Critic of Software Patents Wins Nobel Prize in Economics

doom writes "You've probably already heard that the Nobel Prize for Economics was given to three gents who were working on advances in mechanism design theory. What you may not have heard is what one of those recipients was using that theory to study: 'One recent subject of Professor Maskin's wide-ranging research has been on the value of software patents. He determined that software was a market where innovations tended to be sequential, in that they were built closely on the work of predecessors, and innovators could take many different paths to the same goal. In such markets, he said, patents might serve as a wall that inhibited innovation rather than stimulating progress.' Here's one of Maskin's papers on the subject: Sequential Innovation, Patents, limitation (pdf).

Comments

Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[CRCulver]

It's the Swedish Bank's Prize in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Nobel's estate doesn't recognize it, and there is much evidence that the old man would have been horrified to see the dismal science being rewarded.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[MoonFog]

Easy mistake to make since they are listed on the Nobel Prize's official web page. They are listed as receiving a price in economics though, not a Nobel price in economics, even though they are under the "Nobel Prizes" banner.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[CRCulver]

Seconded. The Nobel Prize in Economics ... is awarded by the socialist Swedish central bank. Their awards are biased.

While Sweden is a Scandinavian socialist state, the economics prize is generally awarded to neo-liberal economists. The judges are based, but they are actually biased against the popular values of their own country.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[Anonymous Coward]

"socialist Swedish central bank"

Haha, thats pretty funny, considering that sweden, with the exception of tax levels, is probably one of the most pro-free market countries in europe (And the world, for that sake. Way more free-market than the us in some ways.). Besides, all the lefties in sweden hate the "neo-liberal" central bank (which is an independent entity that mostly tries to keep inflation down).

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[djmurdoch]

Honestly any economist who doesn't recognize the value of creating and protecting intellectual property rights in an information economy is a POORLY trained economist.

As far as I can see, Maskin isn't against IP, only patents. His article says "copyright protection for software programs (which has gone through its own evolution over the last decade) may have achieved a better balance than patent protection." Copyright is IP too.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[jimstapleton]

there's a value in creating and protecting it, yes, but there is also a penalty in hoarding it.

In these third world countries, the leadership can be fairly well off - the problem is that all of the wealth is congealed into a very small space.

A balance is needed, as with anything.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[Anonymous Coward]

You may have good points, but they are buryed deep beneath your basic misunderstanding of the difference between patents and ip.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[smilindog2000]

As a country develops it's own intellectual property, it becomes important to protect it. For example, India seems to be moving towards proper copyright protection. However, this article is specifically about software patents, not copyrights. Of course software copyrights need to be protected. The authors need to have the rights to do whatever they want with their software, and it should not be stolen from them. Software patents are different. They don't protect your software, but restrict me from writing equivalent software. I can't recall a single example in history where a software innovator was rewarded by their patent - there are probably a few, but they are vastly outnumbered by the software patents that have restricted innovation. Instead of rewarding innovation, software patents make it possible for M$ to attack Linux, while doing nothing to help innovators break into the software market dominated by M$. Don't get me wrong... I'm a big supporter of M$ in general, but lets face it: software patents exist to protect M$ and other huge calcified players, rather than reward innovators.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[mmcuh]

Seconded. The Nobel Prize in Economics is NOT a real Nobel, and is awarded by the socialist Swedish central bank. Their awards are biased.

Honestly any economist who doesn't recognize the value of creating and protecting intellectual property rights in an information economy is a POORLY trained economist. Hernando de Soto has pegged a lack of real property rights as the primary issue that prevents wealth from being created in the third world (agricultural economies).

You do realise that property rights have absolutely nothing to do with "intellectual property"? One says that you are not allowed to steal other people's things, the other says that you are not allowed to create certain things if someone else created it first. Property rights is a rather obvious concept derived from the simple fact that if you take something from someone else, they lose it. "Intellectual property" is a government-sanctioned privately owned monopoly that prevents other people from creating something identical to what you have, or in some cases even just slightly similar.

As government-awarded private monopolies, "intellectual properties" are artificial barriers for the free market and thus you can certainly be opposed to them without being a "socialist".

That said, I doubt the Bank of Sweden knew about Maskin's patent critique, or if they did, that they cared about it. They gave him a prize for some neat theoretical work.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[jkrise]

It's the Swedish Bank's Prize in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Nobel's estate doesn't recognize it..

Okay, I can see where you com from. We'll call it the SBP-Nobel Prize... just like GNU-Linux, does it make you happy now?

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[richie2000]

The Nobel Prize in Economics is NOT a real Nobel, and is awarded by the socialist Swedish central bank. I'll let the IP-hugging mumbo-jumbo in your post slide, but The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences was given the task to select the Economics Prize Laureates starting in 1969. The central bank just comes up with the cash, they do not select the winners.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[Dunbal]

Honestly any economist who doesn't recognize the value of creating and protecting intellectual property rights in an information economy is a POORLY trained economist.

      Yes and I am going to take YOUR word for it over a published, Nobel Prize winning economist...

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[timster]

That's partially because, despite what the people posting here would have you believe, the economics prize is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences -- the same organization that awards the prizes in physics and chemistry. It was established and funded by a grant from the Swedish central bank, but the bank does NOT determine the laureates.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[A beautiful mind]

Seconded. The Nobel Prize in Economics is NOT a real Nobel, and is awarded by the socialist Swedish central bank. Their awards are biased.

Honestly any economist who doesn't recognize the value of creating and protecting intellectual property rights in an information economy is a POORLY trained economist. Hernando de Soto has pegged a lack of real property rights as the primary issue that prevents wealth from being created in the third world (agricultural economies). It follows that in economies (such as the US/Europe) which derive their wealth, more and more, from intellectual property, that the ability to protect those rights is ultimately to our benefit.

Not to rain on your parade but you seem pretty biased or to be more accurate parroting certain right-wing dogmas. Intellectual property doesn't exist. It is an umbrella term at best, but mostly it is a word designed to mislead and cause confusion. The value created by creating and protecting patents and to a lesser extent copyrights is seriously outweighed by the bad effects of giving a monopoly on specific information or methods to private companies or persons.

Copyright and patents do not create wealth, they make all of us poorer, because they tend to inhibit progress as the professor who got the Nobel has shown in the specific case of patents and the IT industry.

Also, quoting wikipedia:

The Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (Sveriges Riksbanks pris i ekonomisk vetenskap till Alfred Nobels minne), usually called the "Nobel Prize in Economics", is a prize awarded each year for outstanding intellectual contributions in the field of economics. The prize is generally considered the most prestigious honor in economics.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[Anonymous Coward]

That is besides the point, ofcourse there would be/could be/is value in creating and protecting intellectual property, even regarding software. The discussion is about what would people consider intellectual property. The argument is that a lot of these IT patents are not valid patents because they either build on other software or don't really innovate. Also, another valid critcism, a lot of the time the result is patented (ie. one-click ordering), while it should be the mechanism behind it. Or the mechanism is explained so convoluted that it seems a very complex invention. If your company considers this kind of intellectual property a beneficial asset, go ahead, but I think in the long run *you* will be the POOR economist.

So, in summary, please stop defending this stupid, unbalanced patent system with the same old hyperbole ("damn commies want to ban all parents"), thanks.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[djmurdoch]

You do realise that property rights have absolutely nothing to do with "intellectual property"?

That's a popular thing to say, but it's just not true. IP is not the same as physical property, but the concept of owning an abstract thing (the monopoly granted by the patent) is pretty closely related to the concept of owning a physical thing.

One says that you are not allowed to steal other people's things, the other says that you are not allowed to create certain things if someone else created it first.

IP corresponds to a "thing", not to a right. The IP "thing" is the monopoly. The property right is the ability to own that thing.

I'd argue that software patents should never have been created, but in countries where they were created, they are certainly things that act a lot like other kinds of abstract property. There are lots of other abstract properties, e.g. your bank balance. Would you argue that changing the number on your bank statement to zero doesn't take something from you?

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[Tim C]

Of course you realise that every single one of those economies started out by vigorously ignoring IP, especially that of other nations, until such time as it had some of its own to protect and only then implemented its own IP-related laws, don't you?

You do also realise that there are many other factors in why the US and Europe, Japan, etc are more prosperous than third world countries, don't you, and that blaming it all on a lack of IP laws is simplistic almost beyond belief?

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[nomadic]

The Nobel Prize in Economics is NOT a real Nobel, and is awarded by the socialist Swedish central bank. Their awards are biased.

What are you smoking? Their awards are biased towards laissez-faire, libertarian, capitalism good anything else bad, free market zealotry.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[MECC]

Honestly any economist who doesn't recognize the value of creating and protecting intellectual property rights in an information economy is a POORLY trained economist.

Promote science and useful arts, indeed. Any system that lets - no make that encourages - someone buy someone else's idea then do exactly nothing at all with it except to sue others in order to leech off legitimate efforts at actually doing something useful is functionally broken, and doesn't make sense in terms of economics either. What kind of software industry will we get with patent trolling allowed to run amok? Just a bunch of companies holding patents waiting for someone else to invest the resources in development and promotion.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[Sique]

Anyone who calls priviledges "property" is a poorly trained economist. They might be assets, though.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[pipatron]

Would you argue that changing the number on your bank statement to zero doesn't take something from you?

I completely agree with you. As long as I can still go to the bank and withdraw the money I have deposit, the number means nothing to me, and they can write it the way they want. That's the nice thing with information.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[siddesu]

Key assumption for the existence of efficient economy is absence of information asymmetries. Intellectual property is an artificially created asymmetry -- information cannot be used to allocate resources efficiently, even if it is available.

Allegedly this 'compensates' the inventor and increases 'knowledge production', but I have yet to see a convincing theory as to why it would happen, and especially why "intellectual property" is the most efficient way to go about it. Conventional economic theory suggests otherwise -- information asymmetries tend to result in inefficient resource allocation, or raise transaction costs in the economy (which is the same thing anyway).

And, btw, as far as I know Hernando de Soto doesn't talk about "intellectual property". He is talking about informal property, as opposed to property based on strict laws, his argument being that the underdeveloped economies have no widespread formal framework to protect material property, which works against the poorest members of society.

I am not aware of his works focusing explicitly on "intellectual property" at all, so if you have some, please throw a link.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you argue that changing your copy of the number to zero rather than the bank's copy takes something from me? Of course not. Copyrights and patents are very different to a number in a bank computer. In ALL cases, you can get societally reasonable results by considering the physical - to change the bank's copy of the number, you'd have to invasively violate the PHYSICAL property rights of the bank to interfere with their data substrate.

