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0 pointsChrisNorstrom13y ago0 comments

Being against all patents is an extreme position. Imagine investing 10 years and Hundreds of millions of dollars into making a brand new revolutionary motor for train propulsion. And having it ripped off within the first year of commercially using it because it wasn't patented.

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MichaelGG13y ago

The point of patents (at least in the US) is to benefit society. The question is if granting a monopoly on ideas is actually benefiting society. Thomas Jefferson wrote:

"That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe ... seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, ... incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."[1]

He then goes on to point out that patents "may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody".

Given the abuse of the patent system and little evidence of it benefiting society, it's hardly an "extreme position" to be against patents.

1: http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12....

leoedin13y ago

I think the problem is that "idea" is such a broad spectrum. The "idea" of 1 click purchasing being patented -that's not helping anyone. The "idea" of a specific valve design which gives a 5% boost in efficiency? Something like that might have taken 10 years to figure out, but if it has no patent protection it can (and will) be copied by competitors the moment they can get their hands on your first machine.

Thomas Jefferson lived in a very different time to us. The investment in time and resources required to develop incremental modern technology is so vastly greater than it was then that his words are almost moot.

nitrogen13y ago

One weakness I see in arguments based on the amount of time required to discover something is that they don't take into account the possibility that lone inventor A used a painstaking brute force search to come up with a solution to a problem, when independent researcher B could have solved the problem in five minutes by applying known theory.

"If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. ... I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor." - Nikola Tesla

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yakiv13y ago

> The point of patents (at least in the US) is to benefit society. The question is if granting a monopoly on ideas is actually benefiting society.

Yes.

> And having it ripped off within the first year of commercially using it because it wasn't patented.

"Ripped off" is kind of a biased way of phrasing it.

cwp13y ago

So we should continue with the patent system because, without it, inventor's feelings might get hurt?

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