China beats US in patent filings for second straight year | Hacker News Reader

China beats US in patent filings for second straight year

asia.nikkei.com

28 pointsteleforce32 comments

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Abolish patents. This is worth a read:

The Case Against Patents http://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/2012/2012-035.pdf/

No thanks, I like having new cancer treatment available.

That paper seems to focus entirely on tech.

And if that treatment costs $80,000 per session its likely due to the patents as well.

Software patents, in any case.

Filings do not equal patents. China floods the market with scientific papers and only a very tiny percentile actually have anything useful. China is obsessed with publishing. I’ve often wondered if it’s for prestige or survival.

So, exactly like everyone else today?

In other news a colleague of mine beat me in lines of code written for second straight year.

Time to get rid of patents. Only useful to trolls and other anti-competitive elements

Dude. I just submitted two patents. Patents are the only way a small company can get an edge.

And yes, there is more than software and IT in this world. Good luck to raise non IT capital in tech without patents.

Your edge is agility and bringing your following with you to a superior product. If you have no following then maybe it is time to acquire one. Personal brand is the future, like it or not

> Good luck to raise non IT capital in tech without patents

Again, this wouldn't be a problem if there were no patents

No. Lets take the most extreme example. Medicine. Development and clinical trials cost you more than a billion. Why would I risk this? I let you develop it, I let you do the clinical trials and then just copy it. Even better. I can always sell cheaper than you since I don't have to recover investment costs.

The patents are the only incentives for the investors to accept the risk.

> Why would I risk this?

Because you don't. Most of the medical research in the world is government sponsored (yes, including USA).

My wife has worked for a series of VC funded immunotherapy startups. No government money funding them. If there were no biotech patents it’s hard for me to see why anyone would invest hundreds of millions into these tiny companies. The money doesn’t go to salaries - it goes to equipment, supplies, and trials.

Central planners spending other people’s money cannot possibly compete with the private system.

Your example is anecdotal, while search shows that most of the medical research is gov money via universities.

It is people risking money in order to earn huge profits that makes the system work. The government spends enormous amounts of money on basic research, much of it ineffectively IMO. Bringing cutting edge therapies to the market was, is, and always will be through the entrepreneurial system. Believing bureaucrats can accomplish the same thing is naïveté.

Most of the primary research is NIH money handed out to university researchers. But then easily as much money is spent in human trials and that’s privately funded.

So? A tiny fraction. Of the one billion development cost, how much is early research, done in universities?

You have no idea about this industry. Or for the noob: development costs are tiny compared to costs in clinical trials.

There are some interesting compounds. Dichloroacetate for example. Not patent protected. Feel free to start your own clinical trial tomorrow. :-)

This is wrong. It is correct for early stage. Compared with clinical trials, early stage costs nothing.

Why resign to a dystopian future of personal brands being a prerequisite to innnovation?

> Your edge is agility and bringing your following with you to a superior product.

You assume the product is some easy to alter and adjust software product. What if it’s a new jet engine or a drug?

Even if the patents are accepted, you will still have to defend it in court because other patents could have been filed earlier which have significant overlap of your patented idea which could invalidate everything. I have personally seen engineers getting patents granted for technology which is obviously already in use elsewhere and is already patented. USPTO is a joke especially for software based inventions. I just want to know, how can anyone even claim to know they aren't infringing on some part of one of the nearly 300,000 patents granted yearly?

Interesting so patents do not offer legal protection. They offer you a promise of legal protection and that promise is very weak.

If the patent office can't do its job then how is the system supposed to work?

It's part of the legal-lawyer industrial complex - which ties into VC-finance industrial complex.

The USPTO checks for prior art. The result is not set in stone but if they don't find prior art then they grant the patent. The patent can then still be challenged in court by other companies.

> Interesting so patents do not offer legal protection.

There are generally two legal fields related to patents - patent prosecution (getting the patent) and patent litigation (fighting in court). There is not very much overlap between the lawyers; each is very specialized.

People get patents for a lot of different reasons, only one of which is to hold up in court. If that’s what you want, you have to hire lawyers that will make that happen. It costs more money and takes more time, but if you want a patent that holds up in court you have to hire the right people to write it correctly, from the very beginning of the process.

Again, this is not what everyone wants. Most patents are intended to be for defensive, negotiation, or vanity purposes - the expense involved with making it bulletproof is just not worth it.

quality is an issue though.

Yeah, but for which country?

China. Well known.

But regarding the other poster (comment got deleted):

China has a higher average IQ than the US and 3 times the population. So more patents are not surprising in the end.

Perhaps we should finally just start blatantly cloning their patents and products like they/ve done us, see how far that goes. It's obviously gotten them far.

Long term this might push us to invalid patents or shorten the length.

Competition = progress.

Well said, hopefully EU joins in thanks to their 500 billion program.

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