Copyright and patent monopolies are plain evil, and their supporters are evil.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[djmurdoch]

You must bank with Gringott's. With the banks I use, they don't actually keep my gold coins in a vault somewhere. The number on the statement is all there is.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[reddburn]

Their awards are biased.

ALL awards are biased. Any award based on a value judgment of "good, better, best" in the top tier of any field is going to sway strongly toward the prevailing biases of the awarding committee, no matter how "objective" they try to be. Although I agree with your main sentiment, that "any economist who doesn't recognize the value . . . is a POORLY trained economist," I can't help but point out that this statement also reveals a bias, in this case, against economics grounded in material resources (which are, no matter where you live, dwindling daily). I'm also inclined to think that "information economy" is a misnomer. Information doesn't drive the economy: in no way can you say that information is scarce. It is, in fact, ubiquitous. What drives the economy is style and utility, and ultimately, speed: the packaging and delivery of information, that which makes your intellectual property valuable to end users.

By the way - hell of a reference to de Soto. His work on bureaucratic hindrance (through corruption and economic cronyism) of economic progress is particularly of note in our current environment: occasionally, a little economic protectionism is necessary, if only to keep certain types from taking power and then driving a nation into unimaginable debt by allowing their buddies to rob the nation blind and charge it to the future.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[pipatron]

damn commies want to ban all parents

Actually I think you're referring to China and their One Laptop Per Child... err.. no.. One Child Per Family policy. You cannot apply that to all communist regimes.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[Mr. Slippery]

Honestly any economist who doesn't recognize the value of creating and protecting intellectual property rights in an information economy is a POORLY trained economist.

Honestly, anyone who doesn't recognize that using the term "intellectual property" to refer to several very different types of purely artificial monopolies created by government action is highly problematic, is ignorant on the subject. Copyrights are not patents and neither are trademarks; refering to them all as "intellectual property" is obfuscatory. And the obfuscataion is usually deliberate, as someone stands to benefit from fooling people into thinking that ideas should be treated the same way as objects, that learning or copying is theft. But it ain't so.

And anyone who believes that patents should apply to mathematical algorithms is a POORLY trained computer scientist.

Hernando de Soto has pegged a lack of real property rights as the primary issue that prevents wealth from being created in the third world (agricultural economies). It follows that in economies... which derive their wealth...from intellectual property, that the ability to protect those rights is ultimately to our benefit.

It does not follow at all, since ideas are a very different thing than land. You distort the issue by using the term "property" to refer to ideas.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[Otter]

As far as I can see, Maskin isn't against IP, only patents.

He's not against patents either, just against certain application of patents. To the degree that you believe that receiving this prize confers total authority, the anti-patent people certainly aren't coming out ahead on this one.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[Anonymous Coward]

Your conclusion...

Seconded. The Nobel Prize in Economics is NOT a real Nobel, and is awarded by the socialist Swedish central bank. Their awards are biased. ... Honestly any economist who doesn't recognize the value of creating and protecting intellectual property rights in an information economy is a POORLY trained economist. From the paper's conclusion...

This suggests a cautionary note regarding intellectual property protection. The reflexive view that
"stronger is always better" is incorrect; rather a balanced approach is required. The ideal patent
policy limits "knock-off" imitation, but allows developers who make similar, but potentially
valuable complementary contributions. In this sense, copyright protection for software programs
(which has gone through its own evolution over the last decade) may have achieved a better
balance than patent protection. In particular, industry participants complain that software patents
have been too broad and too obvious, leading to holdup problems [USTPO]. Also in this regard,
patent systems that limit patent breadth, such as the Japanese system, may offer a better balance.
Thus our model suggests another, different rationale for narrow patent breadth than the recent
economic literature on this subject. My conclusion...

RTFPaper

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[jandersen]

Sweden is a Scandinavian socialist state

I am not sure that Swedes would agree that their country is 'a Socialist state'; but then of course, they are only Swedes, so what do they know. How exactly do you reach the conclusion that Sweden is a socialist state? Or perhaps to you 'Socialist' means anything that isn't as radically in the pockets of rich people as the Good Ole US of A?

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[petrus4]

Careful. You're treading dangerously close to saying that in some scenarios, money might actually be a positive thing. Making those sorts of statements is likely to result in torches and pitchforks being brought out, around here. ;-)

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[russotto]

Hernando de Soto has pegged a lack of real property rights as the primary issue that prevents wealth from being created in the third world (agricultural economies). It follows that in economies (such as the US/Europe) which derive their wealth, more and more, from intellectual property, that the ability to protect those rights is ultimately to our benefit.

No, it does not follow. The differences between real property and IP have been hashed out over and over again; what holds for one does not necessarily hold for another.

Major relevant differences --
1) Lack of exclusivity. One user of intellectual property does not interfere with another.

2) Less limited resource -- with few exceptions, no one is making more land. New IP is created all the time

And a difference in the systems protecting them
3) With real property, a whole system of rights-of-way has been developed to prevent my use of my real property from interfering with your use of your real property, even if my real property stands between yours and some shared resource you need. With IP, it's the opposite -- your patent on your invention can easily prevent me from implementing mine.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[SwashbucklingCowboy]

One says that you are not allowed to steal other people's things, the other says that you are not allowed to create certain things if someone else created it first.

Incomplete. IP rights also says you cannot simply COPY something that someone else has created.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[russotto]

What are you smoking? Their awards are biased towards laissez-faire, libertarian, capitalism good anything else bad, free market zealotry.

That's like complaining that the Nobel Prize in medicine is biased towards genetics and biology and away from beads and rattles...

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[tomrud]

As far as I remember a socialist state is a state where the most companies are state owned and private enterprises are discouraged or forbidden. In Sweden most companies are privately owned and the current government is in the process of selling some of the state owned companies.
Can't anybody mod down the parent troll.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[SgtChaireBourne]

-1 disinformative for you there.

Sweden has never been socialist. It has, during nearly all of the previous century, followed a policy of the "Middle Path" choosing the elements from the free market where they are best applied and elements from socialism where they are best applied.

Nowadays it is following a Bush/ Bliar/Thatcher-style neoliberalism with heavy emphasis on buracracy, privatization and corporate welfare.

Go look at the statistics. During the years Sweden prospered economically, had low debt or a surplus, had good services such as health care, low unemployment, it was during the periods of closest adherence to the middle path. Look at the times where services are few and of poor quality, the budget is in shambles, lots of debt and high unemployment, it is during times when deviation from the middle path has been strongest -- such as the last 15 years.

The Swedish banks are the worst examples of failure of unrestrained capitalism. They have collapsed and been bailed out twice. However, normally when one buys out the debt from a failed company, the buyer then owns the company. Stupidly in the last case, the buyer (the Swedish government) simply handed the banks back to the same asshats that bankrupted them in the first places. These are the clowns that then pick the recipients for the Swedish Bank's Prize in Memory of Alfred Nobel. To try to lend credibility to their scam they, to their credit, have schmoozed into the Nobel celebration. However, the Swedish Bank's Prize in Memory of Alfred Nobel is to the Nobel Prize what films like Ernest in the Army is to fine cinema.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[jejones]

>Of course you realise that every single one of those economies started out by vigorously ignoring IP, especially that of other nations, until such time as it had some of its own to protect and only then implemented its own IP-related laws, don't you?

Yup. In the case of the US, recall Samuel Slater, a guy with a really good memory who indulged in a bit of industrial espionage, going through an English textile factory and seeing how it worked, then coming to the US and building one.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[cnettel]

A key fallacy of your argument is that it would be hard to prove that most kinds of intellectual property creates an information asymmetry in the economical sense. A very real asymmetry is created by the fact that you might avoid certain transactions (or creating certain products) just due to the fear of what patents migth already exist, but the presence of a patent in itself is not creating an asymmetry of that kind.

The fact that intellectual property is based on ownership of "information", in some form, doesn't mean that it's an important ground for information asymmetry. In many cases, it can be quite the opposite. If you know a reliable and acceptable mean to eliminate the asymmetry, even if it means paying, you reduce the consequences vs. the case where the information would be hoarded and hidden more secretively.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[moviepig.com]

I can't recall a single example in history where a software innovator was rewarded by their patent - there are probably a few, but they are vastly outnumbered by the software patents

...in other words, a ratio similar to non-software patents.

Again, the purpose of patents is to motivate widespread innovation... which should apply in software as much as elsewhere, including the non-copyrightable creation of new software processes and methods.

The difference with software is merely its speed of research and development. A 20-year exclusivity license is ridiculous overkill...

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[DanielJosphXhan]

It would follow if the two were remotely the same thing.

But of course they're not. Intellectual property is only useful and valuable when it assists in the creation of real-world value, the very thing that third-world countries neglect.

Other than that, intellectual property has no value. No scarcity, none of the properties that make real-world property valuable.

The only value it can have, then, is the value that we (or they, or whomever) force upon it. IP can have value only by collective agreement. And, unlike real property and real things, that agreement very easily be broken and cannot be easily enforced, making even the agreement worthless.

Unless, of course, everyone is completely honest and law-abiding.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[Arthur B.]

The case for copyright itself may not be as strong as you think. You mention stealing, but stealing implies property rights. Property rights are rights we have in regards to objects, not information.

Let's say you buy a software from Microsoft and agree to a licence that prevents you from distributing copies. You do it anyway and distribute copies. They sue and they win - they should. But what about the persons you gave the copies to? They did not agree to anything with Microsoft, why should they be bound not to use and distribute their copy?

I agree with you, software patents and copyrights are widely different beasts and it is absolutely certain the first ought to be shot, but the ground for copyright is slippery.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[famebait]

[the prize] is awarded by the ... Swedish central bank... ...the socialist Swedish central bank... ...Their awards are biased...

Anyone who can say any these things with a straight
face is a very POORLY informed commentator indeed, and could profitably shut the fuck up.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[smilindog2000]

Agreed. Copyrights lasting 100 years is just silly. I can see reasonable arguments for copyrights lasting the lifetime of an artist or writer, but who in history has ever copyrighted a valuable work, and lived another 100 years? Why do programmers need many years of copyright protection? Since we update the stuff every year, the copyright's always renewed, and if we stop updating it, it's typically no longer worth money.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[CRCulver]

"Scandinavian socialist" is a recognized term with a long history behind it, describing those Nordic countries with a strong welfare tradition. It has nothing to do with the US of A. Note that I do not live in the USA, but I do live in Finland, where most people would agree with the attribution.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[famebait]

That would have be the INN-Economics prize.
INN's Not the Nobel foundation.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[nomadic]

That's like complaining that the Nobel Prize in medicine is biased towards genetics and biology and away from beads and rattles...

