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Comment by prettygood | Hacker News Reader

That’s a pretty naive way to look at it. A lot of patented products have a positive impact on the world, should all of these be shared?

What if a small player tries to break into a market with a nee solution? They should give away their IP to the big player purely because it has a positive impact on the world?

Just because their product is more safe doesn’t mean they automatically have to share this with everyone. They put time and a lot of effort into this, and that should be rewarded. The world rewards people with money. Sure some people might be happy with knowing they saved more lives, but eventually most people just want to be rewarded.

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> A lot of patented products have a positive impact on the world, should all of these be shared?

Yes. It’s bad to criminalize innovation. Most patentable innovations are not so unique but only a logical next step given prior inventions.

Also, patents favor the big players in any market because they have the money and the will to grind down any newcomers with legal action. The upstart with fewer resources should always be in favor of a level playing field.

If it was obvious, why didn’t some big company already do it?

Likewise, the big players in any field spend vast resources on R&D to produce the better products, and the patent is the only thing that makes that sustainable.

It’s all well and good wanting the world to be a safer place, but every company is beholden to its shareholders and debtors. Resources spent must be recovered or it all falls down.

Strange how all those smaller companies filing patents are so idiotic to work against their own interests. Somebody should tell them.

You underestimate the revolutionary role of patents in allowing to innovate in the open.

Do you want to know what is the active substance of a new medicine? Do you want other researchers to know it and critique it, and build upon it? And for FDA to have easy time learning everything about the medicine? Allow the medicine to be patented.

Otherwise every other factory would start producing it, having not paid anything for years of R&D. Nobody would be able to secure a loan or investment for said R&D, and especially stuff like clinical trials.

The alternative is trade secrets, quakery, and loss of knowledge forever if a particular project fails.

Patents have their downsides. The fee structure could be different (progressive with time), the duration can be discussed, some areas should rather not be patentable (large families of substances, or software), but the idea is pretty sound and important.

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