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Scientific American On Bad Patents
dltallan writes: "Scientific American has a short article in which Gregory Aharonian presents his picks for the four worst patents granted. I like the patent for training with manuals (1998)." The Bustpatents site is worth spending some eye-rubbing time on.
You know, the patent of Gene Profiling or Effectiveness of an Ad is a ubiquitous as ignoring two little kids attaching Cambpell soup cans with a string as prior art to the telephone. I understand that there are rules and regulations that are followed to grant/deny patents, but these two seem like I can patent the art of breathing and collect royalties all over the world...
I can't be the only one that finds humor in
- "U.S. Patent 5,851,117: "Building Block Training Systems and Training Methods"; Keith A. Alsheimer and others..."
Absolutely hilarious!!"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
From the article: "Three-Dimensional Presentation of Multiple Data Sets in Unitary Format with Pie Charts"
;)
Gah, and you thought Marketing was the only group that made up complex phrases to describe something so obvious.
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
- Documented Research and Development
- Resource Usage on R&D documented
- Professional Acceptance of Patent (Maybe a part of the USPO acts as a mentor program(?)
- Possible Prior Art and Explanations why it is not (I really like this one)
- Penalties for Obvious Patents
- Business Models and complex sociological functions unpatentable
- Physical patents require working model
- Web related patents with comparable real-life applications unpatentable (Amazon One-click)
And the list goes on and on"Anybody who tells me I can't use a program because it's not open source, go suck on rms. I'm not interested." (LT 2004)
of this humor. (Scroll down and read the sociology part).
--
Error 500: Internal sig error
...so that all patent applications would be automatically acknowledged, and then the dubious ones could be challenged by any interested party? The patent office would not have to employ enough specialists to sort out the validity of every silly application, they would only have to have enough knowledge to be able to verify the claims of people who dispute the alleged patent.
Comic-not
Existence usually comes as a surprise (Idem)
The USPTO has just granted my first patent, #6,356,233. Clearly stated, I claim that respiration of 21.4 small breaths per minute is the ideal respiration of a human and I claim that this specific breathing rate is a design of my own creation. Anyone currently breathing at this rate must license this FreelyBreathing® Respiration rate from me. Don't worry, my AUP and End User License are very flexible!
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
While this article is really funny to read, it just shows the problems that are now going on at the PTO. There are two main problems - the first being what this article points out - that the agents are not doing enough research to make good judgement. It makes you wonder how much of a background in these particular fields the patent agents have?
The other problem is that the PTO has gotten to the point where people are actually rewarded for issuing as many patents as possible. This is a system that really has to be reviewed. It has gotten the PTO to the point where they basically pass EVERYTHING and then let the courts throw out the frivilous stuff. What a waste of time, and even more money since court costs can be astronomical.
This doesn't even raise the problem of issues like people patenting something in HOPES that it becomes an industry standard and only when it is well entrenched - THEN do they say - I HAVE THE PATENT!!! Um, isn't the whole idea that anyone can come up with idea prove that the need for the patent is dumb?
While the PTO was origionally started as a great idea, over the past two decades things have just gotten out of control. Software and Business Methods are something that are just so unreasonable to patent that the PTO needs to either go back and decide:
1- this is something that will have to be SERIOUSLY researched before a patent is issued, OR
2- These are just things that CAN'T be patented
Good luck to them, because either way, they have a big problem facing them.
It is human nature to take shortcuts in thinking.
You know, I wonder if this wouldn't be a good way to fight the RIAA. I remember a quote from the guy who leads the patent office saying he thought legal arguments should be patentable. His argument was basically "Why the hell not?" as I recall.
Now, I don't think that you can patent legal arguments at this point in time, but you can patent business models. I mean, we're all smart people, I say why not just patent everything we can think of that the riaa might need technological to fight fair use, etc. I mean they already have things like digital watermarking, and some business models, but why not try to stay ahead of the curve? I remember thinking about a Digital Rights management system built into an OS a couple of months before Microsoft's patent was announced. If I'd thought of it years ago and patented it I would have stopped MS from ever implementing it in the core of the OS. Hrm... not that I wouldn't have been unbribeable, but, maybe this could be done through some non-profit organization like the EFF or something.
