[tivodan1116]

Quote by: SteveA 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.

I don't think you're grasping a huge flaw in your argument here... I was being sarcastic when I was referring to cumbayah... Going back to the Wright Brothers example... You ask why wouldn't the Wright Brothers charge a reasonable price for the rights to build such an invention. I'm not saying they wouldn't try to, i'm saying no one would buy.

Or, going to the toasters again... Let's say you build a brilliant toaster and put it on the market for $20. I decide I want to build your toaster. I call you up, you say, sure, you can have the rights to build that toaster for $1 million. Why in the hell would I pay you for the rights to build it? I can merely go and buy one of your toasters for $20 ($15.96 at Wal-Mart), take it apart, see how it works, and build my own. Since the patent system doesn't exist, THERE IS NO MOTIVATION FOR COMPANIES TO NOT STEAL YOUR DESIGN.... I don't understand why you can't grasp this concept. You keep talking about "negotiating" a "fair price" for someone's ideas, but without a law saying that person's ideas are their property that must be purchased from them, why would businesses do that?

Without some sort of legal system like patents to protect inventors, every inventor would have two options for their ideas:
1) Bring their idea to market, whereupon it would be immediately stolen (sorry, "duplicated") and they would see no profit.
2) To keep their idea from being stolen, never release it to the public. But then what good is it? You complain about inventions being underutilized now...

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. 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.

Wherein every company that DIDN'T put in an "offer" buys one dose of the cure, spends 15 minutes in a lab analyzing it, and comes out with their own without all those pesky research costs to recoup.

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

Ok, I will, for $49.95 at Electronics Boutique when it comes out, wherein i will take your source code, cut and paste it into my own program, and put mine on the market for $20
See the problem?

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, a self-proclaimed inventor and programmer who probably could stand to earn a few patents in his lifetime, understands neither the business nor the legal reasons why the patent system is important to nurturing innovation is the clearest proof I have ever seen why the job of patent attorney is not only possible but essential.