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Patents are a fine idea in principle. There's little doubt that they promote innovation in pharmaceuticals, for example.

The problem arises when the patents last much longer than the "innovation cycle" in an industry. As software takes over the world, we're seeing cycle times go down in many fields, but patent laws aren't keeping up with technological reality.

Yes, shorter patents would address a decent number of the issues.

To pick one area I'm somewhat familiar with, a lot of the patents in digital-audio synthesis were initially reasonable, in my opinion. Furthermore, the system largely "worked" as it was supposed to to incentivize innovation and ensure that commercializers of technology paid some royalties to those developing it. A research group like Stanford's CCRMA would develop a new synthesis method, patent it, and license the patent to a commercializer such as Yamaha, who put it in their synthesizers and paid a royalty. Without patents, there would be a strong incentive to do this monetization via keeping things secret instead, rather than openly publishing them somewhere that Yamaha could just read.

The part where it starts seeming unreasonable is when a 15-year-old synthesis method, which is by that time ancient and textbook-standard material, is still patented.

20 year doesn't seem like such an awful term for a patent. You think 15 years is too long, no doubt there are other people who thin 10 or 5 are too long, just as there must be some people who think it should be 25 or 30 years. I feel like 20 years has stuck because it's approximately the length of one human generation.

What on earth gives you the idea that a generation is a good measure of time for a monopoly? Patents are intended to promote innovation for society not give protection to a racket. The only reason to give people a monopoly on production is to allow those who invested in the invention and research to reimburse the costs of research and development to allow for further investment in innovation.

After the time period the patent / copy rights should be released to the public domain so that everyone may benefit from cheap economy of scale production.

The only reason I could think you feel this way is that it is all you've known. In most cases a couple of years worth of profits from monopoly should suffice. In reality it depends on how much was spent on the initial innovation.

In most cases a couple of years worth of profits from monopoly should suffice. In reality it depends on how much was spent on the initial innovation.

One tricky issue is also the lead time to market. In the synthesis example, Yamaha came out with a synth within ~2 years of licensing the patent. But in some areas (like medicine) it can be common for it to take 5-10 years for a product to come out, in which case a 5-year patent would be worthless, because it would expire before you can sell anything.

Sorry I should have probably continued on, there was a bit of an implication here:

In reality it depends on how much was spent on the initial innovation [and how long it takes to reap the return on that investment].

I think a generation had stuck because that suits enough people's ideas of what's acceptable while hitting some sort of median in product development and investment returns. Not all inventions even show an immediate profit.

It seems to me that you want it to be less for your convenience, and no other factor.

> There's little doubt that they promote innovation in pharmaceuticals

Are there studies that back up your claim? Or is this propaganda from the entrenched powers?

There are studies that show patents slow down & harm innovation.

http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/do-patents-encourage-o...

Indeed, patents are good for the lawyers & entrenched players. That doesn't sound innovative to me.

>How hard is it to put an image on two screens and sync it to gyroscopes/ultrasonics/infrareds? This is college-senior-project level complexity.

Hard.

I'm with you on reforming patents. But how do you protects companies from copy cats? iPhone is released and some hardware manufacturer makes the exact same shell running Symbian instead. I'm not talking about copying the OS, but the hardware form factor. They represent a brand image as well.

More competition is always good.

Also, if iPhone's form factor is actually better, then it would only benefit customers if other companies would adopt it.

Sure, but I if as an inventor can't be guaranteed some protections for my work, for at least some period of time, I'm less likely to produce this better form factor in the first place, which is a net negative for consumers.

Perhaps.

Some things are hard to copy though and would take time to reproduce by others (if ever).

And how do you know it would result in a net loss for consumers? I guess by assuming that iPhone's form factor would not get invented, if others were allowed to copy it. But how do you know that it wouldn't? And what about all the other things that would get invented, because people were allowed to reverse engineer stuff or develop other, currently patent protected technologies?

I think probably the easiest starting point is recognizing that innovation iterates more rapidly than a century ago and shortening patents to perhaps 3 or 5 years. We need immediate bans on process patents like software and biotech (since finance patents are already banned, I believe? So this is not a big stretch).

My gut feeling on iOS vs Symbian (running on similar hardware) is that if it's so easy to copy something like that, then iOS is only being propped up by the law anyway. It's probably not doing society much good overall.

Maybe a route forward is to allow competition, but require that if hardware is licensed by something like the GPL, then some nominal fee would have to be paid to the rights holder. Society would have to vote on what that should be, and it would be across the board, perhaps 5% to 25%, something on the level of capital gains or VAT? It would be kind of like generic drugs, where other companies would have a hard time competing because typical profits margins might be in the 15% range, so they couldn’t afford to advertise. Otherwise my feeling now is that we’re actively encouraging monopolies and it just feels really anti-entrepreneurial.

It's two images for two screens: one for your left eye, one for your right.

> Software patents are such an obvious incumbrance to programmers

true for those looking to copy or re-implement something they see from others. For programmers looking to innovate or do something completely new and need a way to fund it - completely the opposite. Patents provide the programmer support in convincing investors to fork over their cash since smart investors recognize the R&D will even in the worst case scenario (e.g. startup goes bankrupt) result in a patent which can be transferable or monetized.

This is a perfect example. The 80+ issued patents and 53+ pending patents have provided the original investors a return on their investments. The engineers got funded and got to work on what they wanted, while the investors got rewarded. Both are satisfied and will likely continue on again.

The sheer number of patents involved, and the generality of said patents is what discourages future innovation.

It's a complete first man advantage, anyone coming after that has to deal with the fact that 130+ patents already exist. Sure, some of these are probably extremely valid, but seriously, 130+?

So we've got some revolutionary new technique that allows real-time visualisation direct onto the user's retina, your brain can't distinguish it from reality..

Yeah, but the user is seeing something that's not physically present? Got that one covered. Pay up.

Patents block copying only exactly what's covered by the Claims and thereby encourage finding alternatives or develop new ways. Society benefits from having alternatives to choose from.