Hrm, maybe I should patent this idea... method stopping tyranny through abuse of the patent system...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Instead of hiring expensive lawyers to do the prior-art search before granting patents, why don't they just employ a bunch of semi-trained monkeys to type the patent title into a decent search engine, and grant the patent based on the results?
Of course you'd need a Legal gibberish to English translation tool as well.
The problem with this is that most large companies deliberately give patent applications vague and general titles. This is because the title of the patent becomes public before the body of it - and there's no point telling your competition what you're working on until necessary.
Personally, I find that to be rather a bad idea. I think up interesting things all the time, and I think I should be able to patent them, even if I haven't got the capital to build a working model or anything like that.
Maybe the burden of proof could be higher or something for a corporation rather then an individual. But I don't really see a reason for not allowing people to patent something if it wasn't difficult to come up with, I mean sometimes the most useful things are 'obvious' in retrospect and their genesis consisted mostly of a flash of insight and a quick jotting down. I read a report on a guy who made most of his money coming up with new kinds of condiments containers. Those things do make your life better, and might not even ever be developed if the person who thought them up didn't think they could make money off of it.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
IMHO one of the core issue with those IP problems is the notion that everything must be owned by someone. I suppose it makes kind of sense, if everything is owned, then money will be made out of everything.
When there will be a patent on the process of "a mother singing to help her children sleep", we will know for sure that we are slaves.
Part of the problem with the patent office is that technically minded people don't want to work there. Sure you get to learn about lots of creative ideas and there is good deal of job security, but who really wants to work for the patent office? As far as I know there has only ever been one really famous patent clerk, and he left shortly after that paper was published.
People with technical skills and training to solve problems aren't interested in a job that is largely research and paperwork. Who can blame them? At the University of Maryland (just outside DC), some people from the patent office came to give a well publicized lecture about their trade and next to no one showed up to hear it. The most knowledgable people will go off and invent or even just teach and then people who can't find positions elsewhere end up working for the USPTO. [I'm sure there are some bright patent examiners, but they sure aren't likely to attract many.]
One might try using pay and perks to make the job more attractive, but that's only likely to go so far. It occurs to me that we might do much better if there was a system resembling that of peer review for scientific research. A lot of problems might be solved if patent applications were reviewed by a pool of people that had recieved patents in related fields. Just add a priviso that people that recieve a patent are obligated to review 3-5 patent applications per year for the length of the patent. Remove all the identifying details and send each application out to several people to referee.
Of course there are lots of details to work out, but IMHO such a system could go a long way towards improving the current state of affairs with the granting of patents.
The Bustpatents site is worth spending some eye-rubbing time on.
:-)
Whew! For a second I thought that was Bust patents. Almost had me...
I think the USPTO should allow a time for public comments to be issued on pending patents before the research process begins. Perhaps via some easy to use Internet/Web interface. This would certainly reduce the work load of these guys, and pre-sort the bad/invalid patents out. Perhaps the ones with lots of comments would receive more attention by the USPTO as opposed to pending patents that recieve little or no comment. By essentially envolving industry in the process it is actually made more efficent. I suppose a possible draw back would be someone trying to slow down the approval of a good patent by making false claims, but a method could be devized to reduce or eliminate such behavior. Maybe the USPTO should install Slashcode and allow pending patents to be modded up or down depending on their worthiness. Regardless of how it is carried out, something needs to be done to change how the system works because it clearly doesn't work now. One idea I had would be to follow up on companies to see if they actually build/sell the patented product within a given time frame. If they don't then the patent would be lifted allowing anyone to use the information. Wouldn't that help a lot more mousetraps hit the street rather than being tied up forever in some government stack of paper work?
In my humble opinion, the XOR cursor patent is worse than any of his top four. That patent totally flunks the "obviousness" test: any first-year computer science student, taking a graphics class, could write code that infringes on that patent.
"Write code to move a cursor around." Hmm, what are the operations I can use to set and clear pixels? AND, OR, and XOR. Hey, wait a minute...
