[SteveA]

Quote by: tivodan1116 I see... So the Wrights should have shared their invention with Curtiss and Langley, and they all would sit around a fire singing cumbayah and all share the profits equally? And you say the current system is silly?

That's silly. Why wouldn't the Wright brothers charge whatever they felt such a noteworth invention would be worth instead of just giving it freely to them and sharing profits equally and singing cumbayah?

They could just let others know that they were successful in building a flying machine, pool money from people to have the ideas released publicly. I'm certain you could tens of millions of dollars or more back then to encourage them to release their discovering. Singing cumbayah and expecting things to be shared equally is a doomed mindset, dude.

Ahh, the lawyer bashing argument... Very classy. Don't you understand that if someone invents something first, and you come up with it later, it's not "your own thought" for the purpose of selling the idea?

Exactly, it's theft for all I care. There was even a front page article in Electronic Engineering Times showing this exact problem with regard to some new computer developments. 7 companies working on similar technologies had a single one of them receive a rather broad patent that effectively took the work of the other 6 companies and tossed it in the trash can. Maybe it's more of destruction than theft ... but close enough.

Umm, is this a problem? I thought that the good inventions got produced and sold, and the bad ones were given away by Dean Kamen to nerds so they can go 12mph on a sidewalk. Seriously though, the free market pretty much assures that good inventions will survive, and bad ones will "sit around".

Nope, you just assume that's the case.

A good invention could sit unused. There's nothing requiring an invention make efficient use of something. Many companies buy up patents, only to leave them unused, just to limit competition. It's not a matter of someone offering something of value, it's a way to create an artificial scarcity that doesn't help anyone.

If you instead remove the artificial attachment between engineering and production that's created by the patent system - then no single producer (emphasis - producer not inventor) is granted a government monopoly, and good inventions would be naturally utilized efficiently.

"Duplicate" is merely your euphamism for "steal". What is my motivation to innovate if I know that the day after I create something, someone can take my idea, sell it for less, and cut me out of the equation?

Don't get me wrong. I agree it's at least immoral to use someone elses idea to compete in a limited market but the patent system isn't restricted to this. There's no requirement to utilize the patent. Production of it can be done inefficiently. Whether or not alternate developers could compete without significant impact isn't considered and the lifetime of patents is arbitrary.

Ahh, more lawyer bashing. Obviously you don't understand the basics of our legal system. Lawyers do not act independantly. They act at the behest of their clients. Furthermore, patent lawyers are transactional and generally do not handle infringement suits.

Ok, agreed. They're just being paid to do a job. My real gripe is that the job of patent lawyer is possible.

The fact that you think people would continue to innovate with no hope of return on investment is ridiculous.

You didn't read what I said. I'm amazed you jumped to this conclusion. We already have private mechanisms to do this. An inventor can't be forced to release information, and if he did desire to he could also do so under a non-disclosure agreement. We already have property rights to defend developments from being encroached on.

Ok, let me detail why the patent system is just an inefficient and redundant creation (even the creators of it were partly skeptical of its necessity and initially confined it to physical creations only).

Let's assume someone has a cure for cancer made from common household chemicals . Now how does he earn money from this without the patent system? Any way he wants to! He can market it to others, without releasing the details (if someone else figures it out merely by knowing that such a cure is possible, then it likely should never have been patentable anyway because obviously other people could do the same thing). He then collects offers (potentially through an intermediary) and releases the information when satisfied with the compensation.

Oh and the best part of this is that noone else could deny him from doing this either. Under the current patent system, one person could patent the idea and remove this from being legally utilized by others. (Again, consider why so many programmers specifically invest a large amount of extra labor to add notices and agreements to protect their ideas as publicly available? because the patent and intellectual property systems are misused to rob people of their ideas instead and actually deny them from using their own thoughts. It's should be up to someone desiring to profit from an idea to market and sell it, not up to everyone else to try to wade through millions of patents to know whether or not they are violating a law. That's insane and I've experienced it too. Anytime I'm designing something new, it takes just as long to deal with the patent system as it does to design it and then patents aren't granted in any simple and logical manner, it's impossible because it's in the realm of subjective thoughts. You can usually find a few patents on one idea that all overlap and other times it seems apparent that the only thing novel about a patent was the fact that someone thought the idea should be patentable.

Simplify: What you do with your own thoughts and property, is your business. If someone else wants to keep something secret and sell it, that's fine too but it shouldn't impede other people in the process.

I think i've shown that there is: Innovation is rewarded through control over return on investment.

I agree. The patent system takes this control out of the hands of inventors and restricts the value of it as well.

Well, next time you innovate something, be sure to send me a copy so I can "duplicate" it and sell it for less. I can assume you won't take any action to stop me from making millions off of your good idea?

Nice try but you're going to have to buy it :)