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Private entities invest in research and development. If they find something incredible, they release the full details to the world of what they found, and in return we give them monopoly on the invention for a period of time. That's a patent.
Take away the incentive and private entities won't invest in research.
The public appetite for investing in basic research with government funding is pretty low. So instead of waiting 20 years for the patent to expire, during which we're all paying a premium on the invention, we instead spend 20 or more years without the invention at all because no research was funded to find it. Maybe longer.
I don't believe private entities wouldn't invest in research if it wasn't for patents. But I also don't care. If the private sector won't invest, let the public sector invest. Just don't keep innovations out of the hands of humanity.
So yes, in a world with patents, private entities would still engage in research, but what would they gain from disclosing the details of their process?
1. Successfully provide a profit
2. Are necessary to provide said profit
3. Are long enough to provide enough profit to pay back the investment
But it's not clear that they're short enough to encourage further rapid improvements. Like, suppose a patent lasts 20 years but would still be worth pursuing even if it lasted only 5 years; that's 15 years of public development opportunity lost, for each patent.
Currently, the system is that the government declares "X years" by fiat. If it's too short, then corporations can lobby for longer patent durations. If it's not too short, then corporations can lobby anyway. This is a functional but mediocre system, and there's clearly room for improvement.
They might not gain, but the people working for them would certainly gain from moving to other employers who needed their "expertise".
In this case this tiny company doesn’t have the resources to optimize production and has failed for years. They might eventually receive outside funding and figure it out, but they could also fail without releasing their secrets as has happened a few times.
In reality you can get patents granted that are somewhat vague. It's not like the patent office actually tests if the patent text is sufficient to replicate your invention.
Even the US would ignore such patents if it was useful for military usage.
For one thing, there doesn’t seem to be any strong reason to believe that the superconducting material (if any) is what the LK-99 team thinks it is. For another, lead is nasty, and, if there really is a room temperature superconductor, there will be plenty of interest in finding lead-free materials with similar properties, and those might not be covered by a patent.
I hope you see the point.
you could do the same, get together with a group of other people and invest in something using your disposable software eng income (maybe you already are). or you could just complain when someone else takes the risk and reaps the rewards because you apparently have no concept of things like jealousy, envy, or basic economics lol.
Researchers do not owe the world the results of their research, except possibly in the case where their research clearly mitigates existential threats to all of humanity, like climate change - which clearly doesn't apply here.
Edit: this is not sarcastic, I am not good at chemistry.
Some things are just truly toxic at any amount and are not good to have any amount in your body.
Your body uses Chlorine atoms in its normal processes all the time. Its essential in the function of your digestive system, the nervous system uses it to transmit electrical impulses, muscles use it to contract and extend, and facilitates the movement of oxygen and carbon dioxide inside cells. Without chlorine, you just wouldn't function: your muscles wouldn't move, your heart wouldn't pump, your brain wouldn't think.
Lead is similar enough to calcium and zinc to displace it when your body makes proteins, but it doesn't "fold" the same. This causes the proteins to be less functional or non-functional, which causes a lot of further problems down the line. Also, because lead sometimes replaces calcium your body will stash it away in your bones which can make it tricky to actually get rid of.
Lead and most or all of its compounds are toxic. It’s not good for you in moderation. It’s apparently not even harmless in small amounts.
I hope you're right that the free markets of China and Russia will save us from the strict planning enforced on the west by the USA (... oh the sweet irony).
If people don't respect the patent and produce things with it, your recourses are lawsuits - patents aren't stopping chinese manufacturers from exploiting patents from the US.
And for something this important, I can even imagine governement making some kind of "public good" patent for things that are too influential - where the compensation is pre arranged and reasonable.
Scale up for world consumption will be around $1B capital in my experience, and it will be difficult to get that learning curve paid for if IP doesn’t protect the first mover.
Otherwise there is first mover disadvantage in game theory which dramatically slows progress based on history of tech development.
Patents exist as a hack to make up for the fact that markets don't deal well with situations where investment from one entity benefits everyone. Patents ensure that only the company doing the research gets to benefit from it, robbing the world as a whole from the progress which could have stemmed from that research.
Why can't we leave the markets to do their thing, and have an alternative mode of research whose funding doesn't depend on keeping the fruits of the research out of the hands of humanity? Why can't we leave companies to do whatever research they want, but put a bunch more money into public research institutions and research non-profits and the like?
If you absolutely want to keep research funding private, I can think of other options as well. Instead of making the reward a government-backed monopoly over the use of an innovation, what if the reward was, say, a direct monetary reward through tax reductions, or maybe a system where the government could subsidize products with the innovation for some time period so that competitors have a disadvantage in the market.
I'm sure someone smarter than me could think of other, better solutions. Point is, there are lots of options. Using state power to keep the innovation out of the hands of humanity seems like the worst of them.
Which would create future incentives for a lot of people to invest their money into a lot of high risk, high reward science that takes years to do?
Really hard to see that as something negative.