At least they didn't grant a patent on "A Technique Whereby Raster Graphic Image Fragments Are Made to Appear in a Blank Frame Buffer by the Use of the OR Operator". Hmmm, wait, maybe I should file that one before someone beats me to it.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Although IANAL, I am pretty sure that the burden of finding out if prior art exists rest with the person applying for a patent. This is part of the reason why, if you apply for a patent, you are advised to spend lots of money on patent lawyers and speacilists. The patent office only do quick searches to make sure you havent missed something obvious. If they were to do a full search, the costs would be ridiculous.
Nonetheless, a little common sense wouldnt go amiss.
Check these patents:
Silly patents
Really silly patents
Really Very silly patent
Plain absurd patent
Even law firms admit many patents are silly
Are you getting bored of all this silliness yet?
I can go on
And on
And on. Even in Spanish
Incidentlly, I have just made my own patent application:
Method of recieving Karma Points from www.slashdot.org utilising process of relying entirely on external sources and/or hyperlinks - "Karma Whoring".
Sorry, somebody already patented that one in Australia last year: here. Is crazy, no?
Well you asked...
Employment Announcements at USPTO
Also the main USPTO site is here.
A method to induce sleep in young humans through the use of pressure waves generated by the female progenitor's vocal chords.
These patents that only get granted in the US don't happen in Europe. Certainly in the UK this is because other people can challenge the acceptance of a patent, and the people investigating it put it out to experts in that field.
Sounds all to simple, but why not just switch to a system that has worked elsewhere.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
In the software/internet field, I think that the main problem is not that prior art is not found -- in a new field it may not exist -- but that the obviousness criterion is not tested.
IANAL, but AIUI, in order to be patentable, an invention must be both novel and non-obvious. But read this interview in which the Director of the US Patent Office demonstrated quite clearly that he did not understand the difference between these two concepts.
It appears that the US Patent Office believes that obviousness can be ascertained by determining whether there is any prior art. Of course obviousness is much harder to prove conclusively. But until they understand that an invention has to satisfy both of these criteria separately, we will continue to get more ridiculous software and e-businness patents.
11.0010010000111111011010101000100010000101101000
He left out the amazon 1-click patent. That certainly ranks up there.
Maybe it's time to patent the 0-click mouse-over patent. "...the fool held the mouse over the image, he must have wanted to buy it..."
The US patent office can only search things in the library of congress or their library (i.e. stuff that is patent pending or has been patented (they discard the stuff they reject)). They can't do a google search for prior art since that would leak info to google.
Because most of the inventors of the cool computer stuff didn't think their work was patentable, they didn't submit it and now if you can find something that hasn't been sbumitted, you too can get a patent on something you didn't invent.
The same is true for business practices which can now be patented. With no "prior art", anything can get a patent.
One easy fix to this would be to do something as patent a method to something uesless (but patentable) and submit all of google's database. the problem with this approach is that it requires the entire database.
First off, we all know *yawn* how easy it is for a big company to patent a blindingly obvious idea. The little guys then have to go thought a painful and long process to get the patent overturned. The patent process is abused and big buiness wins.
Also remember that any company can claim patent pending to sound good.
e.g. Say I run a company making bog-standard parts for a Ford Escort. I then get a patent out for putting a roof on a toaster to stop the toast being poped up too high(!). I can now legitamately claim patent-pending !
Trade marks are similar. In the UK at least, putting TM after your trade mark is regarded as 'totaly meeningless', as it carries no legal weight at all. However, it is easy to bully smaller companies into submission by claiming you have many 'registerd' trade marks.
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.
Trouble with the PTO not paying attention to their applications is that every bad patent makes them less credible, eventually to the point that every patent issued becomes suspicious. Or course the reason for these 4 was the hope of settling some lawsuits out of court and retiring. I know in this forum patents are evil by default, but that's a bit extreme. There are small companies that need that sort of protection to get their business off the ground. Every obvious, ridiculous patent issued reduces this level of protection. The solution? First let's eliminate lawyers everywhere, second, well that's been mentioned enough already.
