Slashdot Mirror
Inventing the Telephone, Independently
An anonymous reader writes "There is a nice article about the history of the telephone at AmericanHeritage.com. Most of us know that Alexander Bell beat Elisha Gray to the patent office by mere hours to claim credit for the invention of the telephone, but did you know that two other inventors can also claim the invention, including Thomas Edison? Similar disputes about independent invention and patent ownership can be found regarding the television, the airplane, and the automobile. Maybe it really is true: the economic benefit of encouraging patents is like that of encouraging window breaking."
it was a war on the rights to the First Patent Post.
You can't handle the truth.
(1) SOME patents are bad patents (they patent obvious and/or previously innovated ideas)
(2) Therefore ALL patents are bad and our society shouldn't have patents
(1) is true. (2) is false. (2) does not follow from (1). The hostility to IP on slashdot really amazes me, especially considering all the stuff we would not have if it were not for patents:
AIDs drugs would never have been developed if after billions of dollars spent on research, the drug would instantly be copied by generics and sold for zilch. For example Gilead Sciences was founded in 1987 and burned investor money for a decade before getting its AIDS drug approved. If they couldn't sell it for a high price, investors would stop making expensive long term investments in biotech.
If some invention costs $X to develop, it is ILLOGICAL to invent it if the inventing person/company cannot earn more than $X from the invention. If some knockoff company can come in and steal the idea, then the inventing company will NOT earn $X. This is especially true if the development cost is high and the distribution cost is low. Knockoff companies will compete and drive the product's price close to the cost of manufacturing the product, and there will be no way to recoup development costs.
I agree there needs to be more separating the wheat from the chaffe in patents, but the blanket hostility to patents I so often see here is logically unsound and in the real world, will literally lead to disease, death, and worse lives for everyone.
Jefferson's slaves, who had to translate his ideas into reality, might have appreciated some more immeadiate return for their labor.
Jefferson was blind to the Industrial Revolution but he surely understood only too well that the slave states were not going to be a hotbed of innovation.