Only unlike medicine, after a few hundred years of effort economists still have a lousy track record in predicting or affecting anything. It's not a real science. Economists aren't real scientists.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[Don853]

What is the incentive to innovate if someone else will immediately copy your idea and reproduce it? Pride and a sense of self satisfaction are great, but they don't put food on the table.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[Corporate Troll]

Americans have a negative connotation with "socialism", which most of the rest of the world hasn't. The reason is that we can keep apart the idea of socialism from the bad implementations of socialism, which weren't socialism at all.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[A beautiful mind]

To produce a product. In a broader sense to compete in order to get income and turn a profit, that is incentive enough.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[JSchoeck]

Sweden is not a socialist nation, but a social one. That's a very big difference. Marx and Lenin and all those guys would turn in their graves if they could read /..

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[Mr2001]

Of course software copyrights need to be protected. The authors need to have the rights to do whatever they want with their software, and it should not be stolen from them. Um, except you don't need copyright for that. Even without copyright, it's nearly impossible for anyone to prevent you from doing whatever you want with the software you write. What are they going to do, break into your home or office and prevent you from running it? Follow you around and prevent you from selling copies of it on CD? Nonsense.

Copyright isn't about allowing an author to do what he wants, it's about preventing everyone else from doing what they want. And because of the fundamental nature of information, nothing they might do with their copy can interfere with your ability to do whatever you want to do with yours.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly any economist who doesn't recognize the value of creating and protecting intellectual property rights in an information economy is a POORLY trained economist.

-1 Overly broad assertion with no support.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[Uart]

The fact that my post was moderated as "troll" is in-fact the reason why I rarely post here anymore. Meta-moderation apparently doesn't work, since people -1 posts that they disagree with.

Slashdot is a community with no intellectual freedom.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[rkanodia]

Life of the original author plus 70 years is what the USA has now. So if your favorite artist kicks the bucket tomorrow, their works will enter the public domain in 2077.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[Anonymous Coward]

These are the clowns that then pick the recipients for the Swedish Bank's Prize in Memory of Alfred Nobel.

Nope!

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[Uart]

"Not to rain on your parade but you seem pretty biased or to be more accurate parroting certain right-wing dogmas."
Why because I called Sweden's Central bank socialist? Call them up, they'll agree with me. Or are you referring to my support of property rights? Right Wing dogma? It's a constitutional right to property -- 4th Amendment (check it out).

"Intellectual property doesn't exist. It is an umbrella term at best, but mostly it is a word designed to mislead and cause confusion."

Um. Ok, in the most abstract sense, yes, IP doesn't exist. In the printed form, it exists. In the physical form, it's results exist, but the concept is that IP rights are to protect your ideas. It is an umbrella that covers a number of areas like Trademarks, Copyrights, Patents, Trade Secrets... etc. All of which share a number of very similar characteristics. In this case, I am referring to Patents... The concept behind IP is that the creations of your mind belong to you, to dispose of as you please. For practical purposes, there are some limits on the length of validity of MOST IP.

"The value created by creating and protecting patents and to a lesser extent copyrights is seriously outweighed by the bad effects of giving a monopoly on specific information or methods to private companies or persons."

It isn't a monopoly on information. It is a monopoly on the products of my work. I cannot patent the knowledge that water turns into a gas when heated, but I CAN patent a technology that heats that water more efficiently. I would have little incentive to develop my water-heating technology without a patent, as it would take me a lot of time, and I would likely need to invest money to purchase equipment. Without Patents, my technology (if marketable) would surely be recreated by some large corporation who would have no reason to pay me a royalty.

Software isn't much different. Now we are talking about an algorithm, but how is it much different from the water-heating device?

The patent rewards it's creator, and encourages creation by ensuring the ability of the creator to earn money from his creation.

In regards to the Nobel winner's assertion that software patents reduce or restrict creation, I think he is wholly and completely wrong on this matter. All technologies are in some way derived from others, whether software or not, and mankind has (thanks to property rights) been able to develop quite an expansive portfolio of technologies. Here are a few reasons why he is wrong:

1) If I have a software patent, I would certainly be interested in developing derivative technologies of my OWN product.
2) Patents can be a) licensed and b) transferred -- if YOU want to develop a product that derives from MY technology, you need only approach me with your idea and come to terms with me on a royalty for your use of my patent.

The example I'll give is this: You are a software developer working on a revolutionary new program. The technology you are creating in software will revolutionize the way we use our computers. You quit your job two years ago (to work on this project full time), and have spent all of your life savings keeping yourself fed, clothed, and your rent paid, as well as investing in computer equipment that allows you to create, test, and refine your work. When you finish your work, you have no money, but your product is amazing. You release that product to the world on January 1st, 2008.

By March 2008, Microsoft, with their vast wealth and thousands of employees has replicated your techniques and built their own software that works in exactly the same way as your own. They also release this program to the world, for half of the price you are able to offer it for. They invest a ton of money into a large-scale marketing campaign, and corner the market for this technology easily. They offer you no compensation for your work, and since your sales are minimal, you are forced to declare bankruptcy and go out of business.

Microsoft did not copy your code, only the

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[Uart]

"1) Lack of exclusivity. One user of intellectual property does not interfere with another."

Well, we can all plow your farm... I mean hell, you can't use every inch of it, right?
Property rights aren't about USE, they are about TAKING. In countries without property rights, the government will often come and TAKE from its citizens, properties that are valuable for its purposes.

It is possible for you to TAKE my IP as well, although it obviously occurs in a more abstract way.

"2) Less limited resource -- with few exceptions, no one is making more land. New IP is created all the time"
Once again, it is about TAKING. I invest in property and improve upon that property because that property is mine. I have incentive to build a house on an empty lot, because that lot is more valuable with a house on it. In this sense, REAL property can be created. If I buy your house, and build a skyscraper on top of it, I have created more space and more property.

Any and all creation or improvement of property -- real or intellectual is discouraged in a system where rights to that property are not respected, and there is little or no property incentive. In the third world, people still farm the land, and in an IP/Patent-less country people would still create IP, however -- as I described in my earlier hypo -- the IP created will be limited to shorter, less costly products. Just as the third world farmer dare-not build a hospital on his land instead of farming -- lest it be taken from him.

"a whole system of rights-of-way has been developed to prevent my use of my real property from interfering with your use of your real property, even if my real property stands between yours and some shared resource you need. With IP, it's the opposite -- your patent on your invention can easily prevent me from implementing mine."

It is called a royalty. If you want to build a structure on my land, you can lease that land from me. If you want to build a technology on top of my technology, you can pay me for the right to do so.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[Anonymous Coward]

"Property rights are rights we have in regards to objects, not information."

Neither copyrights nor patents convey legal rights on information.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[Uart]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism
"Socialism refers to a broad array of doctrines or political movements that envisage a socio-economic system in which property and the distribution of wealth are subject to control by the community[1] for the purposes of increasing social and economic equality and cooperation. This control may be either direct--exercised through popular collectives such as workers' councils--or indirect--exercised on behalf of the people by the state."

The means of production CAN be owned by the government in a socialist system, but essentially any system where wealth is re-distributed by government power is Socialism.

I am not a troll because you don't agree with me.

And I retract my statement that the Nobel in Economics is awarded by the Central Bank, I was under the impression that it was (and in a way, it is, it just isn't voted on by them -- fine). I stand by my comments regarding Software Patents however.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[Uart]

"It does not follow at all, since ideas are a very different thing than land. You distort the issue by using the term "property" to refer to ideas."

They are different. Except in the eyes of the law and the United States constitution. Courts in this country, and almost anywhere in the first-world will support the definition of IDEAS as PROPERTY.

It is not a distortion, but rather, a legal fact.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[Uart]

noted. Thanks

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[Mr. Slippery]

Except in the eyes of the law and the United States constitution. Courts in this country, and almost anywhere in the first-world will support the definition of IDEAS as PROPERTY.

You really ought to read the Constitution before you comment on it, you know. It only grants Congress the power (though not the requirement) 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 in no way mentions "intellectual property".

The authorized copyrights and patents are nothing like land deeds, which are 1) issued by states, 2) perpetual, 3) issuable to anyone, not just "authors and inventors" (I didn't create the land my house is on, after all) and 4) not are required to promote the public good. This is because the framers had the good common sense to understand that ideas are not like physical property.

As Jefferson (no mean author and inventor himself) put it,

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. [emphasis mine - tms]

As for the courts, Dowling v United States shows that copyright violation is not theft; that makes it pretty clear that songs are not property.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a popular thing to say, but it's just not true. IP is not the same as physical property, but the concept of owning an abstract thing (the monopoly granted by the patent) is pretty closely related to the concept of owning a physical thing.

Huh? So how exactly do you "own" an idea? How is that somehow similar to, say, my owning a specific item like an alarm clock? And can I have some of whatever you are smoking?

The two things are related to each other similar to as bricks don't fly in the air.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't recall a single example in history where a software innovator was rewarded by their patent

Look at Eolas vs. Microsoft. Microsoft paid 0.5 billion to settle the lawsuit (it was that or removing Internet Explorer).

See: http://www.news.com/2100-1032_3-5173287.html

You could argue that Eolas didn't invent anything, but certainly they could have invented something and protected it, or just protect something somebody else invented.

The point is that software patents work.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course you realise that every single one of those economies started out by vigorously ignoring IP, especially that of other nations, until such time as it had some of its own to protect and only then implemented its own IP-related laws, don't you?

You do also realise that there are many other factors in why the US and Europe, Japan, etc are more prosperous than third world countries, don't you, and that blaming it all on a lack of IP laws is simplistic almost beyond belief?

Also you do realize that countries that implement serious IP rights do not grow beyond 2% per year, while other countries that do not respect IP rights grow up to 10% per year?

As it was mentioned earlier in this thread, IP makes us all poorer while making one of us richer, because it is a zero sum game.

