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Patent Nonsense
ziriyab writes: "This article from The Guardian, after a few paragraphs of corporation bashing, gives an interesting history of two countries (Switzerland and the Netherlands) who flourished without IP laws. The article, while not necessarily suggesting that the abandonment of patent protection is an essential precondition for development, seems to indicate that it can, in the right circumstances, be an effective tool."
"In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock."
- Orson Welles (1915-1985)
I think the existing laws are being abused by corporations who take advantage of back-logged and under-educated patent offices. I would support the exclusion of certain categories of intellectual property from the patent process. For example, I think the trend of patenting human genome sequences is a bad idea. I don't think you should be able to patent things that exist in nature, nor should you be able to patent mathematical or physical laws.
The patent process wasn't originally this dysfunctional. There was a time when it provided legitimate protection to inventors for a limited period of time. Now, I'm not so sure that the public is well-served by patent mechanisms (as was the original intent), given the short-lived nature of today's inventions.
Is the solution totally eliminating the patent system? I'm not sure. I would suggest that, in the time period discussed in the article, there was less up-front investment needed to produce a new invention or process. These days, in the drug industry, at least, the research costs are so high that I think some form of short-duration monopoly protection is required, just to insure that they can recoup their investment. We certainly wouldn't want research on things like cancer and AIDS drugs to slow just because of the risk of not recovering the research investment.
Yesterday it worked; today it is not working; Windows is like that...
As is the case in many of these debates, there are two extremes, and both are equally likely to have problems.
1. Eternal Patent and Copyright: This means that there is tremendous stability in development, very little "new directions" as a new direction would have to come from the company with the copyright or patent (or a company paying money to them). The downside is the cost of doing this if there is failure. Very high. --> Little change or innovation
2. No Patent or Copyright: Very dynamic creative possibilities because everything can be used to create new things. Everyone who has a different direction or idea can develop that, there are no barriers (cost) associated. Just time. This is also very chaotic... you can't have standards when everything is always changing. Stability of anything here... not good. As well, it ends up making things extra cmplicated as the only way to make money is to do it from services (installation, customization etc) so it is in the best interests of the creator to make it as difficult as possible to implement making sure that someone has to install it for you.
Seems to me that there is a happy medium. My personal preference is for the happy medium to be less restrictive than now, but that is for society to judge (which is why I have problems with where things are now, I don't believe society has decided, I think that society has abdicated that decision to corporate interests.
Don't skip those first few paragraphs. While there is a bit of a bias, the article talks about the sale of cheap medicines to third world countries. It's true that large, highly profitable companies are outpricing these nations on things they need.
When will some people recognize that some rights - like food and medicine, i.e., basic health and survival - trump capitalism, intellectual property, and other protections which are fine to call "rights" in prosperous nations but do not deserve that designation in the Third World?
Perhaps there are two types of invention: Those that will occur without protection, and those that won't occur without it.
Obviously, not having protection won't hinder all invention, as the "inventive spirit" is something that most of us believe exists.
Also, while there may have been invention during that time, there was probably also more trade secrecy, something the article doesn't explore at all.
If the patent process slows business, it may actually be because it requires disclosure. Companies go for the "sure thing" by patenting, but give up the possibility of perpetuating their monopoly through secrecy which can be *very* effective. Thinking Coca-Cola? Chump change. Consider Ziljan (the cymbal people) IIRC, they kept the process a family secret for something like 400 years or more. If all the Ziljans get hit by a bus, nobody will ever be able to make those exact cymbals again. So, what was that about patents being bad for society?
Of course this is all just speculation and stuff. Nobody has the time to do an unbiansed, rigorous, statisticly valid study and present it in such a way so that laymen could understand it. That would be... a lot of work!
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I found these points interesting:
;-)
;-), despite the fact that it was originally identified in 1986. If this isnt prior art, I do not know what is.
;-) . It will show huge proportion of "patented" sequences have prior art.
Novartis was one of the companies which successfully lobbied for the European convention allowing companies to patent genes
New global trade rules have also allowed big corporations to patent crop varieties and, in effect, the genes of plants, animals and human beings.
Even without going into ethical debates, gene patenting is notoriously dubious. The standards that these companies apply to patenting genes is very poor at best. My patent law is not up to scratch, so i would be happy if someone could point me in the right direction on this. However, my genetic knowledge is rather good
Essentially, companies (such as novartis) cast a very wide net when patenting genes. Alot of the time, they dont actually do anything particularly pro-active when attempting to discover them. They essentially take a pool of all genes expressed in a certain tissue ("mRNA") and randomly sequence these genes. And then slap a patent on them. This is quite clearly discovery. Furthermore, it is cheap, non-directional, quick and easy.
Originally, companies like novartis argued that cloning genes would take a strategy of e.g. specifically identifying genes causing a disease. This takes alot more effort and money, and is more likely to have medical significance. Therefore it is easier to argue that patenting is to some degree fair.
However, the first strategy is quite clearly against patenting law (even the stretched definition for gene patenting). For example, I often see "patents" for DNA sequences of the gene MYB (which I know quite well
This is a result of the essentially random, "wide-net" strategy the companies are utilising. Even worse, it is trivial to check (using a homology search) whether there is "prior art" on a gene or not. But the companies do not do this.
BUT I COULD. And may well do. I have been thinking about comparing the database of patented DNA sequences against those in the public domain (It will take some time to set up, which i dont have right now, and significant computer resources, which i dont have right now - help anyone? reply to this as above email wrong
But who would I go to with these results? Could the companies be held responsible? If, so what would be the result?
The prime source of information about software patents in Europe is the patents mailing list on the AFUL web site (french free unix user group).
Some information is also available on the APRIL web site (french association for research in free software).
In particular, to date, all the big (poll-wise) candidates to the french presidential election have expressed their opposition to software patents, see in french Haro sur les brevets and Tous les candidats dans l'opposition.
And of course the EuroLinux web site and FFII web site (Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure ) have links to a lot of ressources and interesting readings.
We, european citizens, are seeking ways to get other european countries take position against the current proposed european law that opens the gates of unrestricted software and ideas patenting.If you're willing to help the cause, please contact your local free software association and try to get some activism in place together with the established assiociations like the FSF Europe. If you are French or German you can even make a tax-deducible donation, it may help the cause too.
--
Laurent Guerby <guerby@acm.org>
Finland DOES have a patent system (I know because I lectured to a room full of Finnish patent agents in 1995, who were worried that because Finland was becoming part of the European Patent system (you file once in Europe and designate a bunch of European countries, and once the EP patent is issued, you file translations in each country where you want protection INCLUDING SWITZERLAND, THE NETHERLANDS AND SWEDEN).
I found it interesting that the two companies mentioned in the article (CIBA and Unilever) are not at all shy of obtaining and enforcing patent rights throughout the world (including in their home countries), although their existence is, in some measure, due to their ability to knock off the innovations of others with impunity.
I guess it helps to have a sense of irony when dealing with large corporations.