Slashdot Mirror
The Law of Unintended Consequences: Patents
An anonymous reader writes "Fortune has an
interesting article about the relationship between patent law and innovation. It compares the biotech industry with the computer industry and discusses the effects of the Bayh-Dole amdendment, which has allowed universities to make a lot of cash. But in the process innovation and scientific collaboration seem to have been stifled."
Of course patents help science and tech! If patents hadn't existed, The Great E could never have gotten a job at the patent office, and may never have ended up making his amazing findings, or maybe never publishing them.
Where would we be then?
Before waxing philosophical on economics, you could do yourself a service by skimming the academic literature on the subject. There are good, free services like econlit.org and scholar.google.com
All determinations of time presuppose something permanent in perception and that this permanent cannot be in the self, s
Bayh-Dole amendment: http://www.ucop.edu/ott/bayh.html
... is actually a fundamental problem built into all IP law: the assumption that money is the prime motivator for creative endeavors. (And yes, science is a creative endeavor.) This is a myth successfully propagated by generations of moneymen, but a myth is all it is. Scientists, like artists, certainly want to make a living from their work, but the best ones pretty much always do what they do simply because they want to do it, not because they expect it to make them rich. If your primary concern is making money, OTOH, you don't have the time (or, probably, the brainpower; suits who think of themselves as intellectuals because they have an MBA simplye have no idea what goes into a serious scientific education) to become good at anything that constitutes real creative work.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
While there are certainly areas of crossover, like the algorithms to filter through the volumes of data that biotech firms have, the fundamental difference between bio companies and computer companies is that biotech produces *something*. Computer technology is basically ephemeral. But Biotech leads to medicines and other discoveries that are both difficult to discover and inherently valuable.
It makes sense to cover biotech with patents, as it took significant effort to research and develop those things.
Computer tech, on the other hand, is primarily focused on automating processes. Computers are inherently faster than humans at doing repetitive tasks, especially in regards to calculations. But it is difficult to find a program that implements a process that doesn't exist already in another form, or that isn't blatantly obvious to everyone. Something like developing "a secure mechanism by which encrypted media data is stored on a device and available for playback when read and decrypted by the client application" would probably be a good candidate for a patent. "Users can click once and purchase an item without having to load the shopping cart menu" is both obvious and not really that far removed from the systems that preceded it.
That people get greedy and innovation slows down when companies are competing is just a small side-effect of the patent process.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
"But in the process innovation and scientific collaboration seem to have been stifled."
Don't forget spelling. amdendment?
Nothing will hurt innovation more than the Patent Reform Act of 2005.
Why? Because it sets limits on damages for willful and even fraudulent patent infringement so that large corporations will find patents easy to ignore.
Meanwhile, the limits are still big enough to remain a deterrant for small companies and independent inventors.
In other words, if you are a big corporations, you might be able to knowingly ignore patents while startups and inventors don't have the same benefit.
There are some good improvements in the Patent Reform Act of 2005 but this fundamental flaw is going to hurt innovation by making the patent system benefit a small percentage of companies at everyone else's expense.
Please write to your representatives and respectfully ask them to fix the flaws before it becomes law.
Grease keeps systems working smoothly. Lawyers, money speculators, used car salesman, and a zillion other occupations are society's grease. In a frozen static society, you could get rid of them once you had polished the system to the nth degree. But in a dynamic society, these greasers keep the various diverse parts all working together relatively smoothly.
But too much grease in a gearbox bogs it down. That's what has happened with intellectual property in general. Those idiots in Washington listened to their corporate sponsors and believed what they said about the more the merrier.
At some point, hopefully sooner rather than later, business and politicians will notice what the true innovators and researchers have long since learned the hard way, and cut back on the flow of grease. In the meantime, the rest of us are stuck with completely counterpdocutive IP legal wrangling getting in our way. It may take a long time to notice the drop in innovation and productivity, but I sure hope not.
Infuriate left and right
Also, if someone wants to question the patent system in biotech, then what's the alternative? Patents have, despite a few cases of misuse, been proven to be the suitable intellectual property rights regime in that field. In contrast, today's leading software companies like Microsoft, Oracle and SAP needed no patents at all during the first 10+ years of their existence. SAP only had a total of four patents a few years ago. It would be too simplistic to say that copyright law alone protects software because it's actually a combination of copyright, trade secrets, complexity, trade marks, and the possibility of converting a technological lead into sustainable economic value (by selling products, acquiring customers, building the brand identity of an innovator). That form of protection is much more dynamic than patents because it requires someone to actually market a product, as opposed to just sitting on a patent and waiting for others to unwillingly and unknowingly "infringe" upon it.
The other issue is who should own the outcome of the research work that is performed with tax money. I don't think it's reasonable to let the public pay twice for the same work, upfront by employing many such scientists for decades in each case (the fewest of which ever come up with something that can be commercialized on a large scale) and subsequently through patent royalties.
From the article.
" A 1979 audit of government-held patents showed that fewer than 5% of some 28,000 discoveries--all of them made with the help of taxpayer money--had been developed, because no company was willing to risk the capital to commercialize them without owning title"
To all those in this thread that argue "scientists will do it for the love" or any of that crap. That sentence above says it all. Scientists might do it for the love, but companies won't pay to develop it. I work at a biotech company - we won't do stuff that won't make us money. We have to pay our salaries. If we do something that we DON'T have patent coverage on, our competition will just copy it at no cost to them... oh yeah - we will have spent A LOT of money to do the development. If we can't get an exclusive license, then for the most part we won't touch it. It WONT make financial sense to do so.
