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The Case Against Intellectual Property
dhilvert writes "David Levine and Michele Boldrin argue that current IP laws encourage an inefficient rent model and stifle the potential for innovation without intellectual monopoly. Levine teaches at UCLA and maintains an Economic and Game Theory page."
Now, the wolves are guarding the hen house. In the early 90's, when Bruce Lehmann hosted the USPTO's sham hearings on whether to institutionalize s/w patents, his panel was comprised entirely of lawyers.
IOW, lawyers chose to instititionalize s/w patents in spite of strong protests from individuals throughout the software industry.
From that point on, it has been accepted that lawyers have the right to reap profits and taxes off of so-called innovation in software. It's a huge inefficiency, impossible to enforce, and impossible for anyone to prove virtually any software is unencumbered by patent conflicts. It's ridiculous.
The USPTO loves it though. They just increased their staff to handle their backlog which will forever increase since software patents are prolific and easily twisted into patent submissions.
Better yet, lawyers are having a heyday. The more lawsuits, the better. They get wealthy while the software industry grinds to a halt. It's obscene and a severe conflict of interest that they should have instituted s/w patents over all reason from the s/w industry itself.
I'm not even sure it's legal. I wonder what authority the USPTO head, Bruce Lehmann, really had. Was he appointed, and by whom? He certainly wasn't a member of Congress where laws should be created.
S/w patents should be abolished.
"The point is when does intelectual property become a rediculous concept, or is it a rediculous concept from the very begining?"
:) ).
That is a really difficult question. At what point does an algorithm become a mathematical equation. At what point does patenting it become a detriment to society.
To use medical stuff as a starting point the theory (and it is well played out in reality) is that the development cost is huge, manufacturing cost is tiny - same is true in CS. In order for them to recoupe costs (and therefore make them want to do the research) they are given a period of unilateral controll of sales. In the end it drives progress, for a few years only a select few get the rewards, in the long run the poorest are extremely elevated.
Software, unfortunatly, does not have the much harder line that a pill does (not really a physical product from quicksort). Is a windowing system patentable? is Quicksort?
Ultimatly the question is "does this help advance society". We, in many cases, are quite capable of answering this question. That question is supposed to be the job of the courts or the patent office. Unfortunatly they want an expert system type of decision making. A simple yes/no based on a simple given input written in a few pages of documentation. Patenting online sales in our current date is idiotic, but it passes thier simple "yes/no algorithm". Patenting a new extremely low latency/high throughput network interconnect is patentable (and really should be).
The next question is length of patents. In our industry a 5 year patent is really "in the past" let alone our current patent system. If you can't make a profit in 5 years in CS a ten year patent will not make you a profit, nor will a longer one. On the other hand it seriously dampens societies progress.
Patents are supposed to be, and should be, a balance between the need of society to benefit from advances in tech, and the people who invented the tech (or corperation) need to profit from the tech. When one is given great priority over the other the system gets screwed. It generally takes a person, capable of rational thought, to find that line, not a simple "yes/no" solution. Plus they need to realise the line is not necessarily in the same place each time (and some may disagree), that is why there is such a thing as "comprimise" (which is where neither side is happy, and neither side is greatly unhappy
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
Does this really protect the individual who actually *invented* something or protect the ones who say they have the rights to it and have the resources to protect it.
The post before mine recognizing Newton/Leibnitz and the possiblilty of "patenting" calculus drives the point home.
This seems to me just to be another excuse not to work. My whole country seems to be doing this. It seems everyone is out not to produce anything per se, but to tie up anybody trying to do anything and exact a fee. Somehow this system passes as "free enterprise".
Now, if the patent protection lasted for seven years or so, I would consider it much more appropriate. That way one could profit during the market window, but not tie the works up in perpetuity.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
A patent is not a right one person gets when he patents something, it is a right everyone else loses. If Amazon had not patented the obvious one-click order, everyone could do it. I think that taking away the right of every person (save one) in the entire world to do some action is a very serious thing to do.
Therefore, patent granting should be very restrictive - not like today, when you can patent obvious bits of code, obvious business processes, DNA sequences, the wheel, swings, whatever.
When the patent is obvious, patenting is theft - taking from all and giving to one.
And it scares the kerpookie out of me.
No matter how you design or code anything, you are sure to step on something someone has documented. I mostly do analog design.. now there are several circuit topologies for switching power supply design.. but are any of them safe to use outside of an academic lab? Or as mentioned, can one even use a quicksort algorithm without the risk of the letter in the mail? What if I use a m-way search tree in a custom mini-database which keeps track of some activities my robots are doing... can I expect somewhere someone is going to see I am using an m-way tree and hold my company ransom for it?
I can only imagine what it is like in the biochemical industry. I have seen my share of organic synthesis books.. and how similar organic molecules are. You can darned interpret anything you want if you get Congress to back your patent. Its like coming to the building industry because they used copper wire, copper pipe, bricks, nails, whatever in the construction of the building, and you have your lawyers hold them hostage for it.
Scary indeed...
But then my great hope is the Chinese. Hopefully they will look at us and learn. They will be able to innovate and construct and hopefully use their resources for production instead of litigation. It won't bode well over here in the States, but then Congress may have another thing to consider, how do you control the masses of people once they have lost their homes and no longer have money or jobs to pay rent. I do not like to be a fat man in the presence of hordes of hungry wolves.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]