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Comment by icanhackit | Hacker News Reader

Looking at some of the for and against arguments regarding patents, let's play a mental game: would new, valuable things still be created if the patent system didn't exist?

I think yes. The creator wouldn't necessarily benefit directly, but in a way we all indirectly benefit from new technology and ideas. Much the same as it would be better for the poor to have free or affordable essential health care, our society would have more able-bodied and able-minded people to work or even conduct themselves in a way that didn't transmit their illness, whether physically or through dependance.

By leaving the weak weakened, we indirectly transmit that ailment to others by physical and economic forces. You're only as strong as your weakest point.

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The question is: what kind of valuable things would still be produced? You'll still get iPhones, but will you get ARM cores or Snapdragon chipsets or LTE or MPEG4 or pills that cure Hep-C?

The bigger picture is that almost all hard R&D takes place under the umbrella of some sort of protection from copying. Intel spends billions a year on semiconductor R&D, and protects it with trade secrets. Pharma companies spend billions on drug R&D and protect them with patents. Even internet companies like Google and Facebook depend on being able to hide a lot of their "secret sauce" (either algorithms or compilations of user information) on the server-side where it can't be easily copied.

Hard R&D that isn't protected from copying is usually subsidized. The core internet protocols were subsidized by the Government. Advances in core browser protocols are subsidized by Internet companies that rely heavily on ad revenue. Going back further in history, Bell Labs was subsidized by AT&T's telephone monopoly and PARC was subsidized by Xerox's copier monopoly. That model can work too, but has its own problems.

Marketing is at least as important as technology. Intel sells chips, not because there are no alternatives, but because they're Intel.

There will be little or no impact on innovation by this patent change.

You make some compelling points but I'm still not convinced that this form of protectionism is the only avenue to innovation. The strength of a company is often in its organization, processes, location, and systems which are difficult to copy in a cohesive way without being gifted with similar circumstances. Why can't a company's strength and success in the marketplace be defined by these characteristics as opposed to legislative shields? Winner-takes-all systems often shape organizational behavior to be more defensive than creative.

> I'm still not convinced that this form of protectionism is the only avenue to innovation.

Protections of inventions (as loose as the term "invention" might be) isn't the only avenue to innovation, but it is an avenue.

There is always going to be a pull between free/open and paid/private. It's a good thing that multiple avenues exist, because some public-good innovations may happen under one regime but not the other.

Also, I take issue with the terms of the "it should be free" conversation here. The patent isn't for the gene: the company does not hold the rights to your DNA. The patent is for the discovery of it's link to cancer.

In this exact circumstance, I question how long it would take for this gene to be identified as a causal-link to breast cancer if there was not the bait of a financial windfall. Is there a smoking gun that shows this company beat out a public institution to this discovery?

Let's not reduce this argument to innovation for companies. Individuals innovate and patent as well.

There is a tendency to focus purely on the negative effects of a system that seems to be failing it's purpose. It's important to understand the system as a whole, and it's history. Has the patent system ever functioned for the purpose it was designed for? If it isn't functioning correctly now, is that in part or in whole? Is it not functioning because it has been changed, because the world has changed, or both.

Finally, is there a way to alter the system, whether that be to curtail it, expand it, or just change how it operates, that might yield a better functioning system?

Personally, I'm not for abolishing patents. They had a very clearly defined purpose (innovation encouragement) when they were first created. I think they've been mostly perverted into another purpose (wealth protection), more-so in some industries than others. They've been expanded from court rulings to cover things which were not originally thought patentable. What we need here is a well reasoned legislative overhaul. What we'll get if we're extremely lucky is a hole-ridden clusterfuck of revisions, but if we're lucky, it will somewhat address the current problems. The new problems will be something we discover and address tomorrow.

I don't think you can disentangle those two purposes. Innovation is encouraged precisely because you can profit from your invention.

I believe the cost and delay of patent litigation is the real problem. It's important to identify the critical issue before effective change can happen.

My point was when wealth protection is a tool to bolster innovation, then the incentives are aligned correctly. When people, or more importantly legislators, forget that and think the purpose of patents is to reward for innovation, we get some perverse incentives. In a perfect world, protection would be inversely proportional to the amount of innovation the sector is experiencing, and would also be scaled to the amount the innovation helps. But those are both hard to measure realistically.

Individual patents are a corner case that's hardly worth sneezing about. They typically come up in these sorts of conversations in the same way that, say, Monsanto will cry about protecting small farmers while proposing rule changes that let it get away with whole new classes of abuse...

"The bigger picture is that almost all hard R&D takes place under the umbrella of some sort of protection from copying."

There is a huge difference between protection from copying, and protection from building similar things that achieve the same goal. Patents are not simply "protection from copying".

Drug patents often cover things like "using the same body mechanism to achieve a desired result".