You can preach about "greater good of man" and all that. At the end of the day I just want to send my daughter to college and be able to go surfing. To do that, we have to make tools that help people, and I enjoy being part of that. I love solving the problems. I enjoy working on the projects. BUT - I have to eat and the company has to make money.
Gavin Fischer
First of all, this article is well-researched but poorly written and the author fails to achieve a coherent voice and statement. IMHO, this was a waste of 10 pages. Secondly, I have worked in the biotech industry for last 6 years, 2 years of which have been with THE largest biotech company and the remaining 4 years with various start-ups. From this insider's perspective, I can tell you that the number one challenge of innovating in the biotech industry has less to do with IP law and more to do with the lack of management experience amongst life scientists. When you have industry where start-ups can get $90 million in venture capital and ballon to 150 employees without have a commercial product, that's not an IP issue... it's business 101 issue... think 1990's dot.com reduex
The problem with patenting algorythms and functions is in the very concept and purpose of computers. Programming languages are basically tools for expressing thoughts. As human toungues are used for expressing speakable words, programming languages are used to implement thinking processes of the mind. Data is non-material, and computers merely receive, process and output data, as human nervous system does. Algorythms are same as thoughts - they are ways of analyzing and processing data.
Patenting physical devices (ever computer hardware) is fine by me, but patenting algorythms is comparable to patenting and restricting ways of thinking. Imagine what would happen if a law ordered people to think (or avoid thinking) in a certain way...
I am not saying that everything on the computer must be completely patent-free. I believe that only unique, sophisticated and unparalleled applications should be allowed to be patented by the US Patent Bureau, for a limited time.
- Matvei M.S
09 f9 11 02 9d 74 e3 5b d8 41 56 c5 63 56 88 c0
Is human nature. Greed is a vice, not a virture, for a reason. Greed causes people to do evil and harmfull things and should not be confused with ambition. The ambitious man wants to build a business that is rich and successful, the greedy man wants to build an empire that will rule the economy with an iron fist and drain every last drop of wealth out of it that it can.
One of the things that never ceases to amaze me is how accurate Judao-Christian scripture is about teaching about human nature. We see the result of greed in the dotcom bubble burst and we see the natural lack of general altruism all around us from the greedy bastards like Andrew Fastow that tanked Enron to the people now trying to scam FEMA and Red Cross by claiming to be refugees. Human nature toward economics is greed, not altruism and not enlightened self-interest. That is why both pure Capitalism and essentially all forms of Socialism have utterly failed.
The problem I have with long patents is that they subject the economy to the control of lazy, greedy men and women. I and other fiction bloggers are proof that you don't need a long monopoly on your ideas to want to produce literature, music and discover new ideas. I have probably about 25-30 pages worth of just fiction material up for free for the other Christian sci-fi fans that read it, yet I don't really care right now about making money off of it. My muse is Christ, what is your muse?
Shorter monopolies will light a fire under the asses of these people and force them to create new things. I hate to break it to the laissez faire purists, but the security afforded by these long monopolies breeds **sloth**, not creativity. Too many seem to have forgotten that old saying: necessity is the mother of all invention.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
One fascinating phenomenon is how long it takes for the rough consensus of the "innovation community" (much of which is represented by many Slashdotters), that patents interfere with innovation, to begin to be reported in the "finance community" which depends on the innovators. That such reporting happens at all is really a testament to the relative freedom of the press - relative to all human history, that is. That such reporting will have little to no effect on patent interference with innovation is a testament to the relative slavery of politics, which controls the patent system, to corporations, which care solely about property, and not at all about "innovation" (so long as it's not necessary to profits). Perhaps relative to human history our politics is not so bad, but "not as bad as thousands of years of tyranny" isn't good enough.
--
make install -not war
Not the patent poster boy again!
However, it's also true that any policy, be it in intellectual property or any other field, is bound to fail if it's based on the exclusive assumption of everyone being a homo oeconomicus. There are people out there who'd rather win the Nobel Prize than make 10 or even 100 million dollars, provided that they already have a level of security and a standard of living that they're comfortable with. And some are even fine to be "poor but proud".
Lawmakers simply have to understand the diversity of motivations. This is a pluralistic world in which people can seek their individual happiness in different ways.
In life sciences, there is usually a lot of money involved (for laboratories etc.) to do research. Many inventions in that field simply couldn't be made by someone at home who has no substantial funds. Consequently, the IPR system in the field has to be particularly investor-friendly. Since university researchers usually aren't investors, it's doubtful that they should reap the rewards for what the public has paid for.
In computer software, there can be no reasonable doubt that a lot of innovation happens every day without the motivation on someone's part to publish software or take out patents. Open source is the best example. Key open source projects were started by people who had to make no capital investment beyond the computer they already had. The entire code base of open source has been developed by a diverse group of people, and in that group you probably find any mix of commercial and non-commercial motivations, literally everything from 0% to 100% of a profit motive.
From TFA
Universities have evolved from public trusts into something closer to venture capital firms. What used to be a scientific community of free and open debate now often seems like a litigious scrum of data-hoarding and suspicion. And what's more, Americans are paying for it through the nose.
And who's to blame for that? Yup, the good old American system.
