Since the technology moves on so fast, shortening the patent expiration to eg. 1year would solve most of the problems.
Companies get 1 year head start (which is a lot), and after 1 year, we all benefit.
Companies get 1 year head start (which is a lot), and after 1 year, we all benefit.
Once your patent is published, there isn't much to stop others developing the same method [1] (they just would run into trouble if they sold it commercially). So at the same time that the patent owner is developing their platform, a competitor can be developing theirs and launch at the same time or nearly the same time as you.
Certain areas, like software patents, I'd possibly agree. I don't think software/algorithm patents are a good idea for a number of reasons however...
[1] General consensus seems to be patents don't cover academic work. I've also heard that they don't cover commercial research, and that in any case it's hard to provide damages. http://softlib.rice.edu/ques.html#2
So have a two phase validity. Once it's in the market you have a year.
Aside from this, what is "on the market" most novel scientific equipment undergoes early access. This period often lasts up to a year, usually equipment is sold at a loss or near cost. The product is validated. So... they recover none of their R&D during the patent period (making the patent largely useless).
So... perhaps you structure things such that you give this patent covered product away for free during early access. But you use the product to recognize revenue elsewhere (consumables, reagents... whatever)... Thereby extending your coverage period.
So... how will all this be policed/structured so companies can't find ways round it?
If you can find a way of enforcing it, it still doesn't work out for the companies. In my experience a scientific startup needs at least 5 years in R&D.. an then at least 5 years on the market to cover those R&D expenses.
If this is going to get funded by a VC it then needs a high enough return to cover all the VCs investments. This is then looking like a minimum of 10 years of patent coverage, and something like 20 years to make it worthwhile for VCs.
Yea, you can get rid of patents all together. Probably the investment/funding sources will need to change and that might not be a bad thing. But I can't see that what you're suggesting is workable.
And that was done by people completely oblivious to how real world economics work, and reinforced in that delusion by later generations of not much smarter statesmen.
It is not humanly possible to imagine how economic growth and efficiency is encouraged by intentional introduction of economic inefficiency through imposition of artificial scarcity (which is what patents are, literally a license on economic inefficiency)
"Intellectual Property" is one possible way to try to answer all these points, a hack to try to couple market allocation to the information generation issue while also recognizing that it's not real property and is funded by and for the public. It offers a chance, not a certainty, to make money off an investment on information generation through convincing other parts of society to pay for it piecemeal during a limited pseudo-physical-property replication stage. In exchange, it shouldn't be secret, shouldn't cover basic facts of the world or certain other areas where additional generation incentives are unnecessary, and should have limited times taking into account the ongoing and ever increasing societal cost.
I think it's very foolish to mistake implementation issues with fundamental ones and throw out the baby with the bath water unless you've got something better to fund information generation equally effective. And I have yet to hear any proposed scheme by total-anti-IP folks to take its place, merely complaints about the current implementation. I think it'd be far more productive to first direct efforts towards fixing mismatches in historical IP in each of the 3 areas above vs modern times. On the secrecy issue for example, encrypted source code escrow should be a requirement for having copyright protection for everything that isn't open or available source already, and have-your-cake-and-eat-it Trade Secret laws should be eliminated. Patent protection for mathematics (all software patents) should be completely eliminated, copyright is more then enough already for software and better aligns incentives. And new, better ways to reflect ongoing and increasing societal costs, and the divergence in areas of generation, should be added rather than mere fixed times. Ongoing yearly renewal beyond an initial short period at non-linearly increasing cost (either fixed or an increasing percentage of revenue) would be one possible approach.
But all this seems far more useful than anything else I've seen. Total command and control at all levels of the economic stack hasn't proved any more effective for information generation than it has anywhere else in economics. IP has overall worked fairly effective, and it seems to me that the problems it has caused are more down to warts and rust that could be fixed.
This is a complete delusion. This is what about Goebbels said, "the bigger the lie, the easier it is to believe in."
People are so indoctrinated in that way of thinking, that some times I have to show this though experiment:
1. Set up a machine that will "destroy" the IP value of something by copying it.
2. Make it do so a billion times, and watch if the company whose IP being "infringed" goes bankrupt.
Now, will the company go bankrupt? Would they "run out" of their "IP generation resource?" Definitely not, that would be completely inconsequential to them. They nor lose nor gain anything. And then, all those guys run to make up some smart "economic theory" to explain that, often mutually contradicting, one sillier than another.
