The VP8 wars heat up ... again [LWN.net]

The VP8 wars heat up ... again

Posted Apr 5, 2013 2:15 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
In reply to: The VP8 wars heat up ... again by Aliasundercover
Parent article: The VP8 wars heat up ... again

To me, the logic behind the proposition that patent law sometimes stimulates innovation is so solid that it would take an enormous amount of empirical proof to make me doubt that it does.
That resembles an argument to faith.

No, faith is fundamentally different because it lacks the logic component.

Shouldn't the burden of proof be on the side wanting to create monopolies?

The burden of proof is orthogonal to this. Logical deduction counts as proof. Many proofs (anything in math, for example) are nothing but logical deduction. In other areas, we don't trust our logic enough and ask for some experimental evidence as well. Most scientists I hear from say experimental results are meaningless without theory, so the logic actually counts for more than the empirical evidence in stating generalizations such as that IP law does or does not stimulate innovation.

But as for the burden of proof of facts relating to whether patents should exist, I don't see that one side or the other is particularly deserving of the presumption of correctness.

to post comments

The VP8 wars heat up ... again

Posted Apr 5, 2013 2:36 UTC (Fri) by Aliasundercover (guest, #69009) [Link]

> But as for the burden of proof of facts relating to whether patents should exist, I don't see that one side or the other is particularly deserving of the presumption of correctness.

You should. It is the difference between freedom and power, between controlling what happens to you yourself and controlling what happens to others. Patents in particular exert control over others taking away their ability to use their own work.

I think freedom deserves the presumption of correctness over power. I should be free to use my own work regardless of someone else having done something similar and laying claim with the government.

Do you really think government imposition of monopolies deserves to start on an equal footing with letting people be? Hauling people in to court where we are in jeopardy for massive monetary judgements and legal fees is just as good as leaving us alone provided the evidence is unclear either way?

The VP8 wars heat up ... again

Posted Apr 5, 2013 8:03 UTC (Fri) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (13 responses)

> To me, the logic behind the proposition that patent law sometimes stimulates innovation is so solid that it would take an enormous amount of empirical proof to make me doubt that it does.

Comparing the amount of money spent on lawyers and lawsuits versus R&D is enough experimental proof. If the system worked it the former would be far smaller.

By the way: do patent trolls make any sizeable amount of money outside the software field? Are there any even?

> The burden of proof is orthogonal to this. Logical deduction counts as proof. Many proofs (anything in math, for example) are nothing but logical deduction. In other areas, we don't trust our logic enough and ask for some experimental evidence as well.

It's only in Math that logic is enough. Anywhere else it's possible to build a perfectly logical model completely disconnected from reality - simply by ignoring some important parameters. It's especially easy in economics. In fact good economists even tend to make jokes about it (and themselves).

For instance the current patent model is ignoring the fact that lawyers, judges and the USPTO don't and will never have a clue about software PHOSITA and software prior art. And the fact they don't want to be told since they would lose a massive amount of work.

I agree logic is not valued enough in today's world but you look like you've gone a bit too far the other end.

The VP8 wars heat up ... again

Posted Apr 5, 2013 9:22 UTC (Fri) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link]

Yes there are patent trolls in other areas, but software patent trolling is a high growth industry.

The VP8 wars heat up ... again

Posted Apr 5, 2013 15:49 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (9 responses)

Comparing the amount of money spent on lawyers and lawsuits versus R&D is enough experimental proof.

Proof that patent law never stimulates innovation? I don't see how, so I think you're arguing some point other than what has been made in this thread so far.

If the system worked the former would be far smaller.

So maybe the proposition (which has not been proposed) you're disproving is "the system works."

It's only in Math that logic is enough

I don't think you're thinking broadly enough, because everyone's life is full of accepting proofs based on logic alone. You buy a coffee maker from a local store based on the proposition that it will be compatible with the electrical outlets in your kitchen. What is your proof that it is? Not experimentation; just a series of logical inferences. And you believe in the logic enough that if someone suggested stores normally sell appliances that are for a different voltage than what is used in that country, you would demand some pretty strong proof of that.

The VP8 wars heat up ... again

Posted Apr 5, 2013 17:10 UTC (Fri) by Aliasundercover (guest, #69009) [Link] (2 responses)

> Proof that patent law never stimulates innovation? I don't see how, so I think you're arguing some point other than what has been made in this thread so far.

It is becoming apparent you really do mean "any" innovation as opposed to the "enough innovation to be a net benefit considering the costs" everyone else is talking about. People may read your words which speak to a triviality but respond assuming you mean something more reasonable. No one is making a serious claim patent law never stimulates ANY innovation. No one cares. What matters is if it is a net benefit.

It is a good bet LSD has inspired some innovation. Same for crippling personal injuries. Forget about any. If people wrote here claiming IP law produces absolute zero innovation they were engaging in hyperbole.

The IP law we have is doing harm as its costs greatly exceed its benefits.

Where is the evidence patents are a net benefit in software? Before software patents we had a field with the most dramatic innovative explosion of modern times. Our society received huge benefits, many people earned a good living while others became rich, all in an unusually open field. Now with software patents we have dramatic consolidation, less innovation coming from less players.

Please do tell us about all the stagnant industries which become innovative and vibrant once patents came in to wide use. Logic and faith do indeed overlap in an important way. Too often people think they remove the need for objective observation of the real world.

The VP8 wars heat up ... again

Posted Apr 6, 2013 16:22 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (1 responses)

It is becoming apparent you really do mean "any" innovation as opposed to the "enough innovation to be a net benefit considering the costs" everyone else is talking about.