The fact of the matter is, America doesn't care about science. We worship things like actors and singers and sports figures and then snub our nose at scientists in academia and pay them crap. Business is the most popular major, not because it provides the most to society, but rather it is the most profitable. In other countries, scientists are looked up to and admired (for example, India).
In the US, the budgets have been cut drastically for academia (most grants are getting a 8% cut straight across the board this past year). Adjusting for inflation, the NIH and NSF budget's have actually shrunk over the past 10 years-- which is ridiculous considering the massive amounts of improvement in technology that have occured. With such a drastic decrease in available funds, researchers need to tighten their projects, search for alternative funding, and be wary of who they tell people what they are doing. Sharing data with someone you aren't collaborating with or on unpublished work is a sure way to find yourself out the door in academia. This is further being complicated by the fact that tenure reviews are starting to shift from the old paradigm of how many papers you published, to a newer paradigm of how much grant money you bring in (while this is usually correllated, it is not always the case).
It's not the scientists that have created the environment, it's the environment that has created the scientists. There's a reason why College Professors were listed as one of the top 5 undervalued professions in America. Patents are the one bone that academia gets and the writer seems to think that scientists are exploiting America. Academia is already losing a lot of great talent (and henceforth, progress) as it is in America due to lack of funding-- how do you think it would be if patents didn't exists?
The difference between you making money on it and them making money on it -
YOU spend 500 million dollars developing the drug, testing it for safety, tweaking it to make it usable, doing more testing.
To "Make Money" on it, you have to recoup those 500 million.
THEY copy it, spend ten or so thousand dollars basically looking at what you did.
To "Make Money" on it, THEY have to recoup 1000 times less money than you to turn a profit.
Since it's a free market society, and it cost them less to make the product than it does you, they can afford to sell it for a lower price.
So of course, if they can do that, nobody is ever going to buy the original developer's product, since it'll be more expensive because that much more work went into making it.
So effectively, all that development work that was done doesn't benefit the company that does it.
THAT's why they claim that it's hard to make money without a patent.
Assuming those numbers are NOT adjusted for inflation, then 12 billion 1980 dollars = about 29 billion in 2003 dollars. Growing 29 billion to 179 billion is an 8% increase per year.
I also wonder if this is a linear increase or if there was something sudden jump at some point. Taking two data points and trying to make some sort of comparison other then "this one is bigger" seems rather dumb.
In 1980 I was single, but in 2003 I had a family of four. That doesn't mean I was reproducing at a rate of 6.2% per year.
Can someone point to a data source that has amount spent on drugs each year? I searched the web, but so far I don't see any sources I would trust, mostly stories similar to this.
"Photon Bounce -- Breaking the laws of physics, but not that of probability & statistic," by, 'Photon Vu' (This entire article copyrighted 9/14th/2005 by Mr. Photon Vu ). This application for patent is applied for by Mr. Photon Vu, dated September 14th, 2005 (11pm, Indianapolis Time, EST) for the design and use of the Photon Bounce and for the design and use of the uniformly distributed electron cloud whose statistical probability is at 0.5 throughout the layer and whose thickness is defined to be width of one electron whose statistical probability is at 0.5. [Begin of target description of patent concept] Patent is for the configuration and use of photon per the non-classical physic bounce to accomplish simultaneous computation via a statistical presence of data formed beneath an electron cloud with statistically uniform region whose probability is of 0.5 to achieve consolidated probability of 1.0 which designates simultaneously solved solutions and consolidated probability of 0.0 which designates unsolved solutions ( which represents region of theoretically-proven unsolvable problems as posed by the data that parameterize the simultaneous equations to be solved ). Details of this configuration are described below from item 1 through item 4: Item 1. Photon have no mass, thus can not cause a physical deflection in physical media, so the phenomenon being used is a statistical bounce in which a photon whose statistical probability is at 1.0 is directed at a region whose statistical probability is uniformly distributed throughout and whose statistical probability is at 0.5 . Item 2. A 'bounce' is defined as the statistical influence of the photon whose statistical probability is 1.0 on the region whose statistical probability is at 0.5 such that when there is a presence of a data point, representing one of the parameter of the simultaneous equation to be solved, all simultaneous computation occur for all data points represented in the computational region, formed by the evenly distributed layer of electrons whose probability was stable at 0.5 at the moment prior to the impact of the photon against it. Item 3. Multiple photons whose statistical probability of 1.0 can be used simultaneously against the uniform layer of electrons whose statistical probability is at 0.5 through the layer, with the requirement that not more than one photon can occupy the same space/time within the uniform layer of electrons. Item 4. Data points are represented by beams of photons of varying energy levels (frequencies) directed at the electron cloud. [End of target description of patent concept] Page 1 of 1 and only 1 page, final. BTW3. the key is not in the document above. It's something that every little kid already know, 'things that glow in the dark'. a.k.a (read below) [ i prefer the kid's version and wording ;))))) ]
Energy levels in stable electron clouds are at specific energy 'rungs' which dance with bypassing photons. That's classical physics. In non-classical physics, the electron is a statistical entity whose distribution goes to infinity in space/time. However, even photons have statistical significance, of 1.0. So, when a photon that exist in physical space as a quanta hits an electron (which is really a statistical entity) it converts onto a wavelet, a statistical distribution that we can control. Thus, the statistical significance of an electron whose energy level is quantized already; and thus, a statistically significant computation event occur (not a physical event). Data of a simultaneous equations can be parameterized by electrons that are 'pumped' to a specific set of rungs ( yet again by photons, prior to the computation event ). If you layer this data set with a layer of electrons whose statistical probability is at 0.5 and whose thickness is exactly 1 electron (whose statistical probability is 0.5), you get a region of time/space that can convert the bounce of photons above it into an instantaneous computing event of all simultaneous equations, using the presence of the electron
but Fortune's writing style is absolutely unreadable. It's 95% advertisement and pump, 3% "{and,if,or,not,the}", and 2% information.
