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I’m becoming more of the opinion that all intellectual property law is immoral on the grounds that it creates artificial barriers to prosperity for individuals who don’t receive the benefits of the patents. I work hard on personal projects (robots) that I think would be useful to others and I share them all CC0 or BSD licensed. I think it would be useful for economists to consider the way patents exacerbate inequality.

That said, my employer has filed a patent for some work I did for them, and it’s a tough issue for me. In this case, I don’t think the innovation is so world changing that I need to fight for it to be open, nor do I think they would honor my desire to leave it unpatented as I’m not really in a position to ask for that.

But it’s an issue I feel uncomfortable with, and I kind of dream of moving to a different place where my employer doesn’t try to patent my work.

It is tough when they offer you a few thousand for these ideas you come up with. That money could help me build a family, but in closing off these ideas I’m making it harder for everyone else to prosper.

FWIW, if anyone says “patents encourage innovation” I would ask you for citations. I understand this is the story we’re told, but it’s typically presented with simple anecdotal evidence and hunches. I’ve never seen a thorough study of the issue.

>intellectual property law is immoral on the grounds that it creates artificial barriers to prosperity for individuals who don’t receive the benefits of the patents

It is also a wealth transfer from the poor to the wealthy: the justice system protecting IP capital is financed by taxpayers, the hard majority of which hold no patents.

Consider that the majority of federal tax revenues are generated by top income earners. It’s more of a wealth transfer between different groups of the wealthy.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/10/06/a-closer-loo...

Patents take money from the poor by denying them the prosperity at low-cost that would happen if there were no patents.

Patents are government-enforced monopolies. They enable all of what anyone would expect with monopolies, namely high prices for consumers.

Reasonably time limited patents are a necessary component of incentivizing innovation, without which consumers would not realize new goods and services based off of those innovations.

There was plenty of innovation before patents. The purpose of patents was never to incentivize innovation. The purpose was to incentivize disclosure, to allow the progress of society by revealing trade secrets (in exchange for which they would be protected from competitors for a time).

If you've ever tried to read a patent, you'll know this system has failed. In almost no cases can you meaningfully replicate an invention from a patent. Quite apart from which, a huge number of things under patent protection today are public knowledge anyway, or can be considered 'obvious'.

>Reasonably time limited patents are a necessary component of incentivizing innovation

Ive never been satisfied with this necessity; its not like innovation would just seize without patents: innovation in processes is still incentivized, because falling behind would mean higher prices than competition, and lost market share, so you still need to r&d to at least match the competition, let alone best it. Innovation in consumer products is still incentivized, by first movers effect, though perhaps the easiest copied things are lost (ie plastic lids might be too easy to copy design updates). Innovation in software obviously wont stop, and shenzhen succeeds in electronics with lax (absent?) patent/copyright law.

The primary innovation patents might be necessary for is a small company taking on a larger one, and needing to protect its design while it gets itself going.... but in practice, it proposed hinders innovation there more than it helps.

Patents, I think, are about essentially open-sourcing the design of things, and the incentive to do so is a temporary, gov-enforced monopoly. If theres any idea about innovation, its in the long-term, as 5,10,20 years from now, we can read up on these ideas and build on top of them, instead of seeing them lost in time with the company's demise.

One argument is that small companies can't out-compete big companies in efficiency due to lack of resources, therefore patents give them the necessary time to bring their products to market.

However I never found that argument to be believable. Big companies have such a vast patents portfolio that it's impossible for small companies that try to create a product to not infringe on anything. So what happens many times in practice are actually cross-licensing deals.

Therefore small companies developing some innovative algorithm or technology are better off keeping it a trade secret until launch.

I am as against patents as anybody else, but I wish that people talk more about the original idea behind it: if next-door wealthy guy can copy everything you invent, then there is few incentive if any to create anything new.

That argument has always felt like it came out of economics 101. Maybe in a world where everyone is a rational economic actor motivated only by maximizing profits, people wouldn't make anything new without a patent.

In the real world, open source and open research communities have no shortage of innovation, even without being able to place artificial blocks on the competition. It turns out, creator's motivations are more complicated than making money alone.

In my opinion, innovation might move a bit slower without the money injections from VCs who can be confident they can get patents and a safe ROI, but I think we'd be better off in the long run if we allowed creators to build off past ideas without the fear of being sued.

Even with rational actors, it doesn't really hold. You still have to innovate, because if you go stagnant and the competition does innovate, you're fucked. At the very least, you have to be capable of constantly updating your copies to match the competition, and you'd at best reach parity (unless the cost of original r&d was enormous, and time/cost to copy was minimal), which won't maximize profit.

That was never the purpose. See my comment above.

I do think the time is long overdue for IPR "property tax" as an anti-squatting measure and a defence against increasingly long copyright terms.

Disney making billions off Mickey Mouse? They can pay a tiny fraction of that and they can have their extension.

Novel by obscure dead author? Don't extend the copyright unless the estate wants to pay for it.

Abandoned and nobody to pay the tax? Enters the public domain.

All those defensive spurious patents? They impose a search cost on every single other innovator. There should be a carrying cost for the defensive patent wall.

I think that's a great idea. The value of an IP could be self-assessed, with the caveat that any party has an option to purchase the IP for e.g. 125% of the self-assessed value.

The tax on this value could scale from 1% for year 10 onwards, increasing by 0.25% per year. Year 50 of your copyright? Be prepared to pay 11% APR rent on its value.

Especially as filing a patent costs several hundred dollars. If you have an idea but not much money, you can't afford to patent it (or might have to make the choice between buying a patent or marketing your invention).

> It is tough when they offer you a few thousand for these ideas you come up with. That money could help me build a family, but in closing off these ideas I’m making it harder for everyone else to prosper.