Everyone except possibly one, who explicitly said, "Anybody that says that IP law stimulates innovation is living in a dream world." While that author may have meant, "... enough innovation to be a net benefit," it's easy for someone to assume the author wrote what he meant, and I wanted to make sure readers don't think that it is generally agreed that patents have no up side, or that LWN readers are so simple that they can't see two sides to an issue.

Given that you figured out that I meant only what I wrote when I said patents stimulate innovation, I don't know what to make of the additional four paragraphs fighting the straw man who thinks patents are great.

The VP8 wars heat up ... again

Posted Apr 7, 2013 14:59 UTC (Sun) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link]

While that author may have meant, "... enough innovation to be a net benefit," it's easy for someone to assume the author wrote what he meant, and I wanted to make sure readers don't think that it is generally agreed that patents have no up side, or that LWN readers are so simple that they can't see two sides to an issue.

It is actually possible to refute that "IP law stimulates innovation" by comparing the normal level of innovation with that under the observed legal regime. Even if individuals or organisations are encouraged to innovate by the availability of monopoly grants, if the general level of innovation decreases, any claim of the benefits of the "IP law" in question can be refuted at the most pertinent level of discussion.

The VP8 wars heat up ... again

Posted Apr 8, 2013 7:23 UTC (Mon) by dvdeug (guest, #10998) [Link] (5 responses)

It is experimentation; after many, many years of buying electrical appliances, I know they invariably fit my plugs. If we were following logic, we might likewise assume that washers and driers plugged into standard plugs (they often need 220v), or that portable electronic tools had some sort of standard charger plug (hah!).

The VP8 wars heat up ... again

Posted Apr 8, 2013 17:56 UTC (Mon) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (4 responses)

I suppose it's possible you reason out whether to buy a coffee maker that way ("Every time I've bought an appliance before, it had a standard plug, so I'll assume it's always that way"), but I suspect most people who think to ask the question answer it with a syllogism such as, "this store would not be in business if it sold things people can't use; the store is still in business; etc."). I know that's how I make decisions like that.

Imagine that you've lived in the US all your life and then move to the UK. All the evidence you have is that stores sell appliances with North American plugs. So do you assume a UK store does too? Do you do demand evidence to the contrary before you'll risk buying a coffee maker you can't use? Or do you take the risk based only on a logical deduction that suggests UK stores sell coffee makers that work in UK kitchens?

The VP8 wars heat up ... again

Posted Apr 9, 2013 1:12 UTC (Tue) by dvdeug (guest, #10998) [Link] (3 responses)

"this store would not be in business if it sold things people can't use"

That's not logic; there's a lot of experience and facts behind that. It certainly wasn't true in the Soviet Union, for example. And as per the examples that follow, it's a leap to assume that that means the plugs are compatible.

Why is that I figure that a washer or dryer won't plug into the standard sockets? Why is that I don't figure I can buy an arbitrary charger and expect it to work with my electronic device? Why don't I figure I can buy an arbitrary video game and have it work in my system? Why can't I buy a movie disc and assume that it will work in my DVD player?

If I thought about it in terms of "North American plugs", I'd probably already know what type of plugs the UK uses. I assume, as a First World nation, that the UK is consistent in the type of plugs they use. On the other hand, I bet you should look twice in Hong Kong; are they Chinese plugs or UK plugs? I suspect there's many other places where you should look twice and keep adapters on hand.

The VP8 wars heat up ... again

Posted Apr 9, 2013 2:23 UTC (Tue) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (1 responses)

You're pointing out that all logical conclusions about the real world can be traced back to observations (evidence), and that all conclusions based on evidence are actually an application of logic to that evidence.

So the distinction between believing something based on logic and believing it based on evidence is only a matter of degree of the remoteness of the evidence.

Based on your categorizing the conclusion that a coffee maker will or will not work in a particular kitchen as an evidence-based conclusion, then my conclusion that patents stimulate innovation is also evidence-based, though I originally said it was not. A lifetime of seeing what greed makes people do, of seeing things cost money, of seeing people use other people's inventions, and on and on lead me to that conclusion.

I believe someone said at one point there is "no evidence" that patents stimulate innovation, which I took to refer to more direct evidence, with less logical deduction required, than the above.

The VP8 wars heat up ... again

Posted Apr 9, 2013 6:11 UTC (Tue) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

Now I'm tempted to go and look for some lawyer community web site. There's a chance they have forums with discussions more interesting than this one :-)

A first world nation is consistent ...

Posted Apr 11, 2013 12:26 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

You haven't been following the Japanese Tsunami then :-)

One of the big problems they had was they have two different electrical standards, and it was one side was mostly wiped out. So they couldn't feed power across the island from the other side because both the volts and the hertz were different.

Cheers,
Wol

It's only in Math that logic is enough.

Posted Apr 11, 2013 11:59 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

It's not enough even there!

As soon as you start doing arithmetic you have to start acting on faith.

Godel has shown that, as I like to put it, "you can have complete, consistent, or adds up. Pick any two". You have to take it on faith that arithmetic works, because Godel has shown it's unprovable.

Cheers,
Wol

It's only in Math that logic is enough.

Posted Apr 11, 2013 16:17 UTC (Thu) by apoelstra (subscriber, #75205) [Link]

> Godel has shown that, as I like to put it, "you can have complete, consistent, or adds up. Pick any two". You have to take it on faith that arithmetic works, because Godel has shown it's unprovable.

Well, given those choices you'd always pick "consistent and adds up". But Gödel went one further and said that you can prove consistency if and only if your system is inconsistent.

So you don't even get to choose.