UGH.
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
I'm surprised the parent was modded +5 insightful, since I'm not sure the poster actually took the time to read the article. Anyhow...
Technically, the Bayh-Dole law that the article talks about doesn't really say too much about companies being able/unable to patent the results of research that's been privately funded.
Even prior to the law, if you want to spend your money on research, you of course had the rights to patent the results. However, Bayh-Dole made it so that your company could spend tax-payer(read 'our') money to do research and development and then still be assured of your company owning the resulting intellectual property. So, the whole thing really seems like a big corporate well fair racket, whereby companies have been essentially gifted valuable IP by the American tax-payers.
Maybe the NIH or NSF should start acting a little bit like a VC firm in these cases. That is, if companies and/or universities want to profit by patenting the results of publicly funded research, then maybe the funding federal agency should get a proportion of the proceeds. That money could then be funded into other new and interesting research projects.
However, you may get rich in the science business, as you apparently have done. Congratulations.
The reality is that if you work in the lab, your salary will be good, but smaller that it would have been if you had become a doctor, lawyer, MBA, etc, especially when you consider the long time it takes to get your PhD (and post-doc, and second post-doc....)
Not many Americans are entering scientific fields for a darned good reason, I think. I wouldn't repeat my choice, knowing what I know now.
Just look at art and science in totalitarian countries. In all former communist countries, you definitely couldn't get rich by doing science, not even in relative comparison to general population. Yet they had a lot of excellent scientists, and produced huge amount of research.
As far as art goes, not only you couldn't get rich, in many cases you could get yourself locked up. Still, all the Soviet block countries had very active unofficial art scenes.
AccountKiller
Thoreau wrote of poets living from their poetry as a steam plane is powered by the shavings it produces. A bowl of rice now again certainly doesn't hurt, but. . .
.art and science.
The rewards of art and science are. .
KFG
AFAIK, most scientific journals publish discoveries that were classified by peers as "interesting" in some way. It could be commercially useful, useful for further research, or just plain interesting from an "intelectual curiosity" point of view.
In my field, it is often (usually?) impossible to tell whether a result is going to be useful or not.
AccountKiller
Wrong root cause--the blame lies with the left and their reaction to the Vietnam War, with their one permanent reform the destruction of basic research in United States universities through the Mansfield Amendment. Just go to the musty bookshelves of one's university to the mathematics section and look for books before 1970. Many of them will have an acknowledgement of funding through some agency such as the Office of Navel Research.
The Mansfield Amendment deliberately destroyed the relationship between the United States military and university basic research, so that instead of getting crumbs from a gargantuan Department of Defense budget, which meant the crumbs were quite substantial, basic research had to rely on the politically castrated National Science Foundation with no important constituency to push for funding.
Faced with the prospect of basic research almost completely disappearing, the only alternative was something similar to Bayh-Dole, because there was no way anymore to politically push through explicit funding. What an irony that now what were once considered public goods are now the property of the largest corporations and the rich only get richer. Now that is the true unintended consequence considering who initiated the Mansfield Amendment.
Donate free food here
but I am sure it ain't right. Check the historical budget tables at www.omb.gov. NIH and NSF are doing just fine, thank you very much. Unfortunately, most of the data is not adjusted for inflation but the increases are so large that it is obvious that it is greater than inflation (around 2-3% year, or 25% over ten).
Also, how precisely are you measuring "provision to society"? If you are making claims about it, you should have a good answer.
This is all about the spirit of free enterprise. We need research and development in order to progress as a society, but like all good things R&D involves time and resources and both thoses things cost money.
Where does that money come from?
Democrats/Librals believe that if the people pay for it, the people own it the benefit to this is that scientists are free to access the real pay dirt - information.
Republicans/Red-Necks believe that a grant is just that, a gift of money and that scientists should be free to profit from their innovation - the benefit of this is that you attract brighter minds and the industry can run itself relieving the tax burden of a constant stream of grants.
The question really is what is more important, a free market or a freedom of information?
Thats not an easy question to answer. People would say that Russia was a perfect example of why the Republicans are right. Others might say that America is a perfect example of why the Democrats are right. I say the truth is that both sides have fudged the system to a point where neither can be right.
I would have more sympathy for big R&D companies if I thought for one second that they had stopped asking for research grants or tax cuts to support their work. I would have more sympathy for big R&D companies if they could be trusted to return their products back into the public domain where it belongs. I would have more sympathy for R&D companies if they could be trusted to act with compassion where the bottom line must be second to the saving of lives and removal of people from absolute poverty. The one thing these companies can be trusted to do is protect their investors money, but thats about the only thing they are obligated to do by law.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
Office of Navel Research.
So they even had an office of researching the belly button?!
Well, not quite, perhaps, but...
I think the debate about whether patents are stifling innovation or not misses an important point: that most inventions don't happen because an inventor suddenly invents a brilliant new gadget. The real way most things are invented is when somebody has a problem and solves it; and most often the person doesn't even think of it as anything special, because it isn't in that situation - it's just a handy solution to a problem, so he/she could get on with the job at hand. Later, perhaps, somebody combines a number of these solutions and it turns out to be a great idea.