I don't disagree. I look at it as a way for me to profit, I have to be pragmatic, unfortunately. I do donate 25% of each bonus to the EFF and personally I look at it another way...

This problem is going to get worse before it gets better. If I don't do this someone else will. The powers that be want this, and the lower levels like myself live on a bounty. It'll eventually fix itself, but until then I can net enough money to pay off my student loans, my cars, my house.

> The processes are unique, very difficult to replicate, and should be offered some protection (if we agree that motor designs should be protected).

Just to clarify the discussion. Patents do not exist for protection of innovations or to guarantee income for innovators. Patents exists so that the society would get more innovations. And that is the only measure that patents should be judged against: Do we generally get so much more innovations (within motor designs kn this case) with the patent scheme that the welfare loss caused by monopolizing the IP is covered?

Interestingly enough, it is widely agreed that monopolies are bad, so one could imagine that the proof pf burden here would be on the ones who support monopolization of IP. And I have seen very little proof of benefits of patents that do not reduce to assuming that patents are benficial as per the measure I described above.

Has the idea of a patent tax ever been explored?

Basically, increasing the cost of filing patents incrementally to regulate excessive patenting and encourage companies to be more selective.

hmm...then wouldn't the companies just create spin-off companies which they own. Or instead just submit the patent in the name of the employee who invented it, but have a contract with the employee to license the patent to the company.

I have thought of a scheme where the first couple of years of IP are free and after that heavily progressively taxed over time ( e.g 1000 usd on third year and doubling each year after that. Once the ip holder does not pay the tax, IP becomes automatically public domain.

Unfortunately Berne convention has been written in a way that basically does not allow any kind of taxation of IP in arts and literary works. Which, of course, is amazing, mindboggling power grab by IP industry, done already in 18th century.

Art and literature and patents are a fundamentally different law construct with different background and purpose.

Generalizing patents and copyright as IP is a fallacy and leads to wrong conclusions.

I recommend reading this article by Richard Stallmann on this topic https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html

> I have thought of a scheme where the first couple of years of IP are free and after that heavily progressively taxed over time ( e.g 1000 usd on third year and doubling each year after that. Once the ip holder does not pay the tax, IP becomes automatically public domain.

It's not free at the beginning, and the fees are less than you suggest, but that's mostly what we do have: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maintenance_fee_(patent)

I think this thread drastically underestimates the impact of removing incentive to protect their intellectual property. People will simply file their IP in the EU, China, and elsewhere internationally, ultimately deterring people from operating in the US market entirely.

Unless your job is actually filing patents, I'm sure you'd still live a relatively comfortable life without filing them. You must not be that opposed to patents if you are willing to go against your own beliefs for some small bonuses.

> For each one, I donate a portion to the EFF; for what it's worth...

What a great idea. Thanks

If your name is on a patent, can you use it anytime? Like if you change jobs?

Typically no, because employees 'sell' their rights to the patent to their employer when filing the patent application. It is customary for the employees to get a silver dollar as a token that has monetary value (hence the sale) and we can thank Richard Feynman for forcing there to be an actual transfer of money :)

I should also add that usually the inventor can't take the patent to their next job but if the inventor wrote super-narrow claims into the patent then that would be easy to work around at a future employer.

I don't think this is necessary. You can sign the rights away without a transfer of money.

You always may rightfully say you're the inventor (or one of several) of a patent issued for something you invented.

But you can't "use it" unless you own rights to the invention. Patent inventorship and ownership are different things.

Most likely, you assigned all rights to your invention to your employer at the time of invention. The patent will name you as the inventor, and your then-employer will have all rights to the invention.

Neither you nor your next employer can use the patent unless you negotiate permission from the rights holder (your former employer or whomever they sold the rights to).

150 patents?! Dear god, you are part of the problem. You clearly know it’s wrong but you do it anyway.

It's like mutually assured distruction.

Almost no one involved with software patents think they are a good idea, but until everyone backs down at the same time, you gotta keep doing it or that one evil player will destroy everyone.

I don't think software patents should exist, but I've worked on a bunch (and have a few myself). Not a single person I've worked with in that process, including the lawyers, thinks software patents are good.

But if my company didn't file them, then another patent troll or big evil corp could sue us out of existence.

By having a huge patent library, it make the discussion easier. The big companies just get together and decide to cross license all their patents at no cost to either party. But if you don't have a big inventory of patents, then the company that does won't want a cross licensing deal.

> But if you don't have a big inventory of patents, then the company that does won't want a cross licensing deal.

Of course the size of the other party's portfolio shouldn't matter if you're only interested in defensive use.

Of course, but usually one of the companies is interested in offensive purposes, which is why you need a large library for defensive purposes.

There’s a lot of cognitive dissonance in this post. Notably, you’re leaving out that smaller companies often don’t (and can’t) file patents, which means this system just further entrenches existing large companies.

Also, large patent collections don’t protect you from patent trolls since they aren’t exposed to counter suing anyway - they don’t make or sell anything!

But whatever you have to tell yourself to sleep at night, right?

There is no dissonance here. I'm fully aware that small companies are screwed in this process. They also aren't relevant. Just like with nuclear weapons, no one cares about the countries that don't have one. They only care about the evil countries that do have one.

Same thing here. Big companies have large patent portfolios. If my company doesn't have one as big as the evil corp, then my company will have problems when they sue.

And having a large patent portfolio does protect against trolls -- because if you're cross licensed with another big portfolio, you can use all of those to defend yourself in the suit. The trolls know this and will be less likely to sue the companies with large cross licensed portfolios.

If you work in a tech company you don't really have a choice. The company will patent your work whatever you think and this is part of the job. Giving them ideas to patent that you haven't implemented and are unrelated of your actual work is the only optional part.

Good for you!