[SteveA]

(...from a conversation on another thread)

There are few disagreements that information that is freely usable by anyone is more valuable to society as a whole, than the same information with needless restrictions on its use. The patent system was created with the view of it being a necessary evil to assure
inventors could benefit from their work, but is it necessary? If there's a greater benefit to everyone without the patent and IP systems, how can inventors capitalize on this?

Imagine seeing something like this:

"Invention for sale: New Carberator - improves gas mileage by 5%, with 10% less costs in construction than current leading designs.

Details available upon public compensation of $250,000"

(With typical arbitration available over disputes)

Multiple people, likely the automotive industry could offer to pay to have this information released and, when satisfied, the inventor reveals the details of the creation.

I think there's no need to use anything other than physical property rights, contractual agreements and laws against fraud, the same as any other industry, to protect the ability of inventors to earn from their work. People could even create third party industries to handle all the marketing and sales of inventions for the inventor as well as a private replacement for the patent system, but using purely contract laws. You could do a similar thing using trade journals or symposiums as well to market and sell patents (compile multiple inventions together and sell all the ideas to the affected industries as a package deal).

So everything is basically the same as selling a physical object but instead because the information when released would be freely available to the public, you can sell to everyone at the same time.

Consider the side benefits of this as well:

If an engineer worked for an aerospace company improving plane designs, currently we have a system where his creations only benefit one company, primarily, whereas without patents his creations apply to the entire industry!

1) Instead of multiple aerospace engineers redesigning things for different companies, the entire industry (with much more resources) would hire engineers with all parties benefitting greater

2) The overhead of the patent systems courts, lawyers, paperwork and police are removed,.

3) Inventors don't need to view the industry as a potential minefield if something they created is viewed as having been patented by someone else.

4) We'd be on even footing with countries that use our patent books as a play guide.

5) Illegal copying would be history while assuring inventors were still satisfactorily compensated and you wouldn't have people feeling we need laws to regulate the software industry because the problems with federally granted patent and IP monopolies (like the poll we had on software).

6) No more anti-trust laws would be needed and there would be no more motivation to simply purchase a competing patent and leave it legally unusable - to no ones benefit.

7) There would be no available potential abuses to have someones work literally stolen in the physical sense by having someone else patent the idea and denying you the use of it.

8) The production industry would be detached from engineering - no single producer would have a legal monopoly to produce something, so there'd be more competition, specialization and efficiency in production industries.

9) Technology would progress faster because inventors would find no benefit or need to redesign something to get around current patents. They'd move on to better things that had greater market demand, instead of redesigning wheels.

And that's why inventions would benefit people more and be able to demand an even greater compensation than they do now - all in the voluntary fashion of free trade too.

Even Thomas Jefferson knew the patent system was an abuse waiting to happen as it already had priorly in England. The principle behind it sounds great, just like the prescription drug plan for the elderly, but just like many other such well intentioned ideas, when backed by force and denying of free market alternatives, it's prone to monopolization corruption and stagnation.