I think people who are just 'inventors' are likely to be some sort of pathological phenomenon; a kind of obsessive tinkerers, perhaps.
As for patents - they certainly make it difficult for others to make money from their good ideas, and I have no doubt that at some point it will become too cumbersome; then it will change. But since people will always run in to new problems and look for solutions, innovation will happen.
Perhaps when it becomes clear enough that the patent system, with all the mindlessly stupid patents for trivial non-inventions, simply doesn't work, perhaps then will people begin to 'anti-patent' their inventions by immediately laying them out in the public domain; that way you at least ensure that nobody else can shut you out from making a fair earning from your good ideas.
No wonder I spent so much time engaged in ompheloskepsis !
I think you are forgetting that the modern day patent trolls are the primary person that this section of the law are meant to stop. You have to realize that most large companies, including Microsoft do not see the point in going after the tiny companies making items because they aren't important enough, and more then likely don't make enough money to be worth the trouble. Most companies enforcing patents nowadays are companies in the case of Freedom Wireless v. BCGI. If you read this case and look at the background of FW's owners, you start to question if they are not acting like a bunch of cons.
Remember most patents that big corporations are buying up now are meant to protect them against the tiny patent trolls and I do not expect this part of the law to cause some grand paradigm shift where we see big companies suing small businesses out of existence.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
They spend 500 millions from taxpayer's money. It cost them nothing, they just got the grant. Then the manager decides it won't be quite as profitable as they thought because only one in a million suffers from this particular disease and production of this drug probably won't cover the costs, so the project gets cancelled. But they have the patent already, and even if someone was willing to help these 1 in million, who suffer because there's no drug that would help them, the particular drug is patented, and the owner of the patent doesn't want to sell it. Or sues the fundation that researched the drug independently, for patent infringement.
As long as patents help fund innovation, they are okay. But more and more often they just help profit from obstructing innovation, instead of getting profit from what you did, and staying ahead, you get profit from directly stopping others from doing what you did. Like a racer who wins a unit of race and gets a bonus, instead of using it to gain further on others or catch a break, they spend extra time to push others, trip them or stand in their way, not letting them pass.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Without Patents there would be no requirement for an individual to disclose an invention. What would happen under such a system is not open innovation; however, it would turn into an immense system of lawsuits and constant battles of "me first" arguments (though this can still happen under the patent system it isn't as bad).
There are two scenarios in reality:
Scenario 1: Company A doesn't invent anything for fear of the second that it is released Company B will clone invention of Company A and then Company C repeats and the market is flooded. Now, here come the "free market" cries, but remember that if inventor/company A doesn't believe they can market product A well, and realize the scenario above will happen they will never release said invention and people may go without...
Scenario 2: Company A invents. Company B takes and "re-invents". Now under old laws of trade secret stealing, or new laws of the "evil" DMCA, Company A sues company B. Vicious cycle continues, and innovation is stifled because companies don't want to release product because of legal battles...
Patents guarantee Company A protection to be sell inventions without fear of Company B stealing said inventions. It also forces disclosure making Company B capapble of creating "improved" inventions based on Company A's disclosure. The improved inventions can then be marketed and the cycle continues. This is where innovation occurs, the problem is that most fields move so fast anymore (especially PC and bio-tech) that the patents seem overly restrictive for long times.
Remember without patents most inventions by small inventors would almost definitely never see the light of day. Also remember that this great fear of patents as a money grab is by and large not a major problem since some 90% or more of patents NEVER COLLECT A SINGLE CENT.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
The argument that only granting exclusive use of some specific piece of knowledge can make commercialising products based on the idea viable financially is unconvincing. (Leaving aside that this does not eliminate risk because competitive products based on other ideas may still appear.) If necessary, have a system where the government compensates organisations for development in certain cases (perhaps with tax breaks) to give an advantage to the original developer. But do not prevent others from making improvements.
The patent system adds huge costs for ephemeral benefits. Creativity and invention prosper in an atmosphere of freedom, not one of bureaucratic control.
Of course, that's assuming that you consider it moral and just to forcefully extract revenue from people -- who may fully oppose your agenda -- in order to fund that agenda.
No thanks, I'll trust freedom over you and your agenda any day. If there is a need for research, then quite naturally, that research will be accomplished voluntarily. If the only way to accomplish that research is through force, then have you considered the possibility that society didn't value that research in the first place? After all, what free people want, free people achieve, and what free people don't want, free people don't bother with. Can you admit that, or are you in denial?
"You believe that a hard core capitalist corporation will burn money just because it is sooooo easy to get more..."
.com's that never turned a profit, never could turn a profit, never could do anything except be a huge sinkhole for money.
Why do you think people were investing billions in
Or was that different hardcore capitalists?
As I understand it, the effort in the cases under discussion in TFA was all supplied by the government. And then industry gets to come in and cream off the patent rights to any areas of research that actually produce something. And, in doing so, commercialise what is supposed to be non-commercial research.
If a company spends lots of money doing basic research to discover a wonder drug, I have no problem with them getting a patent. However, if research is done on the taxpayer's tab, I strongly feel that the taxpayer should get the benefit.
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
... funding through some agency such as the Office of Navel Research.
That would be research funded by the Navel Academy, I presume.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
"In other countries, scientists are looked up to and admired (for example, India)."
