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Patents Chilling Effect on Science
cheesedog writes "The American Association for the Advancement of Science recently conducted a survey on the effect of patenting on the sciences. The results are frightening: 1/5th or more of all research projects in the United States are being chilled by patent holders. The sheer amount of research being canceled because of licensing issues is astounding, but at the same time many of these researchers hold their own patents and therefore contribute to the problem."
So what's the reason we have them again?
Don't most government-endowed monopolies have chilling unintended consequences on the markets they're supposed to protect?
Copyright gives incredible power to the top publishers (with a lock on book stores), the recording industry, and the movie distributors.
Government's monopoly on violence prevents the average person from defending their property, and use of the monopoly outside of our borders causes anger towards our citizens.
Government's monopoly on prescription drugs causes the costs to skyrocket (death sentence for the poor) and useful drugs to be delayed for years.
Government's monopoly on patent licensing is no different. The playing field is far from level. Drug companies would initially have to charge more to sell their meds, or sell through doctors groups (where generics might be contractually offlimits for those doctors). Patents don't protect bootlegs anyway, which get more pervasive as the web gets larger.
For our society to grow, we need to accept that monopolies are always bad, and only government can create them. There are no natural monopolies. The 4 or 5 times there might have been in the past I'd argue weren't meant to last, but they're gone anyway.
I wish to patent my technique for adding an apostrophe to a noun to make it posessive. For example:
Patents' Chilling Effect on Science
I am in a robotics research team here at UC Berkeley and we too found that often companies patent random stuff that they haven't even fully developed yet. Because patents can be overly broad (like the one on the hardware 'double-click') this can cause problems especially in cases where there is perhaps only one solution (or one cost-effective and viable one anyways) to a given problem. The solution may be blatantly obvious to the scientifically-inclined, but if someone holds a patent on it, what can you do...
I wouldn't complain as much if the patent system hired people halfway-knowledgeable or if they allowed patents only on something very specific (aka ethical to 'patent') and genuinely ingenious. But these concepts of ethics etc. are so hand-wavy that we might as well not even try to 'reform' the system, and instead just get rid of it because otherwise it will be hard to meet the standards we expect.
Perhaps another way to go at it is to have a board of scientifically-inclined folks to preside over the patent system and work at it with newer laws on what can and cannot be patented. Over time as new technologies and ways of thinking come about, such a board can continue to refine the laws. My bid for the people to serve on these boards: college professors from a mix of technical majors from various universities.
In any case, the other question is why would researchers who face this barrier file patents themselves? To do it before someone else does - it's not like prior art holds weight in today's patent system, so it is a quick solution to making sure you don't face problems in the future.
I'll leave you with that.
The chilling effect could be quite useful in the areas of superconductor research.
Part of the problem is that patents have been expanded far beyond their original intention. They were originally set up to expire in 17 years with the option for one renewal. That means that knowledge would be locked down for a maximum of 34 years. At that point it was supposed to pass in to the public domain.
It was changed because large companies had the habit of offering a pittance for licensing someone's patent. If it wasn't accepted, they would simply wait until the patent expired and then use the technology for free. Many people don't realize that the relatively modern addition of variable speed windshield wipers were invented in the early part of the previous century. I forget the exact year.
Now, however, that the patent has expired this is a standard feature on most automobiles.
This is simply the pendulum swinging back the other direction. Invention and innovation will be stifled to the point that the companies will start going out of business, strangled on their own patents. They'll be unable to bring new products to market because everything will infringe on someone else's patent. Companies are already buying other companies in order to obtain "the intellectual propery". If its to the point that you buy the whole company just to get their patents, things are desperate indeed.
2 cents,
Queen B
HDGary secures my bank
Lawyers are destroying this country, heck they practically own it. 90% of congress are lawyers, 9/10 medical suits are frivolous and the 'industry' of medical law is about playing the averages. In my home state of Georgia(USA) medical practioners have their own insurance union, they lose 1 Billion dollars a year defending against frivolous lawsuits. Only 1 in 10 of those suits actually stick...it's practically extortion.
I'd like to see some references to your statistics. They seem too...convenient. 90% this, 9 out of 10 that, $1 billion here, 1 out of 10 there.