My idea is: if though process coming under IP generation is an unproductive process, that does not make money, why does the society goes nuts to encourage and facilitate that? A basic understanding of economic principles tells this is just like throwing money away.
See, US always brags of its informativeness. What was the last "big thing" an American company ever came with? I will say it was transistor, and it was more than 60 years ago, when no monstrous IP protection regime was in place.
It was not American companies who came up with: hoverboards, e ciggaretes, selfie sticks, stick computer form factor, an untold number of innovations in construction materials (MgO board is a Chinese invention, as well as FRPP piping, modern foam concrete manufacturing machinery,) an untold number of advances in materials science which allowed for $200 laptops being made from carbon fibre (A US made analogue will cost you $2000 just for the casing)
Just how many new products are coming from China in virtual anonymity and never given acknowledgement for their innovative nature are made without any consideration for getting remunerated for their "IP"
Now whose system make more innovation US or China's?
I clearly see, the moment IP protection began verging on extreme, US began stagnate in science and technology, and Chine went ahead.
Um, no. It's objective fact. Whether it's a video game or R&D on drugs or semiconductors, it does in fact require the expending of limited resources. Are you for real? This stuff doesn't pop into existence out of thin air.
>This is what about Goebbels said, "the bigger the lie, the easier it is to believe in."
Ah yes going the Nazi quote angle, always the sign of someone who is definitely not a crackpot.
>1. Set up a machine that will "destroy" the IP value of something by copying it.
>2. Make it do so a billion times, and watch if the company whose IP being "infringed" goes bankrupt.
Did you, you know, actually READ anything I wrote, including the very first sentence that you yourself quoted? Because what you just described is information replication, which as I wrote in, again, that very sentence you quoted, is effectively free. It does not cover the step 0 of GENERATING that information to be copied in the first place. That's the problem part, which IP attempts to solve by hacking on synthetic limits on the unlimited part of the equation to handle allocation to the limited part.
>What was the last "big thing" an American company ever came with?
Basically the entire semiconductor and software industry? Most modern medicines? Much of modern genetic technology? Reusable rockets? Like, are you for real?
>and it was more than 60 years ago, when no monstrous IP protection regime was in place.
Uh, yeah when it comes to patents yes, IP is about the same as it was 60 years ago, beyond the Republicans continually trying to cut the budget of the PTO. That's part of the problem in fact.
I keep wondering if you're being sarcastic or engaging in satire here yet you seem to be entirely serious, but it's utter nonsense stuff.
You can do a lot of normally valueless things for money, if somebody gives them to you for that, whether by legal compulsion or own volition. Not denying that. The question is whether giving money for that is a rational thing to do.
>It does not cover the step 0 of GENERATING that information to be copied in the first place.
I put that example exactly to demonstrate that it does not influence whether the person/business in question has his capacity "of GENERATING that information" diminished.
No, that person or a business is 100% capable continuing doing so in the same capacity.
The capacity "of GENERATING that information" gets diminished if it gets regulatory limited though IP monopoly (I copyrighted this mathematic formula/program, thus nobody else can use it in their mathematic formulas/computer programs)
China for example has its own non-insignificant pharmaceutical industry making original drugs, low profile semiconductor industry which nevertheless makes own developments, and gigantic videogame companies all with close to none IP enforcement.
Don't get me wrong, it's totally possible that this is a good thing, and it might make it easier for companies to bootstrap if they don't need to compete with VC funded startups. But it's a very different model than we have now.
But...I don't think it's obvious that patents don't encourage growth. It's possible that they do. They do encourage disclosure to an extent (I've learned a lot reading patents). Without patents, you might find companies relying on trade secrets more.
Do you trust the patent examiners to set the validity period? I don't particularly to be honest...
Regulation and legal arbitrage, where companies (particularly in Asia) can take what is newly invented on a silver platter and sell to the global market due to lack of environmental protections etc. would be all that is left.
I don't know about you but I'm perfectly ok with that.
Patents are risk mitigation tools for funding entities to actually support commercialization. Innovation will happen always, but most of it stays on a dusty shelf a la an academic library. It’s not necessary that anything interesting and innovative (and sufficiently complex) gets sold.
It would get a lot harder to put together a few hundred million dollars in funding to build the vacuum chambers, ovens, lithography machines, and other things you need to actually test your idea and get it working, though.