Yes, and India is a 3rd world country with aspirations of being a 1st world country. Probably because they world people with a "masters" degree in mathematics (which is a friggin' joke), but I digress.
Great. They've been at it a long time. Maybe they'll get there before the end of this millenia.
ha! lessee, we gave the keys to our minds and souls to corporate America, and now we're surprised that a collection of "individuals" possessing all the qualities of a paranoid schizophreniac with a single-minded focus on profit had the wherewithall to screw us over.
will wonders never cease.
The odd thing about this sad state of affairs.... If I'm reading this right, the Federal Government retains royalty free rights to virtually all the research it has funded. Which means, at least in theory, it could seriously leverage its position to purchase drugs for the medicare prescription benefits. Something that has apparently not occured...
Which just goes to show who the politicians really represent.
No, Really? Patents stifle innovation, who would have thought that? Wowsers. I mean look at what the great science of Alchemy has brought us!!! 500 years of super-secret butt-heads keeping all they learned in the cave (don't share, its mine, mine all mine!!!) to themselves. 500 years playing with eye-of-newt and possum giblits. That pesky chemistry with it's shared knowledge, what has it gotten us in a lousy 200 years.... DNA, Pfffft, Superconductors Pffft. I tells ya, that sharing knowledge stuff, it'll never work. 9 out of 10 cave dwellers agree on that one.
It is natural for a single young person to live in a shack and be hungry every day, but to continue doing something (science, poetry, art, music etc.) just for the love of doing it, without any material compensation.
But some day you grow older, get married, have kids
Do you want your wife and kids to live in a shack with you and be hungry every day, so you can pursue your dreams of creations?
Do you want some filthy corporate pigs get rich off your discoveries or creations, so their kids can go to Harvard, and your own kids can go nowhere because you don't have any money to pay for their education?
Keep living off your dreams, young people, and never get married.
Because the day you get married, your wife will f****** clean this altruistic nonsense out of your brains, or you will end up being single and broke again pretty soon.
The Law of Unintended Consequences: Parents
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
Just go to the musty bookshelves of one's university to the mathematics section and look for books before 1970. Many of them will have an acknowledgement of funding through some agency such as the Office of Navel Research.
Not just mathematics but also computer science, including some of the *big names* in the field.
Just yesterday I pulled out a little booklet that gives highlights of the year that I was born... 1955. In this book it gives the prices for typical products and services in that year. Most of the items, i.e. cars, homes, gasoline, clothes, etc. were approximately one tenth of the cost that they are today.
However, there were some very notable differences from this trend. Food prices are only 2-3 times more expensive than in 1955.
But college expenses and medical expenses are now much higher than 10 times the 1955 prices. For example, one year tuition at Harvard was $800 in 1955. It is now about 36x that amount.
Indeed, the Soviet engineer's salary was so small, it spawned its own genre of humor. And yet they still managed to maintain nuclear parity with the West, get men into space, and build cars that would start (with some coaxing) in -20C cold. All in the face of a crippling bureaucracy that made PHBs look like renaissance men.
If this isn't the grossest mismanagement of government funds this side of the Atlantic I don't know what is.
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
Patents limit innovation. Of course it's true. Patents do for innovation exactly what trade barriers do for econimics, and also what knowledge hoarding (closing libraries, etc) does for basic human literacy: these devices are designed to kill. If you want more wealth, drop trade barriers. If you want more literacy, build libraries. If you want innovation, kill patents. Note that greed gets in the way of each of these (personal, corporate, national). I could probably tie freedom to demcracy somewhere here too as yet another analogy, but it's early and I haven't yet had coffee.
"Of course, that's assuming that you consider it moral and just to forcefully extract revenue from people -- who may fully oppose your agenda -- in order to fund that agenda."
You mean like invading Iraq and Afghanistan...and funding Isreal, and sending funding to churches (er...faith based charities), and using the FBI to make sure the record companies get their profits? Or pissing away zillions of dollars in NO primarily to pocket Bush's campaign contributors?
Is that what you meant?
But some day you grow older, get married, have kids ...
My daughter is 26.
You will likely find, if you go around talking to older, "successful" people, that most of them report they and their familes were happiest back in the day when they lived in a shack and went hungry now and then.
My wife bought her own engagement ring. It was a zircon. She thought it was idiotic to spend money on a rock when we could use it better for a decent car or on heating oil. I bought her a CS degree to go with her Antrhopology degree. Geek girl.
The most likely time for a couple to get divorced is when they get money.
KFG
A while ago, I read "Punished By Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes" by Alfie Kohn as part of a class assignment.
It hammered home its point, but quite clearly: whenever you offer money, or any other incentive, to people in exchange for something they would ordinarily do for free, they stop being interested in doing it for its own sake and instead focus on the reward.
This goes for universities and scientists as well as grade school children. By offering scientists millions of dollars in patent rights for something they were already doing just because they were good at it, they've made them lost focus on innovation and discovery.
(That's a mighty good book, by the way, because it covers not just schoolchildren, but how incentives and motivators in the corporate workplace often end up doing the opposite of what they're supposed to do. Scott Adams would be proud.)
Nobody was rich in the old Soviet Union, except, maybe, for a few Communist Party bonzas and a few undercover millionaires.
This is the principal difference between a communist regime and a modern capitalist society like US.
It's a question of basic fairness: if you create something new and original, can some other individual get rich off your creation without giving anything back to you?