The only problem is that eventually whoever is not profitting from their own IP is seriously poor. So consider writing books, creating companies made of nothing but paper, and register your "inventions". Eventually big corporations will develop serious products that will resemble your ideas and you will sue them and become rich.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you serious about Norway? They are known as the last soviet state over here (Sweden) for a reason.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[Uart]

"ou really ought to read the Constitution before you comment on it, you know. It only grants Congress the power (though not the requirement) 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 in no way mentions "intellectual property"." Oh, I've read it. I have also read any number of Supreme Court decisions that interpret that and related aspects of the Constitution. The US Constitution is a living animal. Lots of things that don't necessarily compute as "property" are called such by the Supreme Court, on a Constitutional basis. One of these things is IP. You can play games with the exact wording all you want, but the passage you quote gave the right to create Intellectual Property as we know it, AND, once that right has been granted it becomes a PROPERTY RIGHT in the same vein as the land you live on. Property rights cannot be revoked by the Government without Due Process -- which is where the 4th Amendment comes in... etc. "The authorized copyrights and patents are nothing like land deeds, which are 1) issued by states, 2) perpetual, 3) issuable to anyone, not just "authors and inventors" (I didn't create the land my house is on, after all) and 4) not are required to promote the public good. This is because the framers had the good common sense to understand that ideas are not like physical property." #1 is not really correct -- maybe a piece of paper is issued by the state government giving you deed to the land, BUT, the RIGHTS to that land are protected by the Federal Government in the 4th and 14th Amendments. #3 is not entirely correct -- gaining land possession through squatters rights is a parallel to "authors and inventors" (you build on the land and live there and it becomes yours). Besides, the IP rights are transferrable. #4 is entirely false -- while the constitution may not describe real property as "for the public good," they also certainly didn't feel that it was necessary to do so. It was to be understood. They went out of their way to protect those property rights through the various due process procedures mentioned. Additionally, (once again) the Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto writes extensibly about how the public good is served by strong protection of property rights. Nonetheless, the parallel isn't really to be drawn on a direct basis -- the similarities are in what YOUR RIGHTS to the property are designed (and do) accomplish (and the means for those rights to be sold, leased, shared, etc.). Jefferson may not have believed that Ideas could be property, but he did support the concept of Patent Rights for the same reasons that I do: to encourage invention through financial incentive. "Jefferson, always the scientist, warmed to his duties and became more open to the idea of patents when he saw how many inventors put forth their ideas as a result of the new system of protection, claiming that "it had given spring to invention beyond my conception. " (cited) As for Dowling, I would mostly agree with the decision in that case. Theft, in regard to copyright and other forms of IP would usually occur when someone else undertook an enterprise to PROFIT from your IP. The rights are not related to the physical media that may contain the IP, but rather to the idea itself. From your own link: "Infringement implicates a more complex set of property interests than does run-of-the-mill theft, conversion, or fraud." As I've said, the SCOTUS recognizes IP as property. In this case, they found that an illegally-made copy of a copyrighted work doesn't equate to run-of-the-mill theft. The man, Dowling was convicted of multiple counts of interstate transportation of stolen property. This was overturned on appeal (obviously) on the grounds that the copyright infringement did not equate to run-of-the-mill theft or conversion (most likely because the copyright owner was never actually dispossessed of those r

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[Copid]

In the US, "socialist" means "requiring taxes" and labeling something as such is the fastest and easiest way to shoot down any suggested action by the government. You should usually be screaming when you use the word, though.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[Copid]

Well, we can all plow your farm... I mean hell, you can't use every inch of it, right? Property rights aren't about USE, they are about TAKING. In countries without property rights, the government will often come and TAKE from its citizens, properties that are valuable for its purposes.

The key point here is that patents are all about use. This is a fundamental failure of how the patent system is being abused now. If you come up with an idea, patent it, and then never use it for anything, essentially all you've done is taken an idea that existed in the space of "ideas that might be used for the betterment of the world" and erased it for the duration of the patent. The point of granting artificial scarcity to a nonrival good is that the good wouldn't have existed at all had the IP right not been granted. Granting IP rights to organizations who simply hoard them has exactly the opposite effect of what the system intends. Perhaps it grants some emotional validation to people who believe that ownership of all things tangible and intangible is the highest good, but it's certainly not an efficient system, economically or otherwise.

I'm all for patents if they're implemented in such a way that they actually encourage enough useful production to offset the inefficiency they bring into the equation. I'm not sure that lengthy patent terms for a naturally fast moving industry combined with the industry's tendency to file for "defensive" patents has proved to be such a system.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[Uart]

"The key point here is that patents are all about use. This is a fundamental failure of how the patent system is being abused now. If you come up with an idea, patent it, and then never use it for anything, essentially all you've done is taken an idea that existed in the space of "ideas that might be used for the betterment of the world" and erased it for the duration of the patent."

Perhaps the USPTO ought to revert to Jefferson's practice of asking to see a working model of whatever the patent is for? This might be something worth contacting your congressman about.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[russotto]

"1) Lack of exclusivity. One user of intellectual property does not interfere with another."

Well, we can all plow your farm... I mean hell, you can't use every inch of it, right?

Of course I can. On the other hand, if you build a device I invented, my use of that invention is not impeded.

It is possible for you to TAKE my IP as well, although it obviously occurs in a more abstract way.

I can perhaps take the patent itself, by fraud. But I can't take the invention it describes. Which one is the IP is just a matter of terminology.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[Copid]

Perhaps the USPTO ought to revert to Jefferson's practice of asking to see a working model of whatever the patent is for? This might be something worth contacting your congressman about.

Something like that may be useful, if cumbersome. An alternative that puts less of a burden on the USPTO (which, based on some of the silly things they approve and how long it takes to get silly things approved, they really don't have the resources to handle) might be an alternative way of challenging the validity of a patent. It's already acceptable to mount a legal challenge based on prior art, for example. An equivalent option might be allowing a challenge based on chronic non-use. It could simply be considered abandoned IP and returned to the public domain.

My fundamental point is that regarding intellectual property as some sort of moral right rather than an artifice adopted out of economic convenience makes it much harder to make useful policy decisions like that one. If we look at IP as an effective way of promoting the useful arts, then the decision about whether or not to implement my suggestion would be a simple cost/benefit analysis. The cost would be some additional complexity to the system and the potential that it would slow down innovation by companies that tend not to make use of their inventions. The benefit would be preventing useful ideas from being languishing and prevents the patent system from being used to achieve ends that are exactly the opposite of what it was intended to do. If IP is some sort of inherent moral right that's 100% analogous to rival physical property rights, then that discussion is a non-starter. In that framework, an organization has every right to register IP left and right for the sole purpose of preventing it from ever being used. This seems to me to be an impractical and unproductive way of looking at it.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[Uart]

Ultimately the Patent system is a legal construct designed for economic convenience. HOWEVER -- once those property rights have been created and conferred, a moral right to them develops. Who are we to tell you that you have something (the right to something) and then take it away?

You would have to apply Due Process to the whole thing, although, I can see a loophole where the courts could (and should) declare that IP that is not being used by its owner and it doesn't look like there is any intention to use it, has no actual value to the owner, and damages would either not be recoverable, or be limited to some token amount (like $1). There is plenty of common-law support for a decision like this, however, I'm not sure what the statutory requirements would be.

IP rights are not very analogous to chattels (your wallet, car, computer...), but they DO operate in a manner that is very comparable to real property, IMHO. I do believe that there is a moral right to IP, however, but I am willing to concede that not all ideas are necessarily IP, and I also will concede that it ought to be the owner of the IP's responsibility to maintain his possession -- by defending it in court, and also by acting upon those rights (distributing Copyrighted work in some manner, producing tech. protected by patents, actually using a trademark to do business, etc), or allowing someone else to do so (via licensing/whatever).

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[anandsr]

The thing is that you cannot own ideas the same way as you own a physical object. For a physical object you have paid for everything that was needed to build it. But the same is not true for ideas. Ideas like objects don't arise from thin air. They are based on some raw materials.

For example a chair is made up of wood, some nails, you also have to use some tools to build it. You can rent the tools and pay for the raw materials. This way you have paid for everything that goes into making the chair. The same is not true of an idea. Lets take an example of music. Can music be created in a vacuum? No. It needs the octave. It needs the knowledge of several instruments. When you make music, you need to have some grounding into music. Have you paid for all those things? No. So how can you claim exclusive rights to music that you did not created in vacuum.

I am not against copyright. Musicians do need to obtain some benefit from their work. But the music should go back to the public domain from where you had taken your inspiration. There is also the point that a popular piece should not allow a person to rest on his/her laurels and not need to produce anything. When the rest of the people have to toil daily for their food, why should authors and musicians be singled out as the privileged class and have to work for creating only one good piece. I would prefer if the musicians are forced to keep on creating things, for their food like the rest of us. The authors are forced to keep writing books for putting food on their table.

The copyright and patents should be defined in such a way that it does not defeat their purpose. Copyright was created to prevent anybody to make money off of authors work without paying anything to the authors. Patents were created to give an incentive to inventors so that they would show their ideas to everybody, and not keep them secret.

I don't know why trade secrets are afforded any kind of protections at all. This is a great mystery to me. Trade secrets when exposed should stay exposed, and government should do nothing about it. Why have trade secrets and not apply for patents? Nowadays what is happening is that people are applying for patents on obvious things for preventing startups from competing and keeping secret non-obvious things. Exactly things that we don't want.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[yndrd1984]

IP is not the same as physical property, but the concept of owning an abstract thing (the monopoly granted by the patent) is pretty closely related to the concept of owning a physical thing.

That similarity only exists in the legal system. In any practical sense, copyrights and patents are in no way similar to physical objects, and there's no reason that our legal system must treat them the same way.

IP corresponds to a "thing", ... the monopoly. The property right is the ability to own that thing.

I don't even know how to respond to that. Just look at the words - "property rights" deal with property, "copy rights" deal with copying. Nouns and verbs are about as different as you can get.

There are lots of other abstract properties, e.g. your bank balance.

I am contractually owed some amount money by the bank, but I don't own my bank balance. I do have a right to keep you from interfering with that contract, but the only reason a property right would come into play is because that amount is how the bank and I track property. Saying that duplicating a copyrighted song is theft is the same as saying slander stole my good reputation, or a rape stole someone's virginity, or a baseball player stole second. The word "stole" can be used that way, but only as an analogy - reputations, virginity and "which base you're on" aren't property - period.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[smilindog2000]

...in other words, a ratio similar to non-software patents.

I strongly disagree. The small company I founded has some hardware patents in the structured-ASIC space. These patents attracted investors who otherwise probably would have passed us by. Our little space would not even have been explored, had it not been for hardware patents. Software patents generally have far less importance for small startups. Our hardware patents aren't stopping anyone else from innovating (the way software patents do), since no one else would even bother with the expense of exploring this space without a patent.