Likewise, recent changes to IP are one of the worst things to happen to science and industry. Used correctly IP has its place in prompting innovation, but lawyers are turning IP into something strictly to leverage lawsuits with. That doesn't benefit customers, scientific organizations or industry leaders...but it does syphon mountains of cash to the IP lawyers.
I know it's popular to hate lawyers, so what I'm about to say will probably burn my karma to cinders. But, the simple truth is, it's not the fault of lawyers. They're working within the system, getting paid by clients to do what they do. You want less patent lawsuits? Reform the patent system. Don't burn lawyers at the stake.
Your hate is misplaced.
It is the administration of the patent system that is bad.
The U.S. Patent Office is underfunded, understaffed, and underqualified. Much of this is intentional on the part of big business and "patent companies" who profit off of a dysfunctional U.S. Patent Office not being able to do its job. The reasons things are so bad are purely intentional. Also, if a patent examiner rejects a patent, then a few phone calls are made and the patent examiner (who is more than likely some kid straight out of college) is in hot shit by his superior. So, since the patent examiners just want to get paid like everyone else, they rarely blow the whistle on companies which have a lot of lobbying influence in Washington.
Without the patent system, you would basically have a wild west business climate where the only way to protect your inventions is to hire your own thugs to deal with people who infringe on your monopoly. Of course, someone else could hire their own thugs and just steal your invention (provided they had the expertise to manage it) as well. Neither situation is good for business or a climate friendly to inventors, so that is why we have patents.
I could go on and on about why patents are necessary as well as talk about my real world experience with the system, but I think any sane person would agree patents are a necessary evil to scientific progress in business and industry. Nevertheless, the current patent system is so poorly run and so politicized that it might as well be more of a roadblock to inventors than a safeguard right now.
If you want a functioning patent system for the future, maybe you might want to write to your congressmen about how you think it would be wise to reduce social entitlement payouts to retiring old farts in the forms of medicare and social security, and put the money to better use in the U.S. Patent Office where right it is perfectly OK for a patent examiner to work a couple years for the government and then work for a "patent company" or law firm specializing in patents right after that.
Until then you get what you pay for.
I'm an indian and have lived in India for 28 years. See, the thing is, countries like India and China learn from others' mistakes. The US has had to lead in terms of not just technology, but legislation controlling technology (patents, copyright, trademarks) and everything else associated with it (education, research, the internet). When you lead, there are no guidelines and the outcome is based on your best effort.
Throw in a free economy and lobbying into the mix and you end up where the US is today. Other developing countries can see this and analyse it and if they're wise, try to learn from it. This is what India is doing (and I assume what China is too).
The question remains however, is what will happen once these countries catch up to the US and overtake it (yes, that WILL happen, just not soon and no, I'm not trying to start a flame war). Then they will be left to their own devices and where they go from there will be based on the strengths of their governmental systems, the level of corruption at that stage, etc etc.
In a nutshell, it's hard to lead, but easy to follow.
So don't give your country too hard a time for where it is right now. You guys have done a pretty good job (with technology). Ofcourse, its not the fall that matters, but how you get up.
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
It seems to me that this has happened before. Around the turn of the last century, Lee DeForrest patented a whole bunch of undeveloped ideas and nonsense concerning electron tubes on the theory that something might stick. He really didn't know what he had when he developed the very first triode. But that didn't stop him from trying to patent every conceivable circuit he could imagine.
Unfortunately, Armstrong did know what the tube was good for and actually developed some very innovative circuits that lead to the Regenerative receiver. However, DeForrest's lawyers sued him because they thought they had a patent on the circuit before Armstrong did. The court couldn't sort out the details because they didn't understand the technology all that well either. They awarded damages to DeForrest, whose lawyers were well fed...
Today, you can look at DeForrest's patents and decide for yourself whether he really had a clue as to what a regenerative receiver was. Most technically literate people agree that his patent was merely a fishing expedition.
So here we are today: The AAAS has just realized that there might be a problem with patents. Golly! They're about 100 years too late IMNSHO. This festering heap of a stupid idea called patents began to be a problem when it became apparent that no one person could know all there was to know about science as people could claim in Ben Franklin's day. Today, it's harder and harder to find people who know all there is worth knowing about even a small branch of physics.
This concept of patent reform is so overdue that the best thing we can do about it is to junk the whole edifice and start over. It's that bad. We've known it since the last century. Why is it still here?
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!