluminum and consider what would have happened if those were trade secrets of one particular company, with every employee being locked up under contract to not reveal the secrets.
Those are a couple examples where the process could be kept secret while selling the result. Prior to the patent system it would have been likely that such ideas would have died with the inventor, and had very little effect outside the immediate area (remember that if secrecy is your only protection against being flattened by your rivels you don't want to let many people in on the secret, which limits how large you can grow)
by giving out a temporary monopoly the patent system is designed to trade the short term advantage to the inventor for the long term advantage of society by making the inventor document the details of the invention. In the worst case (where the patent owner uses the patent to squash all use) society gets the invention a generation later, in the best case, not only does society get the invention free to everyone a generation later, the inventor is able to make good use of it in the meantime.
Posted Apr 19, 2010 6:24 UTC (Mon)
by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
[Link]
Compare the situation to, for instance, general principles embedded in our (western) laws. Most times we err on the side of caution when someone's rights are to be squashed to gain something else. With patent law we do the opposite - we let broad monopolization of ideas to gain a very dubious outcome.
So, I remain sceptical whether we should be giving these things out like lollipops. It seems like suppression on a grand scale.
As for trade secrets, they exist right now and are enforced right around the world. If they were the all powerful tool to keep everyone out, create monopolies and endless profits, companies would just use them instead of patents, now wouldn't they? However, they don't last - people are inventive. They either figure out what you're doing or they come up with a better way.
So, no, I don't think that use of trade secrets would ultimately have a monopolistic effect. And if it would, we could simply adjust the duration of trade secrets via legislation. That would be really simple.
Posted Apr 20, 2010 21:05 UTC (Tue)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link] (3 responses)
Yet most patents cover ideas which can not be lost for they are embodies in millions of copies around the world and can be easily reverse-engineered. Sure. If you can not guess how the product is made even if you have it in your hands - then it's fair justification for monopoly. How many patents describe things like THAT? 0.1%? 1%? Nobody argues agains these patents. But why keep all the software patents around? The "great idea" embedded in software can not be easily lost: even if nobody has the source you can still use the same old implementation via emulators and recompilers. The initial justifications for patents is bogus in 99% cases for physical patents and 100% cases for software.
Posted Apr 20, 2010 21:40 UTC (Tue)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Apr 20, 2010 21:50 UTC (Tue)
by jordanb (guest, #45668)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Apr 20, 2010 21:54 UTC (Tue)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link]
Posted Apr 19, 2010 8:31 UTC (Mon)
by mjthayer (guest, #39183)
[Link] (1 responses)
Are you arguing in favour of rewarding the individual (or company) or because of the benefit to society? If the second, is there any reasonable proof, not just based on assumptions and logic, that patents do bring the benefit they are supposed to? You know the thing about premature optimisation :)
Posted Apr 20, 2010 5:17 UTC (Tue)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link]
like most things in history we don't get a chance to do controlled experiments.
Posted Apr 19, 2010 9:52 UTC (Mon)
by Los__D (guest, #15263)
[Link]
Why should we need protection against actions that are already illegal?
Posted Apr 21, 2010 14:12 UTC (Wed)
by ibukanov (subscriber, #3942)
[Link] (3 responses)
If it would be possible, then most car companies would create such engine on its own. Inventions are not coming out of nowhere, they are based on past ideas. So it is possible for other people to come up with them. And if two persons would invent the same thing why do we want to award one who invented a month earlier?
The real value of the inventions is when they come into life as a product. Patents just slow down that since after getting a patent there is no insensitive to bring the invention into the world quickly as the company can just sit on the patent while deciding on a marketing plan.
Posted Apr 21, 2010 17:35 UTC (Wed)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link] (2 responses)
I think this is the core of the dispute.
if you believe that the idea will come to someone else at about the same time then patents are major harm.
however if you think that there are ideas that will not come to many people around the same time, then patents can be a good thing as they get those ideas to everyone at the expiration of the patent instead of having to wait for someone else to come up with the idea.
If you do not believe that ideas can be rare, then there is no reason to respect or honor anyone who has ever had an idea, because they will just be one of a flood of people with that same idea.
note that this would have to include Einstein, Darwin, Newton and all the 'great' figures in science and math as well.
I believe that there are ideas that are very rare.
There are too many cases where someone has noticed something (frequently the result of an accident of some sort) and pursued it to find something worthwhile.
Posted Apr 24, 2010 14:31 UTC (Sat)
by anton (subscriber, #25547)
[Link] (1 responses)
note that this would have to include Einstein, Darwin, Newton and
all the 'great' figures in science and math as well.
Maybe if you want to have an incentive for inventors, you could
look at the incentives there are for scientists; maybe such incentives
should be there for inventors, too. But we will never see this
happen, because then the big corporations who profit from patents
could no longer argue that the patents are needed for the small
inventor.
Posted Apr 26, 2010 13:31 UTC (Mon)
by nye (subscriber, #51576)
[Link]
Penrose tiling?
Film: "Patent absurdity"
Film: "Patent absurdity"
Film: "Patent absurdity"
Film: "Patent absurdity"
Film: "Patent absurdity"
Film: "Patent absurdity"
Film: "Patent absurdity"
Yup - and this is where it all falls apart...
The entire idea of the patent system is to make it so that those ideas are available for other people to use freely after the patent expires. If there was not such a system then there would be the risk of such ideas being lost, or locked up through trade secrets (with all the inefficiencies involved with maintaining such secrets, even where they are possible) for much longer time periods.
Our world today is what it is due to technologies that could have been locked up with trade secrets that are instead now freely available to use. Think of such things as how we make Steel or Aluminum and consider what would have happened if those were trade secrets of one particular company, with every employee being locked up under contract to not reveal the secrets.
Those are a couple examples where the process could be kept secret while selling the result. Prior to the patent system it would have been likely that such ideas would have died with the inventor, and had very little effect outside the immediate area (remember that if secrecy is your only protection against being flattened by your rivels you don't want to let many people in on the secret, which limits how large you can grow)
Yup - and this is where it all falls apart...
Yup - and this is where it all falls apart...
Yup - and this is where it all falls apart...
>so you think the only advantage anyone should get for a new invention is whatever head
start they can get on the competition, and other than that everyone should be able to freely
use any ideas that they can get their hands onFilm: "Patent absurdity"
Film: "Patent absurdity"
Film: "Patent absurdity"
Film: "Patent absurdity"
Film: "Patent absurdity"
Film: "Patent absurdity"
If you do not believe that ideas can be rare, then there
is no reason to respect or honor anyone who has ever had an idea,
because they will just be one of a flood of people with that same
idea.
Science and math is not patentable, not even in the USA. And the
research done by these people was done without having an "incentive"
from a monopoly (what would that incentive be for science, actually?).
Film: "Patent absurdity"