(Some sort of IP protection or reward system is still needed for real inventions - where it takes serious money, expertise, time, etc. to achieve something major.)
But maybe a better moral would be that shell corporations (& lawyers playing shell games with them) should be outlawed.
Shell companies have done more damage to the world than most tyrants ever could - enabling tax evasion, escaping responsibility for substandard construction (you close the company after completing contruction of a house) or for decommissioning toxic assets like exhausted mines or oil rigs. They are uaed to obscure land ownership.
Usually people talking about shell companies are referring to companies with no business interests at all or if they are bring expansive only contracts/ip agreements. A construction company is doing actual business. Land owned in a corporation has an actual asset etc.
Most startups start as shell companies, you sort of can’t create a corporation without being one for some amount of time.
So I’m ok with the idea of corporate ownership reform but I think you’d need to get more specific than “shell companies == bad”
I think you could fix a lot of the issues by requiring that all companies must be recorded in a public registry that includes contact information, owner and executive names, as well as a list of actual physical locations where the company operates (if any -- online businesses don't need to have a physical location).
The states decide the information requirements in their jurisdictions and many have vested interests in not changing them (particularly Delaware where this case is).
https://www.fincen.gov/news/news-releases/fact-sheet-benefic...
So we’d need to get specific about which practice is duplicitous. Is it the treatment of IP as an asset? The transferability of patents ? Limited liability of patent defense?
I am no expert in any of those things but I bet there is value in each and bad unintended consequences of each.
If I described to a lay person that there was a hacker website frequented by lots and lots of people with an active forum community, you’d likely get at least some of them to suggest banning it…
Different things. In this case you have a pathological outcome in the process. "Free real estate" as it were because you've got an organizational structuring that is essentially censure proof by the Court unless you pierce the corporate veil.
Remember, corporations are suffered to exist as a courtesy, and a means to distribute risk, but our Court system is very much tuned to "there is a person, get them in here now, and lets get this sorted."
If the Court has to choose between being ineffectual and exploitable, and piercing the veil in order to get to the bottom of duplicitous behavior, one can only hope the Judge will settle in and push the issue.
Surely the basis of all corporations is to trade and to undertake usefull economic activity.
We spesifically don't want them to limit liability where profit is made upfront, owners take off with the money, and there is no-one left to pay the costs.
There are endless examples of this because ideas are not scarce and there are typically multiple intelligent people who have the same idea. All patents do is allow somebody who fails to successfully execute an idea to weaponize the legal system to extort money out of people who do successfully execute "their" idea.
That's not even getting into how the US Supreme Court allows GMO seed companies to patent plants and sue farmers for patent infringement because the neighboring farm's GMO seeds cross-pollinated with their seeds. In Bowman v. Monsanto, the US Supreme Court actually ruled that farmers can't plant their own seeds (when this cross pollination happens) without paying the patent trolls at Monsanto! Patents are simply corrupt, innovation stifling monopolies the entire way down and should be completely abolished and banned from ever coming back via constitutional amendment.
(Current copyright terms are excessive but copyright itself along the lines of the US Copyright Act of 1790 is reasonable as a tool to encourage creative works and copyright abolition would likely be even worse than the status quo's century long copyright terms. Likewise, trademarks are also legitimate as a fraud prevention tool. They shouldn't be conflated with patents as they are in the concept of IP.)
Trademark also has a good few issues, aside of being abused to the point where it becomes obviously stupid (like trademarking colors, common words and similar idiocies). It also cannot prevent counterfeits, which is more a game of whack-a-mole than anything else.
Some examples:
- Rust memory management
- New models in machine learning that enables amazing results
- Protocols
Rust's memory management was invented without any such incentive, and the world is richer for it.
Once I had an idea while sitting on the toilet, about how to use past log data to pre-emptively scale up, when the peak hour is about to come.
I had the idea just randomly sitting on the toilet for a few minutes… it was already patented.
I imagine that this is the case for most stuff in the world. Ideas are not usually unique but it's the great execution of the idea that present the real challange.
Just the testing procedures involve massive investment.
I'm not in favour of patents at large by the way, but they make even less sense for software.
Ideas may also require intellectual labour. But one may not receive the protection of the government for them to give temporary advantage over competitors. Ideas are a collaborative venture, protocols being the very epitome of this - since a "protocol of one" is a bit like a birthday party for one... a bit sad and pointless.
If one wants to make money, by all means invest time in pursuing patentable inventions, but do not presume that mere ideas (most of which are "nothing new under the sun") should be afforded the same protection.
The problem we have today is that the patent system is derelict. The goalposts have shifted to allow almost all and any silly idea to obtain a patent and the system itself is weaponised for extraction. It has not shown any will to reform, so abolition may be its ultimate fate.
Your post seems to entirely misunderstand the patent system. “But one may not receive the protection of the government for [ideas] to give temporary advantage over competitors.” This is just flat out wrong. The purpose of a patent is literally to receive the protection of the government for your ideas in order to give you a temporary advantage over your competitors via a government granted monopoly on an idea. The bargain that’s struck is that the patent owner gives the details of their patented idea to the world so that anyone can eventually practice it or build off of it in exchange for a limited exclusionary protection in commerce.
I have plenty. Now, I do not wish to be rude Abduhl, but I find your "question" a little disingenuous, and your expectation that I act as your personal tutor on well documented matters a tad entitled. This isn't my full-time job, and I come here mainly to look for interesting and unusual viewpoints. Have you done even the most cursory research into the history of patents as I indicated? Do you need some reference material or links to get started?
How about reading some lecture notes and essays (some of the finest on the formation of copyright, patent and trademarks) on the site of Havard law professor Lawrence Lessig [1]
One example I saw just today :
Thomas Savery getting a patent on "make, imitate, use or exercise any vessells or engines for raiseing [sic] water or occasioning motion to any sort of mill works by the impellent force of fire,", which I assume subordinated Thomas Newcomen during the patent's duration = all of his life to Savery, despite Newcomen's engine being much more advanced & commercially successful... (at least he didn't end up destitute, like some of the previous steam engine inventors !)
You can argue that the patent system in the US is partially broken because of how broadly patents are granted nowadays, but that does not support the GP’s contention that there is some kind of distinct line that can be drawn between an idea and an invention, which is why the patent system is what it is now. And, again, your own link underscores how far we’ve come in understanding that unlimited monopolies on technologies/ideas are bad and how limiting patents durationally can help with that. Note that one of the requirements for a patent to issue is called “enablement” which basically means that your patent MUST describe the invention with sufficient particularity that a person with ordinary skill in the art could make and use your invention.
(Also, I don't think that in that case the patent expired because its holder died, more likely it came to a term (after being renewed ?) after 35 years (which I agree is a tad long), otherwise my source wouldn't have put it in this way ?)
Consider the idea of "going to the moon" versus the implementation of Project Apollo.
Even if it would have stopped java from being a thing it's just not worth it.
And if so, do they outweigh legal costs and chilling effects of patent trolling, and the inefficiencies of people having to engineer around patented ideas.
Intellectual property is a fairly artificial concept. It's quite "big government" when you think about it - government grants a monopoly on the application of an idea. It is only worth preserving if it makes the country richer.