In the old Soviet Union the answer was NO: nobody, including you, will make any money off your creativity. Therefore, they didn't even need patents: they had something called
"avtorskoye svidetelstvo", a document confirming that you are, in fact, the original creator, something without any monetary value just to satisfy your pride.
In the US the answer is YES: some filthy corporate pigs will certainly try to add to their already substantial wealth without even thinking of providing some compensation for you, the original creator. That is why patents and copyrights are unfortunately necessary in a capitalist society.
The government doesn't do this because our Congress-critters are completely beholden to big drug companies and insurance companies to fund their campaigns and political party infrastructure, and doing this would make a dent in the drug company and insurance company profits. This is, in general, the reason the Government doesn't commercialize inventions; business interests make sure Congress knows they'll lose campaign funding if they vote for such things, and companies sue for restraint of trade if government branches do compete with them.
So no, the legal system is not amenable to this -- the legal system is amenable to the folks with the most cash.
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
I agree with Daniel's post, there is some computer research that does develop significant new advances. The reason that the vast majority of software patents are garbage is not because software research yields less good results than biotech research but because the patent office allows people to patent what they are doing, not how they are doing it (and also because there is no practical, objective way to determine the non-obviousness of an invention).
But even in the cases where computer research does result in legitimate advancement in the field, I am not at all convinced that granting a monopoly helps the "advancement of arts and science" when it comes to the computer industry. Video codecs are an excellent example of work that does require a good deal of research, and thus fit the traditional criteria of being useful, novel, and non-obvious.
However, what been the effect of codec patents on the industry? It has devolved the standardization process into a political battle where all parties involved are just trying to get their patented technology included, so that they can get their part of the royalty pie. It has significantly increased the cost of video encoding, and the lack of a truly open standard has complicated the task of getting video to people in a format they can play. Worse, the patents are increasingly being used not to protect their invention, but to force certain behavior on the rest of the industry, by refusing to license patents on "standard" formats to groups that do not comply (for example if they don't implement DRM).
As for the benefits of patents, I have a very hard time believing that someone somewhere would not have developed quality codecs in the absence of patents. Many of the encoding techniques developed were started by researchers in Universities who then moved onto industry where they refined their ideas. The effect of industry may have initially been to accelerated codec development through funding research. However, in the long term it appears to have also hindered it by locking the results up in patents, thus limiting the ability of researchers to collaborate and improve upon existing designs.
So all in all, the evidence that codec patents helped the industry is fairly weak, while it has definitely hindered the industry.
As for the merit of biotech patents, well the entire economic model of the medical field in this country is a mess. I am only beginning to wrap my head around what the sources of the problems are, and am in no position to give suggestions as to how to improve it.
You possess a vocabulary that is entirely too large for your own good. :-)
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
What exactly is "Christian Science-Fiction"? It seems like an oxymoron to me. I could understand the idea of Christian Fantasy fiction (although, I will admit, a lot of so-called science-fiction should be re-classified as fantasy) - but mixing the ideas of religious faith (which is untestable and therefore unverifiable, by definition) with science (which is testable and verifiable), seems like two topics which would be at odds with each other (however, this hasn't stopped creationists with their approach of "intelligent design", so I suppose such a genre of science-fiction could exist, no matter how laughable it would be to read it with a sceptical mind)...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Freedom Wireless a "patent troll" ?!!!!!!!!!
You are just insulting people for no reason.
And you can be an ex-con and inventor at the same time.
What is your f****** problem with that ?
Thomas Edison would be the biggest patent troll nowdays, by the way: he had a bunch of patents
but never produced anything on commercial scale.
"Patent troll" myth is being propagated by sleazy
and filthy rich patent counsels working for big
tech companies to facilitate the passage of the Patent Act of 2005,
which will make it legal for them to steal IP from small startups and independent inventors.
For those of you who demand a more principled rigorous intelectual treatment of the general subject of IP, I'd recommend that you consider the Austrian view.
There should be a rule that a post longer than X number of character can't be modded insightful if it lacks paragraph tags.
Read the wiki... "But the resulting brain drain is also credited with boosting the development of the fledgling personal computer industry. Many young computer scientists fled from the universities to startups and private research labs like Xerox PARC."
:)
some good came of this
"I have no idea what you mean here."
I'm sorry, but the two parent posters which already responded to you with a "RTFA" are right: you *should* RTFA.
"It hasn't impacted research much because [/snip your own unsubstantiated theory]"
Ermm...once again: RTFA. It clearly indicates that there IS a considerable impact on research. I mean, what, it has two pages which deal with several actual criteria to show the downfall in innovative research, so how can you say exactly the contrary, unless you *didn't* RTFA?
Or, if you are so convinced of your own theory why it can't be that R&D is in decline, please explain why the facts indicate otherwise.
"Completely untrue. The amount of federal funding flowing into the academic commons has grown over time - particularly in the last ten years."
Are you trying to be obnoxious on purpose? He (the parent poster) clearly was talking about research flowing *back* into the *academic commons*. Federal funding isn't flowing back; it's simply payed by our tax-money. what the prent poster was aluding at, was the age-old principle of 'scientific sharing', which is essential to scientific progress as a whole, because one scientist builds on the work of another, etc. By having further commercialised the whole process (especially with patenting), this process has been severely limited and restricted. Which, as I (and others) have said before, has led to less innovation and less academic sharing - hence the reduced flowing back of research to the academic commons.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
"I did - last night - and I didn't see any mention of some kind of change in the patent process, whereby researchers used to "automatically" receive patents for anything. Show me where the article mentions that."
