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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."
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
I hope this was meant to be funny. I'm sure he'd have gotten a job elsewhere. Whether it allowed him the time to develop his theories is a different matter, but make no mistake someone would have developed them very soon thereafter because all the context was there waiting for an enquiring mind with a slightly quirky and rebelious way of looking at things to work out what was happening.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Problem : I work as a "suit" in a Biotech. I have a Ph.D. not an MBA.
Yes - scientists (myself included) would do it for the love.
Problem - in general a proect I work on or am involved with will burn $1 million before we have a good handle on whether it will work or not.
For a million, you better have the commercial side locked up before you risk it.
Gavin Fischer
The irony in this case is that the Bayh-Dole Act has almost nothing to do with patents. The overlap is essentially nil. Before the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, universities could patent inventions; after the Act, universities can still patent inventions, in exactly the same manner (foregoing the completely unrelated changes in patent law.)
What the Bayh-Dole Act changed is who gets to commercialize federally-funded inventions.
Before the Act, all inventions created by federal grants, which of course are almost all academically-created inventions, were owned by the federal government. But the government had a terrible track record of commercialization. As a result, the technologies and patents just got locked away inside the government and went unused. Eventually, the patents expired; but no company was willing to spend R&D developing a brand-new but unpatented product - if it succeeded, competitors would just copy it.
The Bayh-Dole Act recognized and remedied this functional problem. Universities were allowed to keep and commercialize the rights to inventions created by their employees. That commercialization usually entails patenting the invention, and then exclusively licensing the patent(s) to a single company, so that they can develop a product. In fact, the Bayh-Dole Act places affirmative obligations on the university to commercialize it in a timely manner: if they don't, the federal government can seize the rights to the invention and patents.
Now let's talk results. If you want to see the benefits of the Bayh-Dole Act, look at pharmaceuticals. How many new, extremely useful drugs have hit the market in the last 25 years? I am not a defender of big pharma - their enormous lobbying efforts and enormous profit margins reflect an obese and gluttonous industry - but it's undeniable that they have created a host of useful drugs since the Bayh-Dole Act passed.
So that's the Bayh-Dole Act in a nutshell. Hopefully it's apparent that this has essentially nothing to do with patents. It pertains to who is responsible for commercializing an invention: the university that created it, or the federal government. We can certainly discuss the positive and, yes, the negative aspects to pressuring universities to commercialize their technologies; but that's a completely different discussion than the effect of patents on innovation.
(One common but flawed Slashdot comment that I'd like to head off at the pass: the ridiculous notion that taxpayers are somehow "paying for the invention twice" by first funding the research, and then paying monopoly prices for the drugs. That reasoning is specious, because the public is paying once for two discrete steps. First, an institution creates an idea for curing a disease, like "let's inhibit this protein as a cure multiple sclerosis." Taxpayer dollars cover that step. Second, a company takes that idea and spends $$$$$$$ to develop a drug that executes this principle. That's paid for by customer purchases and health insurance. They're two distinct steps - not "the same thing" being bought twice.)
- David Stein
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
Do you know the definition of ephemeral?
"Function: adjective
Etymology: Greek ephEmeros lasting a day, daily, from epi- + hEmera day
1 : lasting one day only
2 : lasting a very short time
synonym see TRANSIENT
How do you come to term computer technology ephemeral?
Computer technology encompasses concrete inventions and abstract inventions.
Speaking to abstractions, it's likely some computer algorithms will be around much longer than some of the hardware.
"Biotech leads to medicines and other discoveries that are both difficult to discover and inherently valuable"
Do you think sound algorithms are somehow less difficult to discover?
As to "...inherently valuable... I'm schooled in Economics and Commerce, along with other areas. I've read deeply in the subject of value from Aristotle on up, and, to say biotech discoveries are inherently valuable is to state the trivial. Any discovery is "inherently valuable". It is the nature of information that it is valuable, to speak of it as "inherently" valuable is some kind of voodoo.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Your post makes it sound like that's a requirement, and it is indeed in the Constitution. However, its enumeration is in the "Congress may" section, not "Congress must".
In context, it reads:
The Congress shall have power...To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries
It's not recognized as a fundamental right, like property, free speech, and freedom of religion-only as a power granted to Congress to exercise, and only GIVEN THAT the exercise of that power does indeed promote the progress of science and useful art. That point can (and will) be debated here, but I felt compelled to point out that the ability to exclusive control of an idea is not considered a right-it is enumerated as a fully revocable privilege which Congress -may- grant.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
"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
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
You're forgetting that greed is the reason the patent system was created in the first place. By awarding a temporary monopoly to the inventor of some new bit of technology in exchange for publishing their designs, greedy people are encouraged to invent new bits of technology and publish their designs, so that when the patent expires, the rest of society benefits.
Software patents lack a critical part of this deal: reading the patent doesn't make it any easier to reimplement the idea. It's trivially easy to violate Amazon's One-Click patent without reading the patent, or even using Amazon's implementation - just saying "hey, wouldn't it be nice if customer billing information were stored so they could make a new purchase without re-entering anything?" should not be patentable, but currently, just about anything that satisfies that idea will probably violate the patent. The public gains nothing by being able to read the patent. With traditional patents, reading the patent tells you what you would need to know to reproduce the invention.
Sorry if that was a little incoherent; I'm tired.
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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.
"but it's undeniable that they have created a host of useful drugs since the Bayh-Dole Act passed."
Nonsense! Nothing stated without proof is undeniable. As a matter of fact, the exact opposite of that statement was made in the article - they state that these "useful" (new, better - esp. for cancer, not just rehashes) drugs are coming out at a SLOW rate, not in "hosts" . (honestly now, did you actually read it?).
Where are you getting these figures from? You're going to have to do better than that. How about the NME's or high-priority drugs (If you don't know the term RTFA)? Granted, the article states that 2004 was a bonanza year (without stating how much so) - but the previous years?
Let's get some figures from you.
Johns: Well, how does it look now? Riddick: Looks clear.