A programmer generally doesn't need software patents to attract investors. He can often build the first product version himself. As the article suggests, most innovation in software is a small incremental improvement on existing work, which typically can be implemented cheaply and quickly, without requiring outside investors, or the potential of owning a market for several years. Software patents often have the potential to restrict innovation, as it is quite likely that some random person will want to not only implement the innovation on their own, but improve upon it.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[djmurdoch]

The thing is that you cannot own ideas the same way as you own a physical object.

Right, I agree. The idea isn't the IP, it's the patent or copyright that's the IP. It's the patent or copyright that is the "thing" you own. That's why I objected to the GP's claim that property rights have nothing to do with IP.

Patents can be bought and sold just like other items of property. They could be stolen (though the way you would steal a patent is quite different from the way you would steal a car: it would involve forging a new registration for it, or a bill of sale, or something like that).

People sometimes say that the ideas are their IP, and I'd say that's just sloppy speech. Ideas have value and may have originators who consider themselves to be owners, but I agree they're not property. IP in the form of patents, copyrights, etc. is a way to bridge the gap, to create a form of property based on something that isn't.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[djmurdoch]

IP is not the same as physical property, but the concept of owning an abstract thing (the monopoly granted by the patent) is pretty closely related to the concept of owning a physical thing.

That similarity only exists in the legal system. In any practical sense, copyrights and patents are in no way similar to physical objects, and there's no reason that our legal system must treat them the same way.

In the practical sense that they can be legally bought and sold and owned, they are similar to physical objects. I agree that without the legal system they wouldn't be property, and that there could be a legal system that didn't treat them as property. But our legal system *does* treat them as property, so claiming that property rights have nothing to do with IP is just wrong.

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[lastninja]

Dude what are you smoking? During the record years of 1950-1960 the total tax burden in Sweden was never more than 21 percent of GDP, which was less than the US and Western Europe at the time. The Social Democrats polices during those years were essentially libertarian, sure they had a lot of left-wing rhetoric, but actions speak louder than words, right?

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[darksith69]

There are people who don't like to lump everything in the term IP precisely to avoid these confusions: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.xhtml

Re:Not Nobel Prize in Economics

[yndrd1984]

But our legal system *does* treat them as property, so claiming that property rights have nothing to do with IP is just wrong.

You're correct only within the legal system and only with respect to certain aspects. Actual property (AP) can only be taken under eminent domain, while IP can be granted or taken away at the whim of Congress. AP exists whether or not the legal system recognizes it as property, while IP literally doesn't exist at all without legal sanction. AP rights are eternal by default, while IP is always a temporary phenomenon.

I should point out that part of the reason I'm concerned about this is that there's a concerted effort to blur the distinction between AP and IP. Copyrights last longer and longer, fair use is harder to invoke, copyright violation is already called "theft" without a hint of irony, and legislators are pushed to make civil offenses criminal ones. If it weren't for that, I wouldn't be nitpicking so much.

Has anyone else noticed...

[neokushan]

The similarities between software development and Evolution are striking. As this article states, software tends to progress slowly, building upon the previous generation, improving on it and occationally adding new features to give it the advantage over it's competition.
But when a software product progresses with little or no competition to speak of, it's innovation stops, it gets bigger, slower and more bloated.

Re:Has anyone else noticed...

[jimstapleton]

I'd argue that software in general tends to get bigger, slower and more bloated.

Typically, new releases of software tend to have more features - these added features are what cause the bigger-slower-bloatier effect, as the take space to store, time to execute, and not everyone wants them. I don't know of one piece of software that has managed to avoid this fate.

Re:Has anyone else noticed...

[allcar]

At risk of starting a religious flame war, software engineers like to think that they design software. Evolution, as we know, requires no designer, but simply proceeds by trial and error.

Re:Has anyone else noticed...

[asliarun]

The similarities between software development and Evolution are striking. As this article states, software tends to progress slowly, building upon the previous generation, improving on it and occationally adding new features to give it the advantage over it's competition. Hey, that sounds like my relationship! Since it is not intelligent design, it is probably evolution.

Re:Has anyone else noticed...

[Anonymous Coward]

Kill the competition. Bigger, slower and more bloated. Reminds me of America. *ducks and runs*

Re:Has anyone else noticed...

[jimstapleton]

actually - software development is trial and error also.

The difference is not the trial and error part, but the fact that in evolutionary theory, the trials are random, in computer software design, the trials are not (and are usually kept unless the error is considered really bad)

Re:Has anyone else noticed...

[Dunbal]

Kill the competition. Bigger, slower and more bloated. Reminds me of America. *ducks and runs*

      Valid point. Only the competition is not "dead". In fact, it's only beginning.

Re:Has anyone else noticed...

[Comatose51]

Yochai Benkler[sp?] called it the "Shoulder of Giants" effect in his book the "Wealth of Networks". He noted that innovations is one of those processes where the output serves as an input for the next cycle, meaning when you innovate your discovery can be used for more innovations. Needless to say, he argues against patents and this is coming from a law professor who gained an incredible insight into open source software development. Highly recommend his book.

In the "Myth of Innovations", the author, who I forgot, also talks about innovations are not inevitabilities but as a tree with different ideas branching off. A lot of them will be pruned and turn out to be failures in their environment but a few will survive. His insight was that innovations are more like trees, not lines, and their success depend on the environment they were developed in. The right solution for the wrong problem is still a failure. The two makes it sound awful lot like evolution like you mentioned.

Re:Has anyone else noticed...

[knight24k]

But when a software product progresses with little or no competition to speak of, it's innovation stops, it gets bigger, slower and more bloated.

I guess that explains Vista.

Re:Has anyone else noticed...

[TheUni]

Software evolution? Heresy!

Linux was created in six days by the almighty Linus. On the seventh day he rested as it compiled.

Re:Has anyone else noticed...

[theantipop]

I would say software more closely resembles "intelligent" design. Unless you are talking about my software, in which case it could best be described as "I hope no one sees this" design.

Re:Has anyone else noticed...

[SwashbucklingCowboy]

Most technology progresses slowly. As people understand the technology they figure out ways to make it better. Examples include cars, airplanes, electronics and nuclear weapons. Software is hardly unique in this regard.

Re:Has anyone else noticed...

[AlXtreme]

Typically, new releases of software tend to have more features - these added features are what cause the bigger-slower-bloatier effect, as the take space to store, time to execute, and not everyone wants them. I don't know of one piece of software that has managed to avoid this fate.

How about Netscape -> Mozilla -> Phoenix?

I'll give you that Mozilla Firefox currently is comparable in bloat (and features, in many cases) to Netscape, however Phoenix and the earlier Firefox releases were a dream compared to the earlier Gecko-based browsers. Who needs a feed-reader, I just want to browse the web ma'am!

In general software does tend to get bigger and slower over new releases, but when said software goes open source anyone can evolve it further in the direction they want. Openoffice.org is a good counter-example though, but I'm hoping IBM will pick up the slack.

Re:Has anyone else noticed...

[jimstapleton]

But, in most cases, weren't these either

(A) re-writes of the code base
or
(B) takeing a minimal functionality codebase/toolkit (i.e. Gecko), and adding fewer features than the competition?

In the case of (A), you can argue it's not really the same software any more, just a conceptual child. For B, it is at least larger than the base app, just better implemented in terms of size/speed/bloat than the competition.

Re:Has anyone else noticed...

[foniksonik]

Have you looked at DNA lately? In the ancient bacteria, fossil fishes and fungi of the world the DNA is svelte and cleanly coded.... all streamlined to do a few tasks very efficiently, then move forward a few billion years and you get rats and primates.... all bloated with junk and things like consciousness that are completely unnecessary to survival, just bells and whistles really.

I'm not sure what it is you're arguing against.. sounds like you're agreeing with parent post 100% ;-p

p.s. so when is the bloat in our software going to self-actualize and become our computer's soul? I hope it's not based on Windows... what a freakin mess that would be, all freaked out about security, indecisive and completely self-conscious about being genuine... ugh it probably WILL be windows, that sounds like 99% of the people I know.

Re:Has anyone else noticed...

[jimstapleton]

Reread my post, your comment, while partially ignorant of biology and genetics, is also completely irrelevant to my point.

You are talking beginning point and end point - which is irrelevant to evolution by the way. I was discussing the process.

Oh, and the stuff you see in in many multicelluar organisms (like conciousness), is not bells and whistles. There is junk DNA, but even it often serves a purpose (especially if you consider evolution).

Re:Has anyone else noticed...

[darkmeridian]

I am in the minority here, but I think the biggest problem with software patents is how long the patent term is compared to the progress of the art. In the United States, you get twenty years from filing. Imagine the progress made in the software in that time frame and compare it to the progress in the field of airplanes, or carpet manufacture.

Much of scientific progress is evolutionary, which is fitting in some way. Everyone stands on the shoulder of giants. Watson and Crick didn't just discover the structure of DNA, nor did the Wright Brothers just decide to build an airplane. All their work came on the shoulders of others, but we wouldn't say that their discoveries aren't patentable.

The same is true of software patents. If you believe in patents in general, but disagree with software patents, I think the true objection actually lies in the length of the term and excessive protection.

Re:Has anyone else noticed...

[sacrilicious]

Have you looked at DNA lately?

Not... since surfing porn before breakfast, I guess...

Re:Has anyone else noticed...

[Anonymous Coward]

Software is basically an 'idea'. Patenting 'ideas' seems to me one of the worst 'slippery slopes' we face nowadays. The actual implementation -the 'code'- is already protected by copyright law.
Patenting the progress bar, clicking and double-clicking is a perfect example of why software patents are stupid and dangerous, nevermind whether the patents in question are truly innovative or not.
A shorter patent term won't ease things for the small developers, and that is where most innovation in computing has come from for the last 30 years.
Imagine someone back in the 60's patenting 'gaming' with a computer -software patents didn't exist back then, thank the Lord-. Nowadays the most technically advanced game available would be something like Tetris, and only Microsoft could sell it to you, for 200 quid.

Re:Has anyone else noticed...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Shoulder of Giants quote/concept was made famous by Isaac Newton who used it to describe his accomplishments in the maths and sciences.

"If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants."

Apparently, this quote predates him though.

Re:Has anyone else noticed...

[BootNinja]

Actually, when I first took up against software patents, I had no problem with regular patents. My initial objection was that software is an algorithm, much like a mathematical function, which is expressly NOT patentable.