Is there any mechanism by which members of the public can make available to the PTO examples of commonly used, prior-art software, prior-art biotech, prior-art whatever takes your fancy? If not, I think that is something that is necessary - we can moan all day about the PTO granting patents on "obvious" stuff, but perhaps we need to give the PTO a list, to help make their job easier. As another poster pointed out, a PTO clark can't do a Google search for the details of a new patent application, as that leaks information to Google.
What I'm thinking of is a place where I could describe, say, shopping on a website (to pick an example from bustpatents), and describe in very general terms how shopping on a website works (e.g. "You fill out forms in a web browser, and submit what you want to buy along with your credit card number preferrably over some form of cryptographically secured link such as HTTPS"). It needn't be an especially good example, and (I would say) the more general the better.
The PTO may well require the information to be public, which makes sense (no-one would post anything of value on it). And perhaps the PTO could somehow penalise applicants who apply for something already described on this list (or on a "small" number of other lists)
I can see that it would need a form of moderation system in order to avoid abuse, as I'm sure the PTO probably don't want a few thousand "common examples" of spam. But unless we the software community describe (preferrably in a concise manner, and definitely in one place that the PTO can grab a complete copy for its own searching) what stuff is obvious, the patent office doesn't stand a chance.
PS: I live in the UK, where software patents are not legal. However, you'd be amazed at the number of "mechanisms" that most people would describe as "software"
supposedly identified as busted or bustable by Mr. Aharonian have survived scrutiny over the years.
Greg has a tendency, as do many patent critics, to casually review patents without applying the appropriate rules of law, presume their scope are much broader than they actually are, and then conclude that they read upon prior art. This would be unrelated to the law.
In practice, the rules of patent construction and patentability are far more complicated than he appears to suppose. At least, he no longer presumes --as he did at one time-- that patents are defined by their abstracts.
I am a patent examiner. Youcan use nearly ANYTHING for prior art. I've used google to find webpages that discuss a video game's features which was similar to something I was examining.
You generally start off with searching what is allready in a numberof patent databases, if youdon't find it there thenyou look elsewhere within the limited time alloted.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
I posted above on some of the internal reasons how productions incentives has degraded the ethic to do quality work in the PTO. The problem is one of a managment philosophy over the last 30+ years to worship the god of production over the virtue of quality. Even the most diligent examiner is faced with the problem of being diligent with the reality of not getting fired for low production, not turning around amended cases quickly enough, etc.
There really are lots of bright people in the PTO (as well as the ususal portion of duds) but they get eroded down to either always being on the edge of being fired (because their production is low) or they have to compromise their own standards to avoid this fate. Either way, they are miserable, and, if they have waited too long, they are trapped in an occupation that has limited applicability elsewhere (Patent Attorney/Agent/Searcher).
The result: lots of turnover from people who make the correct decision quickly (leave fast, stay long enough to get law degree then go on the outside, etc.) leaving the inept and otherwise unemployable, the competant but ground down by the institutional crappy environment, and the few who ae luck to be competant and in an art that enables them to do good work and satisfy the bean counters.
And the management wonders why turnover is so high.
I have a question. From what I've read patent laws were recently loosened to allow for software and business-plan patenting. Does anyone know who created and passed these laws? Are there any records as to who lobbied for such changes?
It would be interesting to see who initiated this and how their profiting. I love capitalism as a system only until people start abusing government power.
_______
2B1ASK1
Can someone remind me what patents are for? A common argument is that they are supposed to increase innovation, but how I don't see how. When was the last time you went looking through the patent database for ideas? How many of us can even understand the hyperinflated language in patent filings?
Several US companies own patents for individual human and animal genes. No, not modified genes. Naturally occuring ones, like the one which causes Cystic Fibrosis.
If you're developing a CF test which looks for this gene (even from scratch), you will be paying patent royalties.
It's logically consistent with this that you could be paying royalties if you (or your child) has CF...
The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's
The USPTO frequently issues patents thinking any ambiguities can be worked out in court, but ignores the fact that the court process is prohibitivly expensive.
Were justice to become affordable to all, the federal government would be forced to correct the problem before the volume of suits effectivly shut down the 'justice system'.
It is quite possable that the flaws in the system were always there, but due to issues of scalability and the vast difference in the connectedness of society in the past compared to now have brought the problem to light.