(Now, you can argue this is necessary to protect them, but let's be clear - it's not straight copying if i make a pill with a completely different chemical composition that ends up triggering the same mechanisms. However, it likely runs afoul of their carefully drafted patents.

I'm also aware there are chemical compound patents that would not cover me doing this, but usually, when the drug companies can, they get both)

"Intel spends billions a year on semiconductor R&D, and protects it with trade secrets"

and design mask protection (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_circuit_layout_desi...)

"Pharma companies spend billions on drug R&D and protect them with patents. "

They are also heavily subsidized, unlike your intel example. Tax payers, for example, pay about 50% of pharma's R&D costs (and pharma includes a lot more than actual R&D in R&D cost). http://www.healthnewsreview.org/2012/02/the-costly-myths-abo...

and http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2012/02/16/What-Those-...

"Hard R&D that isn't protected from copying is usually subsidized. "

Pharma, one of your examples, is both heavily protected and heavily subsidized. Heck, Intel gets huge R&D tax breaks too.

In truth, most of the heavily protected stuff is subsidized by tax payers in various forms anyway.

The idea that these companies are out there, doing it on their own, without essentially getting most of the R&D cost subsidized through tax breaks/etc, is a huge myth.

We don't have the model you propose. We have a model where it is both heavily protected and heavily subsidized.

I'm not saying that protections or subsidies are two exclusive options. I'm saying that one or the other is a necessary condition for many kinds of hard R&D. I agree that in practice we have a mix of both.

We could ask, though, which R&D gets protected by patents but not by copyright or trade secrets? Which R&D would not produce a return on investment if patents didn't exist?

Drug research, perhaps, though we might be able to find other solutions there, or produce a much more limited form of patent for that industry alone. What else currently depends fundamentally on patents for its business model?

Looking at the many groups working on FOSS media codecs past and present (VP8, VP9, AoM, Opus, Vorbis), I'd say the media situation would actually get better in the absence of patents.

media requires algorithm which isn't supposed to be patentable but because software is sOoOo complex it got shoehorned into patentability. I think we just need to loosen up the ties a little

> protects it with trade secrets

Trade secrets, unlike patents and copyrights, are not a legal construct. They're just things you aren't telling anyone.

They could exist without protection from the legal system, but to the extent that they are protected by courts, they are a legal construct. In the US, there is more to them than 'things you aren't telling anyone' and you are not necessarily without legal remedy if someone finds out your trade secret.

I want to point out that SpaceX doesn't patent any of their tech, as their competitors are sovereign states that would have no problem copying the technology.

Boeing is a sovereign state?

Oh come now. Boeing and the ULA are not SpaceX competitors. They're a last gasp attempt to keep the existing pork/gravy train of cost plus contracting and congressional district graft in place.

> Boeing and the ULA are not SpaceX competitors. They're a last gasp attempt to keep the existing pork/gravy train of cost plus contracting and congressional district graft in place.

No, Boeing and the other ULA members (both as ULA and separately) are SpaceX competitors for (particularly) government contract work, what you call "congressional district graft" is part of the game they play to maximize the value and duration of those contracts (to make them politically hard to curtail), but aren't what they exist to support -- you've got what is being served and what is serving reversed.

We'll agree to disagree (I don't mean any offense). SpaceX exists to drive the cost of launch services down. Boeing and the ULA exist to profit. My opinion, of course.

SpaceX isn't a charity. It exists to profit, even if it is funded by investors who are willing to accept not profiting in the short term to build the business to the point where it can operate profitably.

Now, in order to profit, it has to differentiate itself from incumbents somehow, and the opportunity it is built around to do that is regarding efficiencies that allow it to offer launch services at lower costs. But, it is competing directly with ULA for business, as a simple matter of concrete fact.

SpaceX is a great example of the Google/Facebook situation. When you sell a service, and not a product people can take apart and reverse-engineer, you've got built-in protection from copying.

Pervasive Internet and the move to putting logic on the server definitely outmodes many uses for patents, though. Take Siri. SRI invented the technology, spun off a company with the IP, which was purchased by Apple. I don't think that transaction would've happened without patent protection. But today you have an alternative model. Instead of licensing voice recognition technology for integration into products, you can provide the algorithm as a service. Now, the source code stays safely on the server side where nobody can decompile it to figure out how it works.

This is very true. At the same time though, through the commidification of computing resources, as well as tooling continuing to advance, open source alternatives are reaching parity.

Humor me. When Gmail first came out, it was revolutionary. Now, you could host your own clone for $10-20/month using containerized Elastic Search indexing all of your email, with a small virtual machine ingesting your email from the internet, and providing it to you over JSON to your local mail client or through a web interface.

Voice recognition could follow the same trajectory. Computing power will increase, storage costs will continue to plummet (I've mentioned this multiple times on HN, but Samsung is predicting 128TB SSD drives in 3 years).