I have since changed my mind and believe that all patents and copyrights do more harm than good and should be abolished. But initially that was not so, and my objection was logical and had nothing to do with terms or excessive protections.

Re:Has anyone else noticed...

[l0b0]

Have you looked at DNA lately? In the ancient bacteria, fossil fishes and fungi of the world the DNA is svelte and cleanly coded.... all streamlined to do a few tasks very efficiently, then move forward a few billion years and you get rats and primates.... all bloated with junk and things like consciousness that are completely unnecessary to survival, just bells and whistles really.

Yes, it's bloated. But that doesn't mean it wasn't useful at some point. Also, consciousness is not bells and whistles - Humans have become brilliant at survival because of it. The Selfish Gene has some excellent points in this regard.

Re:Has anyone else noticed...

[Anonymous Coward]

There is essentially no non-denatured old fossil DNA to examine.

Weathering destroys DNA extremely rapidly, and of course there are no soft tissues preserved at all in rocky fossils, let alone nucleic acids.

Even in the case where weathering is minimized (some amber fossils, for example), the decomposition half-life of helical DNA given Earth's mean background ionizing radiation is on the order of a few thousand years; non-helical DNA and RNA (as in Archaea and viruses) decomposes even more quickly.

We have not found any fossils that have been isolated from natural levels of ionizing radiation, so we have not found any case where useful DNA fragments older than a few thousand years have been uncovered.

Speculation about the arrangement of nucleotides in early single celled organisms is therefore just that -- pure speculation. Some of it is founded upon the endosymbiont hypothesis, which argues that DNA-bearing organelles are internalized symbiotes. The DNA in mitochondria, chloroplasts and a variety of other organelles in eukaryotes change very slowly compared to nuclear DNA, which suggests a longer extrapolation horizon for similar independent prokaryotes. The DNA in mitochondria, chloroplasts and many prokaryotes have far fewer nucleotides per molecule than any eukaryote.

This ties in with the cull of electron transport chains as molecular oxygen became plentiful in the atmosphere -- those that could not function aerobically were driven underground (literally), became extinct, or entered into a symbiotic relationship with a functional aerobe that could offer surplus energy in exchange for protection from a relatively oxygen-rich environment. Most obligate anaerobes are prokaryotes, and often have simpler genomes than aerobic organisms.

Therefore, you could be right that ancient single cellular organisms had "svelte and cleanly coded" genetic material. We just don't know.

In the ancient bacteria, fossil fishes and fungi of the world the DNA is svelte and cleanly coded....

There is no reason to expect that fish-like animals from the Cambrian would have very different genomes than comparable fish-like animals of the present day. On the contrary, the common ancestry part of evolutionary theory suggests that their DNA should be very similar.

all bloated with junk and things like consciousness that are completely unnecessary to survival, just bells and whistles really

Consciousness is a word for metaphysics arguments. Use "large and complex brains" instead, since they appear to correlate with intelligence, in as much as intelligence is quantifiable.

Volume and complexity come at a substantial energy cost to the organism. If this new material does not get paid for by environmental changes (external abundance), increased food intake, or decreased cost of acquiring food, then the energy will be diverted from reproduction.

Since biological success is the production of viable offspring, this means that "completely unnecessary" mass will be selected against.

We actually see this readily in bacterial antibiotic resistance (resistance usually comes at a significant energy cost, and a mostly-resistant population that finds itself in an environment where the antibiotic in question is not present will revert to an almost entirely non-resistant popualtion). We also suspect that this is behind vestigial organs.

"Junk" DNA is a poor term because the replication of DNA -- even if it is apparently entirely non-coding -- comes at an energy cost proportional to the number of nucleosides required. Again, an increase in the number of base pairs in a genome must be paid for through increased intake or decreased expenditure, so one would expect DNA to grow more economical over many generations, rather than less.

Thats all nice, but

[should_be_linear]

since when geniuos minds play any significant role in politics? I imagine politician thinking "This guy would would give me half a million if I support software patents BUT there is this famous research study... Oh god, if I only could support both!".

Re:Thats all nice, but

[EveryNickIsTaken]

Holy shit, it's Borat! I didn't know they had the internet in Kazakhstan...

Well Duh!

[Citizen of Earth]

In such markets, he said, patents might serve as a wall that inhibited innovation rather than stimulating progress.

Do I get a Nobel Prize for saying "No shit, Sherlock!"?

Re:Well Duh!

[AusIV]

He didn't get a nobel prize for researching software patents. He got a prize for research into a new Economic theory, it just happens he's applying that theory to his research of software patents.

Re:Well Duh!

[Anonymous Coward]

No but keep thinking and you might get yourself a Darwin award!!

Re:Nobel Validity

[richie2000]

So, if the Nobel committees can so blow this prize, going back to giving it to the dictator Yasser Arafat, do the other prizes have meaning? Are they better vetted than the Peace Prize? How and Why? Because the peace prize is awarded by Norwegians, the others are all awarded by Swedes. http://nobelprize.org/prize_awarders/

Re:"Nobel price"

[jimstapleton]

what is it with all the people calling it the "Nobel Price" today?

Re:Nobel Validity

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a quote from the official statement put out by the committee on why Gore was selected:
"Extensive climate changes may alter and threaten the living conditions of much of mankind. They may induce large-scale migration and lead to greater competition for the earth's resources. Such changes will place particularly heavy burdens on the world's most vulnerable countries. There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states."

One point a lot of people are missing is that often the prize has gone into people's efforts towards peace and not their accomplishment at providing peace. It is almost a sort of encouragement to continue their work. Sometimes it doesn't always go that way.

Another point is that Arafat was not a dictator, he couldn't have been as their is no Palestinian State. He was handpicked to lead the Palestinian Authority by the west and Israel (big mistake). He was given the prize for his combined efforts with Israeli leaders back then towards trying to form a peace deal - it was an acknowledgement and encouragement for his efforts. In the end he failed woefully. That in no way diminishes or invalidates the prize.

Such Markets

[ChetOS.net]

"...software was a market where innovations tended to be sequential, in that they were built closely on the work of predecessors, and innovators could take many different paths to the same goal. In such markets..." Out of curiousity, what are the other "such markets" that he is referring to?

Re:Such Markets

[Xiaran]

One I can think of would be CPU development...

I guess I'll be devils advocate...

[distantbody]

(emphasis mine)

He determined that software was a market where innovations tended to be sequential, in that they were built closely on the work of predecessors, and innovators could take many different paths to the same goal. In such markets, he said, patents might serve as a wall that inhibited innovation rather than stimulating progress.

...That still leaves the opposition with plenty of wiggle room; they don't exactly sound like the words for an open-and-shut case...

Re:I guess I'll be devils advocate...

[Watson Ladd]

Why do you think economics is the dismal science?

This may not lead to patent reform very soon

[Anonymous Coward]

The USofA makes a lot of money selling its IP to the rest of the world. Getting countries like China to play nice with our copyrights and patents is a 'big deal'. It is therefore unlikely that Uncle Sam will soften his position on either. Mickey Mouse will be copyrighted forever. Ridiculous patents will still be granted and enforced. Patent trolls will continue to get rich.

The trouble with the above is that innovation will move to other countries and America will be left behind. I can easily envisage a scenario where Linux is driven out of America by a patent troll for instance. The rest of the world will abandon Microsoft and that revenue stream will dry up.

The only way we can keep ahead of the rest of the world is by fostering innovation. That requires a lot of legal reform. I just don't think the entrenched interests are willing to let it happen in a timely manner.

Re:This may not lead to patent reform very soon

[Anonymous Coward]

I just don't think the entrenched interests are willing to let it happen in a timely manner. Perhaps, but they are mortal. I've yet to meet anyone under 30 who thinks copyrights and patents are particularly reasonable (though I am in europe). The older generation is mystified as to our "lack of rebellion". Well, there is a major rebellion, they just don't see it yet - we will overturn their intellectual monopoly law. http://pp-international.net/

What is obvious to the dev community...

[zullnero]

Is mindblowing to the average person. This is the sort of paper that really needs to be distributed as much as possible (but rewritten to be understandable to the layman), because there really needs to be a great deal of political support for such an exemption from the patent process here. The biggest problem is that the software industry has already defined a piece of software as a patentable product, similar to a car or a monitor, and the general populace believes that to be true. However, you don't make a new car by tearing out the carburetor of a 1995 Ford, clean it up, add a couple parts from a 2002 Chevy to it, and stick it into your new car. However, that is precisely how software is generally made. There's your layman's explanation right there.

Re:What is obvious to the dev community...

[pipatron]

This is the sort of paper that really needs to be distributed as much as possible (but rewritten to be understandable to the layman)

There's your layman's explanation right there.

So write it up into a nice form and publish on your blog! (you do have a blog, don't you? It is the year 2007 after all).

Re:What is obvious to the dev community...

[SwashbucklingCowboy]

Yeah, you make a new car by replacing the engine and leaving the chassis, transmission, steering, etc. all intact.

Real big difference...</sarcasm>

Re:What is obvious to the dev community...

[Darren Bane]

You say that "the software industry has already defined a piece of software as a patentable product". This is only the _American_ softare industry--if you want to destroy your own international competitiveness, nobody will stop you. Software patents are illegal in Europe (although we're fighting hard to keep it that way).

Re:What is obvious to the dev community...

[CodeBuster]

However, you don't make a new car by tearing out the carburetor of a 1995 Ford

Incidentally, the last new production carbureted car sold in the US was the 1990 model year of the Subaru Justy.

Re:What is obvious to the dev community...

[ricegf]

Software patents are illegal in Europe (although we're fighting hard to keep it that way).

When you get a chance, could you please send some help our way? We whipped Nazism as a team, let's make the world safe from software patents as well! :-)

Re:What is obvious to the dev community...

[Husgaard]

Yes, this paper is mindblowing, and more people should know about it. But this paper is also theoretical, so it can be disputed by IP fundamentalists as having little to do with the real world.

But Research on Innovation has a lot of other interesting papers.

In particular I like the paper AN EMPIRICAL LOOK AT SOFTWARE PATENTS. This paper is an empirical investigation of the effect it had on innovation in the IT industry when software patents were legalized in the US.

From the abstract:

We find evidence that software patents substitute for R&D at the firm level; they are associated with lower R&D intensity.

Yes

[Per Abrahamsen]

My main contribution to "discussions" with creationist is that in my experience as a programmer, complex (software) systems are a result of evolution rather than intelligent design.

