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Comment by ploxiln | Hacker News Reader

> who would research anything or spend anything on R&D if it was not protected?

Most people that do real R&D do it because they want to, not because they're rewarded with patents. They want to make a better camera, a better camera format, and sell it. And nobody learns how to make something by reading the patents, in the past 50+ years they're practically unreadable legalese. Once upon a time they had diagrams for mechanical devices or chemical processes, but now they're just ideas that many people faced with similar challenges and available technologies would have considered, except the first to bother to patent a general idea like "compress raw sensor data before debayering" now gets to be a massive pain in the ass to people actually doing R&D to make things.

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I think this is true on an individual level, but a lot of high tech innovation is only possible with hundreds of engineers working together full time for years. Nobody is inventing EUV lithography in their garage, someone had to spend hundreds of millions of dollars assembling the necessary talent and providing the resources needed to get it done. That someone expects a return on their investment, otherwise they will find something else to do with their capital.

What we really need is much more strict requirements for what qualifies as a truly unique innovation worthy of patent protection. None of this BS about virtual shopping carts on eCommerce sites, or playable minigames on video game loading screens.

https://www.businessinsider.com/how-a-22-year-old-makes-micr....

> Sam Zeloof, a 22-year-old American, produced a chip with 1,200 transistors

This is an impressive feat to be sure, but to compare it to modern EUV lithography is like comparing a crossbow to an ICBM

Why can I not reply to the person below me?

Regardless, anyone could do this type of fabrication in their garage given removing the legal and technical barriers that keep EUV technology behind lock and key.

What that guy is doing in his parents garage is not EUV lithography. He's doing what early IC manufacturers first accomplished in the 60s, only with the benefit of 50 added years of knowledge in the space and decades old equipment that never would have been affordable to the average tinkerer when this technology was cutting edge.

The idea that the risk of patent infringement is the only thing preventing him from building a chip comparable to a modern Intel or AMD CPU in his garage today is absurd.

That’s not actually true. Setting aside the fact that to build an EUV lithography system costs over one hundred million dollars (a single system ships from ASML in 40 shipping containers and has over 100,000 parts) [1], Sam Zeloof could legally build one tomorrow if he was able - he just wouldn’t be able to sell it unless he licensed patents.

1. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/12/10/asmls-high-na-euv-lithog...

Exactly. It's not like it's literal magic. It's just knowledge and resources, which should be getting more abundant and cheap, not scarce and expensive.

I also think a shorter duration and/or a cap on total royalties would be useful. Like 10 years and 10x initial r&d investment, instead of "forever" and "infinite".

> I also think a shorter duration and/or a cap on total royalties would be useful. Like 10 years and 10x initial r&d investment, instead of "forever" and "infinite".

For what it's worth, patents are limited to a 20 year duration. This is (was) fine in some slower moving industries, but completely ridiculous for something like consumer electronics or software.

> Most people that do real R&D do it because they want to, not because they're rewarded with patents.

Everybody's gotta eat. Would you work your job if you weren't getting paid?

Your question shows a lack of understanding. Many billionaires do not need to work. What keeps them showing up to "jobs"?

Of course - billionaires, the quintessential example of the motivations of the common man. When I think, "a person under the same set of constraints as Joe in R&D", I think of Jeff Bezos.

So this statement then admits that there are differences in how people are treated and what they are able to do based on religion? No, race? Again, missing the mark?

Ahh, MONEY! Which is as made up as it gets. This person is worth more than that person because this computer says so and it has to be TRUE, or else society wouldn't work. We are about to find out real quick how the world works again, and I am warning everyone here, if you think you are safe because of money, the world is going to humble you.

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