For example, in the mid 19th century, a most people probably interacted (however slightly) with less people in a lifetime than we do in a week. Each interaction carries potential for a lawsuit. They also were never bombarded with advertisments and even 'entertainment' advising them to take others to court for every offense however slight.
Thus, today you are far more likely to be involentarily dragged into a dysfunctional system than at any other time in history.
It seems to me, just given the broad and obvious nature of the granted patents, that maybe the USPTO ought to go with a personal presentation/interview format (almost like they do with permanent residency and naturalization applicants) as well as the traditional paper filing for a formal patent application. It would work a bit like this: Each person wishing to file a patent would do so in the normal way, and then a few weeks later would be sent a presentation time and date. He or she would have to justify and present the patent to the examiners, who would then have the opportunity to review and ask any questions of the petitioners.
Obviously, the big downside is the major hiring the USPTO would have to do to have enough presentation/interview slots available. I can't see how the pie-chart patent would have ever been granted with this process--I mean, how do you present such an obvious concept like that to a group of people and keep a straight face or not get booted from the room within 5 minutes?
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
US Patent 6025810:
A method to transmit and receive electromagnetic waves which comprises generating opposing magnetic fields having a plane of maximum force running perpendicular to a longitudinal axis of the magnetic field; generating a heat source along an axis parallel to the longitudinal axis of the magnetic field; generating an accelerator parallel to and in close proximity to the heat source, thereby creating an input and output port; and generating a communications signal into the input and output port, thereby sending the signal at a speed faster than light.
Certainly not going to get shot down by prior art...
Did anyone notice who filed the patent?
Maybe it's just coincidence and maybe I'm just reading too much into all of this, but:
(U.S.: 5,851,117: "Building Block Training Systems and Training Methods"; Keith A. Alsheimer and others.)
Altzheimer? Alsheimer? Hrm!!!
I remember as a child around Giftmas time pouring over the Sears catalog circling and initialing items for my mother to find later. I have four brothers and for the youngest of us, this was common practice that somehow just started happening out of the blue...I don't remember how that practice started.
We used to get into arguments over who "wanted it first."
"Hey! You can't want that! I wanted it first! It's mine!!"
"If you wanted it first, you should have circled it first!"
"You took the book! So how could I?!"
The underlying notion was claiming ownership of a wish... we were very poor and we rarely, if ever, actually got what we wanted for Giftmas anyway.
But with all the "IP" issues that come to light these days, I am wistfully reminded of those days. And I ask is it really so different? Perhaps, we were all forward-thinking prodigies preparing ourselves for 21st century "industry" where we get paid for simply claiming to think of something first.
Last night, during an internet chat, I quoted James Madison. I didn't know James Madison said the same thing I did 200 years ago? I never read the quote, I just happened to have the same idea he had and expressed it in the same way. It's a good thing we don't have too much problem with being able to express ourselves freely... oh wait, nevermind...
How much of this is "too much" and do we have to come to the point of revolution in order to stop the insanity?
It would make more sense if applications were supposed to be made public in relevant industry journals - the applicant has to pay for an ad - and the public was given time to provide objections on the basis of prior art or overly broad or vague claims.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
>makes it much easier to remove the
>tiles from a Deluxe Scrabble board
The claim would be,
"Manually or with a gripping device, torque is applied to the planar element, until said element is orthogonal to the planetary or other gravitational field, effecting removal of tiles, pawns, and other instruments."
The muffin baking industry is a potential licensee.
hawk
If you don't do anything with a patent, then (a) it's officially invalid
Technically, that's correct; patents expire after 3 1/2, 7 1/2, and 11 1/2 years after grant unless the holder pays periodic maintenance fees. If you don't do anything, not even pay the maintenance fee, the patent becomes invalid.
However, most people would take this to mean "an unenforced patent becomes worthless." That's not patents; that's trademarks.
(b) you're depriving society of technology which they would otherwise have had, for no good reason
No good reason except your own bottom line. For any for-profit corporation, that's reason enough. (Corporations that claim to have ethics do so in order to build goodwill, that is, the value of their trademarks, and that can be measured in dollars.)