Re:"Nobel price"

[argiedot]

It's all the talk about economics...

Re:Nobel Validity

[Anonymous Coward]

But I do know a good bit about what creates and maintains the conditions for peace.

And of course, worldwide famine, massive loss of oceanfront property and land mass, widespread disease and economic collapse would have no effect whatsoever on peace.

So, if the Nobel committees can so blow this prize, going back to giving it to the dictator Yasser Arafat, do the other prizes have meaning?

As someone else earlier mentioned, this particular prize isn't actually offered by the Nobel committee, Nobel hated economics with a passion, and did not establish a prize for it.

Intellectual Property Doesn't Exist

[Anonymous Coward]

Since IP does not exist then you should not have a problem selling me your mutual fund at physical asset valuation instead of physical + IP asset valuation for each individual stock in the portfolio.

I figure that would come to a pretty hefty discount to overall market cap.

That means if your wallet followed your logic you would be 100% short on everything?

Re:Intellectual Property Doesn't Exist

[Anonymous Coward]

And now you're mixing up the concept further between copyrights/patents/trademarks with money. Way to go!

Re:Intellectual Property Doesn't Exist

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not the one doing the mixing.

It is the markets that are doing this mixing by assessing valuations upon nebulous IP instead of cold, hard physical assets.

Re: Copyright for written works...

[Ox0065]

and copyright is the form of IP used to control literary & artistic works. I've never heard a decent argument that software is something other than a written work. The attributes of a work protected by copyright & an invention protected by patent law don't gel well at all, if your party/government is free from inappropriate campaign subsidies.

Well he's probably from the USA

[Nicolas MONNET]

Considering the current politics of that country, anything to the left of Benito Mussolini is a raging commie.

Analogy is not identity

[Nicolas MONNET]

IP is not the same as physical property, but the concept of owning an abstract thing (the monopoly granted by the patent) is pretty closely related to the concept of owning a physical thing.

Analogy is not identity. Although I guess it depends on what the meaning of "is" is. Or something.

And the analogy breaks even more when you try to stretch it.

Re:Great, but not an actual Nobel Prize

[gerf]

http://nobelprize.org/

Um, looks like Medicine, Chemistry, Peace, Physics, Literature, Economics. Further digging in their site shows that the Economics Prize was started in 1968. Well, perhaps Nobel didn't originate it, but it is selected by the same method as the others. Not that I'd consider that spectacular; They gave Al Gore and Jimmy Carter Peace Prizes after all.

Re:Nobel Validity

[Anonymous Coward]

Sir, I am a Norwegian citizen, and must say your comment deeply offends me. This means war!

Hmmm.... let's see...

[idontgno]

On the side opposed to software patentability, an eminent Nobel-prize-winning economist.

On the side supporting software patentability, we have Steve Ballmer.

Which side seems more credible to you? I'm going with the Nobel-winner myself. Even if Dancing Monkeyboy meanaces me with chairs while screaming "DEVELOPERS!" at me.

Re:Hmmm.... let's see...

[sacrilicious]

On the side opposed to software patentability, an eminent Nobel-prize-winning economist. On the side supporting software patentability, we have Steve Ballmer. Which side seems more credible to you?

Agreed. Though I note that even if roles were reversed, and Balmer was pulling for OSS while a Nobel winner promoted patents, I'd dismiss the Nobel winner's position(if all I had to go on was WHO was making the statements, as opposed to lines of reasoning). So my agreement is not that with the idea that *I'm* more persuaded, but that -- in terms of PR for the masses -- this represents a large opportunity for OSS.

Re:Hmmm.... let's see...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure that Ballmer is on the side of software patentability? Sure, so long as software patents are legal, Micros~1 will file for them and use them to their full advantage, but that doesn't mean he supports them.

Think about it...without software patents, his company can simply steal any idea for new software and have his employees re-write the code from scratch. Micros~1 has more resources than almost every other company and they have a whole slew of products that they can integrate with to provide the necessary vendor lock-in. Remember the whole 'Eolas' issue? I'm sure Micros~1 legal has had to deal with many suits filed against the company. Without software patents, those annoyances go away and Micros~1 is free to cut their massive R&D budget and only pursue development projects they know there is a market for.

Seems to me that Ballmer wouldn't be too upset if software patents went away.

Counterexamples?

[jc42]

So are there any documented cases where patents (or copyrights) did actually enhance "progress of science and the useful arts", as the US Constitution phrases it?

All the histories I've read say that when patents have had any measurable effect at all (and most don't), the effect has been to block both progress by everyone and profit by the patent holders.

But this could be a result of biased reporting, similar to the general case that bad news tends to get reported but smooth operations aren't considered news because they're normal.

So does anyone know of a case where a patent can be shown to either enhance further technical progress or benefit the patent holder financially? Or are all the histories of patents blocking progress and profit until the patents run out (and bankrupting small companies via legal fees) actually describing the normal case? If there are such cases, it would be interesting to compare them with the more-documented cases where patents are disastrous for everyone. Maybe we could learn how to revise the patent laws so we actually get the results that people say that patents should have.

Re:Counterexamples?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, there are just as many pro patent as anti patent studies, most are in the middle.

Here is one that is more of a pro patent study that references the paper that is the subject of this post:

Policy Implications of Weak Patent Rights

Re:Counterexamples?

[Anonymous Coward]

So are there any documented cases where patents (or copyrights) did actually enhance "progress of science and the useful arts", as the US Constitution phrases it? No, there is not a single example of an intellectual work which was granted patent or copyright protection that did not depend upon freely available use of previous intellectual work. There's no scientific and artistic innovation without massive amounts of copying of previously existing intellectual elements. This is easily observable by looking at any copyrighted or patented work. All the software patents which "put X function on the internet" are freely copying previously existing ideas and putting them "on the internet". Every book is copying the form of a book, is copying words, is copying ideas of words, is copying and building upon ideas of others.

So does anyone know of a case where a patent can be shown to either enhance further technical progress or benefit the patent holder financially? By definition scarcity is caused by preventing others from competing in delivery of scientific and artistic innovation. Intellectual property grants benefit the monopoly holders short term by eliminating all potential competition. But long term, even those who have benefited the most from IP protectionism (say Bill Gates ~50 billion) lose far more than they have gained, from all the derivative works which are prevented. And of course, the net cost to society is magnitudes greater than any benefit to monopoly grantees.

It's as easy as looking at any business you can imagine, and preventing all competition from that line of business. One grocery store allowed, because somebody would be copying the idea of selling groceries in a store. One shoemaker. Etc. Now imagine further technological innovation on leather materials and leather synthetic materials (Dow Chemical). If that material is better material for shoe-making, such a patent brings about a monopoly shoe maker working with the best shoe materials. So it's a Guild System which is incessantly stifling competition.

Maybe we could learn how to revise the patent laws so we actually get the results that people say that patents should have. Some of us already have, it's called a Constitutional Amendment banning all copyright and patent protection. Quite a hullabaloo has been caused already, and I'm seeing all the best arguments for IP protectionism being destroyed.

Re:Counterexamples?

[argent]

The Yao paper doesn't actually appear to include any counterexamples in favor of strong patents, nor does it seem to address the social good of strong patents.

* The closest thing to a counterexample is the case of the blue LED, and I am not clear on how it applies to patents at all. How would a strong patent system similar to the current system in the US protect an employee under a strong work-for-hire contract?

* The arguments in the paper are very focussed on the potential value of the patent to the patent holder. The assumption that making patents valuable to the patent holder provides a social good doesn't seem strongly (if at all) examined.

In fact, the conclusions in the paper include "Our analysis suggests that very weak property rights does not, by itself, mean that innovation incentives are fully undermined. Thus, attempts to adjust the property right system based on the idea that weak property rights implies little incentive for innovation would underestimate actual innovation incentives and might lead to policies that provide excessive incentives to innovate." which is not at all an argument in favor of strong patents, even if it does encapsulate the assumption that the value of patents actually provides a net incentive to innovation (which is, of course, the assumption challenged in the Maskin paper mentioned in the original article).

If this is considered a "pro patent" study, then the case for the current strong patent regime is even weaker than I had thought.

Re:Counterexamples?

[jc42]

Hmmm ... That paper seems to be purely theoretical in nature; it didn't seem to include any actual examples of what I asked about. At least I didn't spot any in a quick reading. A closer reading of the intro and conclusions shows that the authors' intent was theoretical in nature, not case studies. And their phrasing implies that they think interference with others' use of the ideas is the point of a patent. So they'd probably treat "advancement of science and practical arts" as a failure of the patent system. I didn't spot any numbers applicable to the question of profit.

There is a brief discussion of the lawsuit over the Nakamura/Nichia blue-light LED case, but that was treated solely as an employee-vs-employer case. The question of whether their profits might have been different without the patent wasn't considered, as far as I can tell. The question of how much of the profit rightfully goes to the actual inventor rather than the employer is an interesting question, but it's not related to the question that I asked.

(And if followups go the way they often do on /., we will now have a huge blazing discussion of this topic, and my question will go ignored. ;-)

Cognitive dissonance ahoy!

[Medievalist]

You do realise that so-called "intellectual property" is a concept based on the SOCIALIST value system, and that rugged individualists and laissez-faire capitalists believe people should be able to build and sell whatever they can dream up regardless of whether somebody else already invented it?

It's quite amusing to see someone using "socialist" as a dirty word and then equating intellectual property "rights" with real property rights in the same post. Intellectual property laws are created to restrict the rights of individuals for the benefit of society as a whole. Consider the difference between such legislation and what used to be called natural laws, such as the laws that recognize the rights of individuals to self-defense, private property, and free speech.

Now a Major Motion Picture!

[Doc Ruby]

Even though TV is packed with "business news" shows, I don't expect to see this strong argument against SW patents even mentioned anywhere near people who determine the rules that govern inventors, who drive the entire economy.

All we'll ever hear about is "incumbent economics", which is how the rich always get richer, despite the actual economic values.

Re:Nobel Validity

[nomadic]

So, if the Nobel committees can so blow this prize, going back to giving it to the dictator Yasser Arafat

They've blown the prize a hell of a lot earlier than that. Hell, they gave it to Kissinger back in the 70's.

Grow up

[Anonymous Coward]

-2, Troll

Oh yes. This is such a massive troll. An obvious direct assault on Gore and all slashdot readers - full of inflammatory language and personal insults designed to get everyone fired up and responding.

I'm so glad you guys caught that one before it got out of control.

