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Comment by aristidb | Hacker News Reader

You can get those beneficial effects with trade secrets and NDAs, if _those_ are legally protected. All without a f*ing monopoly grant.

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Trade secrets can't be transacted in and NDA's don't protect against third parties. When you have hundreds of licensees, you can't bet the farm on all of them never accidentally or intentionally disclosing. Nobody would ever buy such a fragile property right.

The "monopoly" aspect isn't really relevant here. It's not like you accidentally stumble onto a MIPS patent. If you're infringing it's because you're copying the design.

*The "monopoly" aspect isn't really relevant here. It's not If you're infringing it's because you're copying the design.

Well that audacious. I'm will be less daring and say that with 500 patents, you are most certainly wrong about some of them.

Last time I said this, you brought up a 60 year old RF parent, but I'll give you another shot and say that I hav never seen a software patent worth protecting.

The RF patent was an example of the kind of patent I worked with, not a software patent specifically.

My example for a software patent would be the h.264 patent. That's not something a practitioner of ordinary skill would find obvious.

That's the entire f-ing point of patents. It's so they AREN'T kept as trade secrets. They are granted a monopoly in exchange for publication of it. It's the same reason the only prior art is something published, not a trade secret no one outside the company could have known about.

To carry on ismarc's thought, patents were only ever meant as a time-limited monopoly, to encourage and reward innovation.

Patents and copyright have grown to become much more defense structures and "keep out" signs, which I think unfortunate, but the basic premise is sound.

First, patents are tradeable, NDAs are not. Second, trade secrets are only as secret as the people knowing them, which is not very secure. Third, if you have a patent, you can discuss the technology without NDAs, which helps both in getting the technology accepted as well as in early-stage business negotiations.

Also, if anyone thinks getting rid of patents would get rid of litigstion, it wouldn't. An informal, ad-hoc patent like system would arise on top of NDA's and other contracts. Thse companies are always transacting with each other. Instead of suing Samsung for patent infringement, Apple would be suing for Samsung's copying Apple technology in violation of contractual obligations arising from Samsung's status as a supplier for Apple. Instead of patent litigstion in the ITC, we'd have litigstion over humongous iron clad contracts with suppliers in foreign countries.

Yes - but such a system would be optional and small/open-source developers wouldn't be afraid to innovate.

Small developers aren't immune to such activity. To the extent they do business with large companies, they can always be dragged in as co-defendants. "Apple: Samsung stole our technology and gave it to LittleCo, who were are suing separately for tortious interference with a contract."

The point is that if there really are so many entities just trying to abuse the system, they don't need patents to do it.

Small developers are best protected by patents, which simplifies using the judicial system to enforce their rights. Otherwise they would have to use a more messy system of contracts, as rayiner describes.

It is not practical to put an NDA on a mass marketed product.

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