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SteveA · Aug 9, 2005, 07:23 pm

I don't think government should be controlling how people write software and if intellectual property rights were greatly restricted or removed, marketting of software would become more a matter taking public bids to have the software released publicly, with few strings attached.

There are entirely private ways, through agreements and property rights of replacing the patent and intellectual property systems, with greater potential benefit of technologies and reward to inventors also.

It's silly that we have 5 engineers build non-optimal toasters to get around each others patents. There are better things to do. If instead they just built the best one they could, and pooled offers from manufacturers to have the design released, it would benefit everyone more, including the inventors (and remove the ability of people to use government and lawyers to deny you an ability to use your own thoughts). This also detaches producers from inventors, so you wouldn't an invention sitting around being unused because the inventor isn't adequately producing it but still holds the claim. The fact that people can learn things from each other and duplicate needed ideas, in an almost endless fashion, is a good thing, not something we should treat like physical property and regulated into artificial scaricty. Then inventors would run the show instead of patent lawyers.

The fact that so many people have to spend time specifically trying to make ideas public domain is ridiculous. The patent system has become abused and the recent addition intellectual property rights only makes it worse. It used to be you couldn't patent an idea.

There isn't a single direct benefit to the patent system, but there are many direct costs, it was only envisioned that there could be an adequately compensating indirect benefit of the system and looking at the rapid growth in technology and products in foreign nations, we're just cutting our own throats under the current system.

(I'm even an engineer/programmer/inventor but I see the hassles of the patent system as just a waste of a lot of good engineering skills ... and ultimately a way government is abused to own thoughts)

Aug 9, 2005, 07:23 pm	#2 (permalink) (top)
SteveA Anarcho-capitalist Posts: 1,972	I don't think government should be controlling how people write software and if intellectual property rights were greatly restricted or removed, marketting of software would become more a matter taking public bids to have the software released publicly, with few strings attached. There are entirely private ways, through agreements and property rights of replacing the patent and intellectual property systems, with greater potential benefit of technologies and reward to inventors also. It's silly that we have 5 engineers build non-optimal toasters to get around each others patents. There are better things to do. If instead they just built the best one they could, and pooled offers from manufacturers to have the design released, it would benefit everyone more, including the inventors (and remove the ability of people to use government and lawyers to deny you an ability to use your own thoughts). This also detaches producers from inventors, so you wouldn't an invention sitting around being unused because the inventor isn't adequately producing it but still holds the claim. The fact that people can learn things from each other and duplicate needed ideas, in an almost endless fashion, is a good thing, not something we should treat like physical property and regulated into artificial scaricty. Then inventors would run the show instead of patent lawyers. The fact that so many people have to spend time specifically trying to make ideas public domain is ridiculous. The patent system has become abused and the recent addition intellectual property rights only makes it worse. It used to be you couldn't patent an idea. There isn't a single direct benefit to the patent system, but there are many direct costs, it was only envisioned that there could be an adequately compensating indirect benefit of the system and looking at the rapid growth in technology and products in foreign nations, we're just cutting our own throats under the current system. (I'm even an engineer/programmer/inventor but I see the hassles of the patent system as just a waste of a lot of good engineering skills ... and ultimately a way government is abused to own thoughts) Freedom - are you man enough to handle it? If so, join us in New Hampshire! The Free State Project ("Liberty in our lifetime!") www.freestateproject.com Last edited by SteveA; Aug 9, 2005 at 07:32 pm.