Will I retire or break 10K?
All you would need to do is look for obvious ideas that the big corps will need to use at some time in the near future then hold those ideas hostage until either the big corps pay through the nose or someone with a clue decides to pass legislation that raises the bar for granting patents.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
"The US patent office can only search things in the library of congress or their library (i.e. stuff that is patent pending or has been patented (they discard the stuff they reject)). They can't do a google search for prior art since that would leak info to google."
.doc file located on the USPTO site but you can use this comment #4 in html)
The USPTO had an RFC regarding Prior Art searches a few years ago. Check out Written Comment #4 (chose it from the list - it's in a
While that sounds good, think of the motivations of the competitors. It would be in their interest to kill a "good" patent (read, real innovation with no prior art) which would be a competitive threat, and let a trivial patent through.
I'm not sure there is a good solution.
It's Linux, damnit! Pay no attention to renaming attempts by self-aggrandizing blowhards.
I don't think that the particular example that you give (diamond coating) would work yet, certainly not 10 years agoe. OTOH, your basic point, corporations are cash maximizing machines with a short horizon, not society maximizing machines with a long horizon, is quite valid. That's what the laws have designed them to be. It isn't what they were originally intended to be, but things changed.
One of the big problems is: Corporations are not people. Anyone who says they are is a liar. The court decision that declared them to be persons was a horrendous mistake at the time, and it has only gotten worse from year to year. Corporations are not people. Every law that implies that they are, or that they have ANY constitutional rights should be stricken from the books immediately. The constitutional rights of corporations are logical entailments of their being composed of people. Of their decisions being made by people. Of their ownership vesting in people. That's it. They don't have ANY constitutional rights in-and-of themselves. They are fictitious constructs, designed to simplify bookkeeping and to enable large projects to be built.
.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
That should work for most inventions.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Method of referencing disparate or related content through the use of textual redirects whereby such references are accessed by manual entry of said redirect into browser's address or location bar.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
How many people here can say they even got as far as finishing elementary school without having been taught a school subject, such as math or science, with the aid of a text book? I can remember using text books as far back as grade two.
So what can we conclude? The people working at the patent office have a very limited education, if any at all. Had these people attended any type of schooling they would have frequently used text books and this "Training Manual" patent would be incredibly obvious with many examples of prior art.
--
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." - Homer Simpson [1F10]
Several US companies own patents for individual human and animal genes. No, not modified genes. Naturally occuring ones, like the one which causes Cystic Fibrosis.
While I agree this makes me uneasy, what are your alternatives?
Gene research costs serious cash. Highly trained people (in high demand). Very expensive equipment and lab facilities. Lots of chemicals (and disposal) If private companies can't get some return, they simply won't do the work.
Who else will do it? Government or universities? Both supported by your taxes- pay up, assuming you can get a tax hike past Duyba. Or you can cut other services (Meet hordes of angry seniors) or add to the deficit if you prefer (Ask the Argentinians how well this works in the long run.)
I don't like the idea much myself, but privates do useful work that otherwise might not get done. Is it better to have a patented CF gene or not know anything about it at all?
Eric
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
...what if someone patents the legal argument that you can patent legal arguments? It makes my head hurt.
It means the in Europe we can register silly patents in the US (eg BT holds the patent on the 'hyperlink') but EU industry remains unhindered by such absurdities. The UK government considered the US system and rejected it, has the US government any published studies that recommend/reject the UK system?
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Well, 10 years ago you could have coated all parts of an engine with a diamond layer, but that would have required to put them into a vacuum chamber for days, only recently it has become easier.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Universities sound like the right choice to me. They have the fortunate by-product of producing more educated people as well as good ideas.
You can work out the economics. Make the assumption that it costs the same to produce an invention in a company as in a university (probably not true, since the univeristy doesn't have the lawyer/marketing overhead, and the peer review/academic competition in universities is arguably more efficient at spreading knowledge than closed corporate labs).
If the patent is granted, the average consumer will pay more and get less product (due to monopoly pricing) than they would if they had paid the required additional tax to fund the research in universities. The company makes more profit, but not enough to offset the consumer's loss. So the patent destroys value overall and is also probably regressive since corporate profits will tend to disproportionately benefit the rich.