You don't need patents anymore, as you mentioned, because you can provide the service, not the underlying source code. But you still need to monetize quickly (if that's your goal), because the rising tide of technology can quickly supplant your lead with other competitors or open source options.

Maybe or maybe not. Open source still lags far behind when it comes to "hard" algorithms that require domain expertise to design: OCR, handwriting recognition, voice recognition, etc.

Only 10% of important inventions are patented: http://infojustice.org/archives/31509

I think that's a misleading question. I don't think anyone is arguing that all innovation would go away if the patent system was removed. However, it seems possible that innovations that require high initial investment and low ongoing costs (medications, gene patents, etc.) would be produced at a lower rate if the incentives the current system provides were removed.

it seems possible that innovations that require high initial investment and low ongoing costs (medications, gene patents, etc.) would be produced at a lower rate

Good point, I don't necessarily disagree. But is a lot of the R&D to get around existing patents, rather than build a new thing entirely? In the software world I think we can safely say yes. Regarding medical research I'm not qualified to say. I'd love to hear from anyone with some insight.

That's an interesting counterpoint. I honestly don't know the answer either.

"A way to work around a patent" means "a different way to do something". Much of the time, that's no gain, but sometimes they find a better way to do something. So figuring out ways to work around patents is not just a complete waste.

Big investments (today it's things like the Internet, Space Exploration; long ago it was the Roman naval assault bridge, the Library of Alexandria) always require state-led investment for sustainability. Copying protection have almost nothing to do with them.

The protection IS a state investment. It's just contributing the threat of resources rather than actual resources, which is even more efficient.

I'm actually wondering how much of the R&D effort stems from actual reverse engineering of the medicine and how much is simply done by reading the patent. Chemistry is quite complicated if you break down the pill into it's basic components it won't tell you much. Even if you manage to isolate the active molecule you still will have to figure out the chemical process to make it and in a safe manner. Chemical patents tend to be quite long because it's quite a complicated manner, and all of them have a full description of how the compound was identified, how it's made, and how it's delivered.

Now many drugs are also not as complicated as some people might think, the majority of the work that drug companies do it pretty much see what works for what, however for the complicated stuff that they actually R&D from the ground up the patents might be an actual liability when it comes to reverse engineering when they cannot use the law to enforce it.

As for the money, as long as rich people get sick drug companies will continue to do research, allot of the money for the research also comes from government grants and not from investments drug companies would rather produce drugs for illnesses that affect as many people as possible and drugs that combat the symptoms and not the cause where ever possible if we want to be completely cynical about it because that's what would yield them the most amount of money.

If government and private grants weren't available all we'll get in a cynical world would be common cold and cold sore medicine that doesn't really combat either viruses just prevents us from coughing and treats the sores. And that is almost the world we are living in because drug companies and investors won't be dumping resources into some obscure syndrome that affects 800 people in the US, for that we have the sick billionaires son and the sick nephew of a senator's best friend to thank for.

Tell that to ebola victims of last few decades. All this time all these wonderful incentives being in place and no progress on the cure. Americans get one good scare and presto, ebola vaccine in a less than a year. I wasn't that hard was it? Maybe those wonderful incentives are heavily misaligned with what desirable for humanity. Unless you thing that over-medicating Americans with vaguely effective but well advertised psycho drugs is preferable to preventing people from dying from ebola...

This is a bad question and a horrible attempt to answer (I'm being so abrasive because at this moment this is the highest voted comment). It's a bad question because it invites wishful thinking. Prediction generally has a very bad track record, and right now you're trying to predict a mixture of economy, free market incentives and technology. Hard to find something more unpredictable.

What you can do is look at the past and find correlation and causation. It's reasonably straightforward. Take a number of drugs and treatments, best if done randomly. See the process that got them on the market, and try to figure where patents fit in the picture.

I tried it just for fun, and found something interesting: up to half a century ago, you had a person's name associated with a drug. More recently, and you have a company. This is not an answer, but a hint that maybe things move towards being more expensive. Which of course brings us to the regulatory process: once a drug identified, what is the cost of having the papers stamped and who is motivated to pay for it?

That's nice, but if I'm Turing Pharmaceuticals or Microsoft, I probably don't care about all of that, and I only care about my immediate gain and exploitation of the patent system.

So perhaps the innovation could be in the process, not the result?

A couple of centuries ago there was a movement to abolish patents. What stopped it was cheap imports threatening jobs - patents acted as a kind of import duty. Curiously, that was their origin.

Relevant: Gongkai https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10353444

You can always waive IP rights in a system that reverse is not true (i.e. conditionally opt-in to IP rights in a system that categorically rejects them).

Likewise, you can give away all the physical stuff you want, but it's great that the rights exist in the first place.

Wasn't the completion of the genome in the first place a public effort that actually beat the private sector's attempts to finish it first and keep it away from scientific research? So not sure what we'd lose from keeping it open.

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