Chemical engineering, to use that example, designs elaborate and complex dynamic systems by chaining together abstract chemical algorithms. Each one of those little algorithms is subject to both patent and copyright. Like with software most of the commonly used algorithms and clever hacks were either never patented or the patents have long expired. It is only on the bleeding edge that some chemical algorithms are under patent; as with computer algorithms there are an unbounded number of potential algorithms but some are more efficient than others. Specific implementations are still covered by copyright and are widely licensed (as libraries).
Most of the nominal specialness attributed to software as a domain for intellectual property does not really exist. Yet the rarely questioned assertion that computer software is special in some way has created a dearth of comparative studies that would likely be valuable from both a theoretical standpoint as well as a practical policy standpoint. Either these other areas, like chemical processes, are equally broken at a fundamental level and the scope should be extended beyond software, or there are differences in implementation across otherwise equivalent domains and we should borrowing from the better implementation. It seems like an oversight that no one is attempting to do either.
There have been a large number of good papers published all coming to this one conclusion - speed to market in current software markets is the ultimate strategic advantage and source of reward. Most other things can be copied quickly enough, but the landscape is evolving fast enough that innovators can constantly one-up the competition, reaping greatest rewards.
By contrast, in capital-intensive, slower industries, these "guard rails" make a lot of sense - if it takes me years to make a breakthrough on the drug, but means of copying it a re super straightforward because I am required to publish the recipe for all to see, it makes sense to restrict the use of the recipe.
I don't see anyone publishing Google search algorithms for all to see. In fact there is an entire industry that focuses on guessing what it is - SEO.
To me personally, it boils down to this - if we make it super easy for competitors to ride your coat-tails by forcing you to disclose your secrete sauce, then it's fair to try and give you some protection. If we leave you to compete without that interference, than we should not extend the extra protection... (this is just strictly a personal view, grounded more in my ethical views than anything else).
In the future advances in science and computer modeling should make drug development much more rapid than it is today. This could vastly lower the cost to bring drugs to market and put drug development easily within the grasp of a large non-profit organization.
Imagine that instead granting a private company the exclusive right to sell a drug, that instead everyone invested in its development and upon its discovery its formula was shared freely. For most drugs, the synthesis is not a major component of the cost. This would lead to rapid deployment of the drug at very low cost to those who need it.
If there was no copyright law, you can be sure there would still be drugs! And perhaps health insurance companies would be interested in drug development. Fewer sick people and cheaper medicine should lead to greater profits.
Just rapid development and testing. Biotech, chemistry, hardware development are orders of magnitude slower.
But development and testing of anything is getting faster every year. Hardware development and testing is now hugely accelerated with FPGA design flow, for example, which feels a lot like software developmnent with crappy tools, to me. All fields' patent abilities will probably live or die eventually by whether software patents live or die. Maybe that's why Maskin ignores the rest.
No matter how you look at it, patents are nothing but a relic of Monarchical times. The system for attribution has changed, but the effect remains the same: companies are in rent-seeking mode when they ask for patents, not in the business of innovation of disruption.
And in fact, no patents are legitimate. Worse than that, most people's concept of "legitimate" is not legitimate. What most people seem to have banned from their thinking is anything close to resembling a ethical argument. Just because something is legal, does not make it ethical. That reverses the true order: what inherently flouts the ethical underpinning of law must not be made legal. E.g., one should never legalize rape, to make rape legal does not change the fact that it is unethical to make rape legal.
But typically, whenever you try to offer anyone an ethical argument concerning patents, it goes straight over their head. They've been conditioned to think that whether patents are legal or not is an entirely pragmatic decision having nothing to do with ethics but only with economics. And so the mayhem continues...
The stated goal of patents is not a moral imperative to protect inventors, but rather an economic hack that is meant to incentivize invention for the benefit of society, only benefitting inventors as a side effect. The fact that it is achieving the opposite of its goal means that an ethical discussion is worth having, but mostly irrelevant (see also: the Drug War).
E.g. trademark law supports the existence of the advertising industry, by creating protectable brands through restrictions on speech. Most web companies wouldn't exist in their current form if there wasn't a tremendous incentive for companies to build up those protectable brands through advertising.
I liked this title because it is restricted to software. A title like "Abolish patents, full stop" is, to be blunt, sheer idiocy and all too common.
I think there are some key differences between software "R&D" and chemical and biological R&D, and I can't see how any rational argument for reform could ignore those differences, but this "Noble Laureate" fails to mention any of them. Does he know something on the subject of patents that we don't?
Why? Apparently a Nobel laureate in Economics disagrees with you, so maybe we should take the idea seriously.
To see more of Maskin's arguments on software patents, you can read a paper of his on the subject at citation #6 on his wikipedia page:
I was looking at a face recognition patent that was filed by the US by a Japanese company in 1998 that was finally issued in 2006. Eight years is a very long time in the fast moving software industry -- even if you get lucky and your patent granted in two years, it's quite possible that your invention is obsolete by the time you get your patent.
Given that software is so fast paced, most organizations that expect to be "practicing entities" find the patent application to be a distraction from the task of getting a competitive product in the marketplace. This is a very different situation from other fields where you really can get a patent for a mechanical or electronic thing and then have the patent as a tool for negotiation w/ manufacturers.
