Comment by TaylorAlexander | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TaylorAlexander | Hacker News Reader

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TaylorAlexander

I’ve become convinced that intellectual property restrictions significantly slow innovation. If no one was allowed to own information we’d still have to get things done and work to make a profit. Only once someone figured something out everyone could adopt it right away. Take a look at the landscape of innovation in 3D printers in the 13 years they were for sale under patent and the following 13 years after the patents expired. Innovation absolutely exploded! Instead of one company happy with $25,000 machines we had hackers, hobbyists, and engineers from all over the world working on solving problems and making the machines cheaper. Ten years after the patent expired the price dropped 100x from $25k to $250.

Imagine how cheap medical care would be if all the patents on medical imaging equipment expired. If there were no patents the market still provides incentive to innovate as first movers and reputable brands stay competitive. Meanwhile patents allow big slow companies to sit on their rewards and charge high prices with little real innovation. Things would change, sure. Instead of few large investments we would see more frequent smaller investments. But market competition would still work and natural rewards to innovation persist. Only innovation propagates way faster.

Intellectual property restrictions are a disaster in my mind. And sadly most people believe some basic fairy tale that we were told without ever caring to research if that story is even remotely true.

To be clear: I'm not saying the current IP system is good. It is evil. But no IP would also be evil.

The fact that when prices go down, consumption increases is just basic microeconomics. This is not evidence that removing IP would increase scientific progress or well-being.

One way to approach this would be comparing countries that don't/can't enforce IP protection to countries who do. Of course would need to control for a lot of variables and it wouldn't be a perfect predictor, but already better than pure speculation.

You’d appreciate this on the ground report from the culture of unauthorized but widespread copying in China. https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=284

> The fact that when prices go down, consumption increases is just basic microeconomics. This is not evidence that removing IP would increase scientific progress or well-being.

I think you have misunderstood my intent. I am not saying that increased consumption is evidence that we should eliminate patents. I am saying that reduced price of functional 3D printers is a sign of increased innovation. Actually I saw the innovation first hand in the user groups and mailing lists, and I am using the price as an indicator of what I saw.

My point is that we would see more innovation if we eliminated patents and intellectual property restrictions. This would have the effect of lowering prices for things which I think is great, but my point is that patents don’t even do what we are commonly told they do. We are told they increase innovation but in my opinion there was far more innovation in 3D printing once the patents expired.

And it’s no surprise. The only thing a patent actually does is restrict innovation. That is the single function of a patent. The story we are told is that by allowing a government decree to issue monopolies on ideas, there will be more profit in new ideas, leading to a net increase in innovation. But in my opinion this process so significantly restricts follow on innovation that the whole thing ends up being quite counter productive.

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