Where did you get that premisse? Nobody is arguing about a patent reform that automatically grants patents for everything, so I'm inclined to see this as a false dilemma.
That is entirely not the question. Rather it is about the change (amendment) of the law that made (quote): "The law simplified the "technology transfer" process and, more important, changed the legal presumption about who ought to own and develop new ideas--private enterprise as opposed to Uncle Sam." With as result a declining R&D and innovative products.
Strange you should have missed that part, if you RTFA: it's already on page 2, paragraph 2 and 3.
"The only metric they cited about "impact on research" is a really crappy one:[...]"
Untrue, the decline in R&D and innovative new products have been indicated (1)by the produced articles, as you said (and which they themselves say is difficult to pinpoint, but this IS the way in academic circles to put a value onto it, so it's not like they're making the criterion up). (2)They also use the data of the total number of FDA-approved compounds and biologics in a current year, (3)but also at how many priority NMEs are making it through: by both measures, the productivity picture is much worse than it was in 1996. (4)And lastly, they looked at the university-linked businesses which are using these patents, to see what they actually produce in innovative products, which in most cases have almost nothing to show for.
It seems, again, curious you should have missed all that, when reading the article: it's on page 5 and 6.
I agree the causality between this decline, and the Bayh-Dole Act, is not irrefutably proven. I think this is always hard to do, in these matters. But at least there is a strong indication of a correlation, which is more then can be said of your theory. If you're so convinced of the benefits of the law and that it's not true there is a decline of R&D and inovative products (in this case drugs), please explane the data provided by the author that indicates otherwise. And please indicate your data which might substantiate your claim and theory.
I mean, you may dispute the value of 'produced articles' (even when the academici themselves use it as value-measurement), but what, exactly, do *you* offer to substantiate your claims? And I mean in actual data, not esotheric reasonings or opinions.
All things equal, surely you will agree he made a far better case about his theory, then you with yours - at least, as yet.
"How was it "flowing back" before? What magical mechanism existed to reinvest money in successful labs that was tragically shredded by the Bayh-Dole Act and the patent system?"
Hmmm...I'm beginning to see why you 'missed' so much from RTFA. It seems you have a very selective reading.
Let's go by this one step at a time:
Original: "He (the parent poster) clearly was talking about research flowing *back* into the *academic commons*."
Notice the word research.
Now, your answer: "What magical mechanism existed to reinvest money in successful labs that was tragically shredded by the Bayh-Dole Act and the patent system?"
Notice the word money.
Now, did anyone talk about money flowing back, or research? Well, heck, it was research.
Is research and money the same thing?
No, it isn't.
Thus, is your answer to the point?
No, it isn't. And that's why you missed my explanation about what is actually meant by the flowing back of research completely. and that's why you missed so much in the article too: the whole thing was about how that law disturbed the age-old process of 'scientific sharing' by focussing on the commercial prospects of patenting tax-funded research, and the decline in R&D and innovatyive drugs that followed, when it was supposed to stimulate it.
The 'sharply decreased' was never about the incomming money, and if you had read TFA a bit better, we could have spared us this whole discussion.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Actually, money people have been doing risk arbitrage for centuries. It's one of the reasons for the existance of futures and options markets.
Patents which can legally enforce massive profits go hand-in-hand with risk. The bigger the possible payoff, the better that funding highly risky R&D looks to the money people. Take away the lotto chance for a massive payola, and the money people go for a much less risky (and interesting) portfolio of R&D.
What you characterized as crappy was clearly a completely bogus claim that the article is based on one measure of research productivity. This was accompanied by vague and unsubstantiated attacks on .
Frankly, if you don't think that the number of drugs shortlisted for "priority" testing by the FDA is a good metric for biomedical research you need to take some science courses. Proxy variables rarely get much better. Its stuff like this that makes you a shortlist candidate for President.
Watching you flaggelate from ignorant outrage to ad hominem attacks is starting to be fun. And since you had trouble clicking through to page two (or counting to two judging by your "criteria" comment), you can find the link to that elusive quote below. If paragraph two of eight doesn't count as the "top" of a page, you're a pedant in addition to idiot.
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/fortune75/articles
In all former communist countries, you definitely couldn't get rich by doing science, not even in relative comparison to general population. Yet they had a lot of excellent scientists, and produced huge amount of research.
You could do pretty well as an established scientist in USSR; better off than majority of population. There were periods when certain branches of science clashed with state propagandists (genetics, information theory) but in general it was possible to make good living (by Soviet standards certainly - a good car was a luxury back then) off science research. Doctorate paid well, and if you made some real advances recognized worldwide the Party took care to maintain your life at a reasonably comfortable level.
Aritstic expression was far more problematic, as you were bound by official party line. Socialist Realism in visual arts and silly pop songs for musicians were pretty much all genres available if you wanted to live off it.
Lisp is the Tengwar of programming languages.
>One possible alternative is to enable the people
>who would directly benefit from the development
>fund the development. As an illustration
>consider if everyone in the nation who was at
>risk AIDS infection were to put up $100 to fund
>the development of an AIDS "vaccine."
This is the most idiotic statement I read so far in this discussion.
Truly a masterpiece of Slashdot idiotism.
I guess those people at risk would really
love this proposal of yours...
It was meant to be a joke, not to be read, but to be skimmed for humor. If you actually read it, it's just garbage. ;)
Have a nice day.