With the invention in the public domain, companies can then compete in a free market to produce and market the product as efficiently as possible. This is in stark contrast to a patent-protected monopoly, which has far less incentive to cut costs since it is already sitting on a large margin and doesn't have to fight for customers. I actually think the companies would continue to innovate anyway to keep ahead of the competition even if they could not aquire a patent.
Basically, patents are bad, and the *real* free market solution is to abolish them.
Of course, people are dumb and don't like paying extra taxes, regardless of the fact that it might halve the prices of most products they buy. Ah well.....
With the invention in the public domain, companies can then compete in a free market to produce and market the product as efficiently as possible.
So, are you allowed patents on production? Good ChemE's don't come cheap, and if you think the production methods aren't covered in a flurry of patents you'd be wrong.
Of course, if you make all that free where's the incentive to improve production by inventing new methods? It costs a bloody fortune to develop a new method: why should any company bother when there's a free, inefficient method out there and any other company can take your new method away? There's no free market here- just a government sponsored research monopoly.
Who pays for clinical trials? The government would have to- no company could shoulder the ~$100M cost per drug under this system.
How about copyright on the informational/marketing materials that go with each drug? Can I take those free as well? I could save a bundle on technical writers/marketing staff. Perhaps the government should just take over those responsibilites too.
Patent works in the drug industry- it's probably the best example, since up front costs for drug development are immense but costs to copy are low.
Are drug companies angels? No, but shutting them down and transferring their entire R&D staffs to academia (where would we put all the chemists?) under government payroll is kind of a drastic solution. (BTW: I seriously doubt your argument that academic research is more cost effective- I've worked in both worlds. The amount of time spent writing grant proposals to get funded is huge. When I needed a new HPLC at Merck, I asked for one. It appeared the next week. In academia it would have taken 6+ months of writing and waiting.)
Eric
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Right now, corporations do in fact patent things through the employees who think them up. However, if one were to make it illegal to actualy transfer an 'individual' patent indefinetly and make it legal for corporations to co-sign patents, I don't think manny companies would trust their employees with the company 'crown jewls' so to speak.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
you're depriving society of technology if you just forget about it as well.
Maybe the current patent system should be replaced with a 'compulsory rights' system, where everyone can license your idea for a price you set.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Where's my 5-year-old explaination of the Theory of Relativity? :)
Zodiac Survey
Guess we just have to agree to differ on this one - you don't think scrapping patents would work, I most certainly do although I'm not convinced it will ever be meaningfully tried.
To answer a couple of your points (all good):
I don't think you would transfer that many people to university research - AFAIK a large amount of the manpower in drugs companies is around the production and testing of drugs, all of which would still have to be done by private companies if they wanted to compete. Even if they pick up the basic research for free, they still need to manufacture it efficiently and convince consumers that it is tested and safe if they want to make a good business.
You could even adopt a funding system where scientists are government funded but work within companies, on the proviso that the research results are available to all. This might be a good model for clinical trials as you mention.
Or as an even less disruptive alternative, the government could guarantee to write out the check for the development of any successfully researched drugs - essentially "buying" the development into the public domain. They would have to include a risk premium (to cover the risk of failed research), but the total costs would be exactly the same and the incentive to make a successful drug just as great. The only difference being that after the drug is made, you get the free market in production and supply rather than a monopoly once again. This might also work as a "bonus" for clever production techniques dreamed up by the ChemEs you mention.
Basically, we all know that patents are bad, that they restrict the free market, inflate prices and quite probably stifle future innovation. The only justification for them is to incentivise new discoveries, but I feel that this can be done in far more effective ways.
I've never worked in a drug company, but I've been in business and technology long enough to know that the ability to copy ideas and strong competition on a level playing field are the biggest drivers that force companies to perform and innovate. Patents prevent this from happening, and this more than anything else has convinced me that they ought to go.
Today is the 80th anniversary of the patenting of the Eskimo Pie (Choc Ice in the UK). http://todayinsci.tripod.com/cgi-bin/indexpage.pl? http://todayinsci.tripod.com/1/1_24.htm