Re:Great, but not an actual Nobel Prize

[Anonymous Coward]

There certainly is a strong correlation between poor reading comprehension and right-based politics.

Re:Exactly

[ej0c]

Who are the omnipotent scholars who can blithely assign decent comments like z80kid's a troll modifier? Who anointed these people?

Now, my original comment may have been off topic, but my point was that the politicization of the Peace Prize is so blatant that it can now make thoughtful people wonder about the value of the science prizes. I truly don't understand game theory, or some of the other things that win the Nobel. I might like to become one of the people who at least understand a little, especially if it affects decisions on things like software patents. But if fairly learned people like myself lose interest in the set of prizes because of the simple-mindedness of the Peace prize, then the Nobel legacy is certainly headed downhill.

Driving Linux out of America? To Finland, maybe?

[argent]

I can easily envisage a scenario where Linux is driven out of America by a patent troll for instance.

You think they're gonna send them furrin operating systems back to where they came from?

Re: Copyright for written works...

[Uart]

Software is written work? When was the last time your uncle sat down and READ Windows? Software is in fact more similar to a microwave, than it is to the collective works of Chaucer. The microwave, like software, performs an action. The works of Chaucer do not.

Here's the abstract

[nbauman]

Sequential Innovation, Patents, and Imitation

by James Bessen and Eric Maskin c 1999

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article for noncommercial use are permitted in any medium provided this notice is preserved.

Working Paper 11/99

Abstract: How could such industries as software, semiconductors, and computers have been so innovative despite historically weak patent protection? We argue that if innovation is both sequential and complementary -- as it certainly has been in those industries -- competition can increase firms' future profits thus offsetting short-term dissipation of rents. A simple model also shows that in such a dynamic industry, patent protection may reduce overall innovation and social welfare. The natural experiment that occurred when patent protection was extended to software in the 1980's provides a test of this model. Standard arguments would predict that R&D intensity and productivity should have increased among patenting firms. Consistent with our model, however, these increases did not occur. Other evidence supporting our model includes a distinctive pattern of cross-licensing in these industries and a positive relationship between rates of innovation and firm entry.

http://www.researchoninnovation.org/patent.pdf

(Warning: Uses mathematical equations)

Re:Exactly

[Anonymous Coward]

"the politicization of the Peace Prize is so blatant"

What points have you made to support this? Or is just that your so called "thoughtful people"'s political sensibilities have been offended though the issue at hand is a very apolitical one. Simply because you only see things as being for or against your political view. That is being "simple minded".

It shocks and disturbs me how anyone can be so virulently against the works of another who is simply trying to alert us to some danger ahead, be it real or perceived. All he is trying to do is ask us to watch out. Agree with him or not but do not be so vile about it and try to destroy or discredit any and everything associated with Gore simply because his political views differ from yours. If anything you are politicizing the issue.

BTW - I am not a fan of Gore's, and I also believe he overstates the case for Global Warming, but at least he is trying to look out for all of us. And that I can respect whether we share the same political views or not.

Re:Exactly

[ej0c]

1) Please, come out of hiding, and stand up for what you believe, if you do.

2) Just where do you get words like virulent, vile, destroy, and discredit? Where in the world do you come up with the sort of thoughts that allow you to apply those words to what is written here? Why are you so monstrously opposed to the civil and free exchange of ideas?

3) If you read the original post and the comments, you will see that we feel there are any number of people whose work this year had more to do with peace than Al Gore's. If this were the Nobel Environment Award or something, I'd be glad to enter into debate about whether Gore and Company have plans to help or hurt the global environment. That's not the point. The point is that people who really are putting their lives on the line to achieve peace and freedom from oppression should have a crack at this famous award.

Re:Nobel Validity

[ej0c]

Thanks for giving an answer, rather than just moding as flamebait or offering anonymous diatribe.

But I'm not sure that the nationality of the award makers really helps me to understand why or if the science prizes in general are more carefully considered than the Peace Prize.

Re: Copyright for written works...

[Rary]

Being "read" is not a criteria for placing something under copyright. A painting is not "read". Besides that, Windows code is actually "read" all the time. My computer is doing it right now.

Nevertheless, that's all beside the point. You're trying to put things into the categories of "copyrightable" or "patentable" based on fairly arbitrary determinants. What makes much more sense is to categorize them based on what provides the most benefit. Maskin's argument, based on having actually studied the effects of the different types of IP protection on innovation, is that it is of greater benefit to protect software using copyright law than patent law.

Non-random trials?

[paladinwannabe2]

This gives me a great idea for the origin of life: moderately intelligent design! Each extinction event could be a restart of the code base!

Suicide Solution

[Belial6]

I don't know what your talking about. If we all followed Gores plan and commit suicide, no human would ever go to war again. Dead people are peaceful after all.

"In fact, you can even reduce your carbon emissions to zero."
Al Gore

Silicon Valley

[jbeaupre]

May I direct you to the example of Silicon Valley and the numerous start up companies there. Patents help maintain that ecology of inventors, business folks, and investors.

Most companies can't just start in a garage and bootstrap themselves into being a large corporation without someone investing. Investors are reluctant to invest if some third party can just copy the technology. So what's a start up to do? Ah-ha! Patents! That's right, a large number of start ups rely on patents to assure investors they don't lose their money. In comes the money, good things happen, and the company grows.

Software and service companies have an advantage in that they can also use copyright (MS) and trade secrets (Google). But the widget guys are heavily dependent on patents to survive. Silicon Valley widget guys are doing well. So it's safe to assume patents are responsible.

(if you want more concrete examples, look up aluminum, latex rubber, cotton gin, Edison, Bell Labs, etc.)

Re:Exactly

[Anonymous Coward]

"the politicization of the Peace Prize is so blatant"

What points have you made to support this? Or is just that your so called "thoughtful people"'s political sensibilities have been offended though the issue at hand is a very apolitical one. Simply because you only see things as being for or against your political view. That is being "simple minded".

Global warming is not apolitical. It is not something everyone agrees on. There are arguments about it even on /. every day! But my post was about the Nobel Committee - not about Gore. So I avoided making any comment about him or global warming.

"What points have I made?" The Nobel Committee felt the need to release a statement explaining how the person they chose for the award "may" contribute to peace in the future. They selected someone who may (or may not) eventually contribute to peace over people who are actively working on projects directly related to peace today. Why?

The answer is pretty obvious. They selected the cause to make a statement and then tried to make the award fit it. That's very political.

I'd bet if I had told you a few months ago that I thought Gore should get the Nobel prize for Peace, you probably wouldn't have understood how he qualified either.

If anything you are politicizing the issue.

They politicized it. I just pointed it out. I'm so naughty like that.

Re:Exactly

[Anonymous Coward]

1) I am engaging you in this exchange so I do not understand what you mean by come out of hiding and stand for what I believe. I thought that is what I am expressing.

2) Use your dictionary. There are many online. I thought these were words you learn in high school but I guess not to some (I guess the british school system is better). And I am not opposed to the exchange of ideas - just close-mindedness and unsupported distortions.

3)In any year there are always those who feel someone else deserves the prize in any category, the decision is up to the selection committee. I can bet that you have not read their entire selection statement before coming to your conclusion. Your mind had been made up way before he was even being considered for this.
What I am espousing is to at least see the good in what whomever has been selected is doing instead of demonizing simply because we do not agree with their POV. Your opposition to Gore's selection seems to be based on politcal difference, that is being simple minded. I do not for a second believe Gore plans to hurt the global economy, that sounds like a sound bite from Fox News. As I stated before I believe he overstates his case, but that does not negate his efforts at bringing awareness to an issue that most of the scientific community has agreed on.

Please use your dictionary where necessary and I have tried to refrain from using words that might make you swallow your gum in the process of trying to comprehend them. I am also including a link so you at least see the selection committee's reasoning for coming to this decision.
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2007/press.html

BTW: I do not agree with their decision as well. I believe there are more deserving people though different from those that have been stated here, but I respect their decision.

Respectfully,
Anonymous Coward

Re:Exactly

[Anonymous Coward]

"Global warming is not apolitical. It is not something everyone agrees on."

The fact that you and I might not agree as to the health effects of black tea does not make it a political issue.

"They selected someone who may (or may not) eventually contribute to peace over people who are actively working on projects directly related to peace today. Why?"

That is something the people on the committee would have an exact answer to. The criteria and decision is theirs not yours or mine. You and I observers, though you seem to claim to know ("The answer is pretty obvious"). From my observation of their past choices and like I mentioned before, the prize seems to be to encourage people to continue on a path of bringing about peace. They stated as much:
"By awarding the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 to the IPCC and Al Gore, the Norwegian Nobel Committee is seeking to contribute to a sharper focus on the processes and decisions that appear to be necessary to protect the world's future climate, and thereby to reduce the threat to the security of mankind."
You claim to know what is really in their hearts. And you're right on your other point - if you told me a few months back I wouldn't have known why. Now they have stated why and I have no reason to disbelief unless I had preconcieved judgements.

Now try to be more objective you naughty politcal animal you.

Respectfully,
Anonymous Coward

Snake oil anyone?

[AutoTheme]

Economists are snake oil salesmen anyway. Nobel prize winners routinely have 50% of their "theories" or models disproved by real life. How about a physicist that has one theory disproved? Nobel prize?

Re:Snake oil anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Economists can be snake oil salesmen anyway. If something is disproved, then a field advances, whether its physics, medicine, biology, mathematics, or economics. Economics is far from the only discipline that is subject to applied mathematics masquerading as science.

Re:Snake oil anyone?

[Copid]

Economists are snake oil salesmen anyway. Nobel prize winners routinely have 50% of their "theories" or models disproved by real life. How about a physicist that has one theory disproved? Nobel prize?

That depends. Did the theory, while flawed, improve our understanding of the topic in a significant way? How many of the most brilliant physicists in history have been wrong? Depending on your standard of wrongness, Newton was a snake oil salesman when he wrote his Principia.

Re:Nobel Validity

[Anonymous Coward]

Since I seem to be the only person in the country who isn't obsessed with Clinton/Gore, I can't really address that part of your post.

But, why are you calling (former terrorist and duly elected leader) the late Yasser Arafat a "dictator"?

Are you sure you know what that word means?

Re:Great, but not an actual Nobel Prize

[Hatta]

What about the prize for literature? If there were anything less cool than economics to award a nobel prize for, it's literature.

Re:Nobel Validity

[Hatta]

So when are the Finnish going to come out with a Nobel Prize for Cartooning?

What the hell are you smoking?

[PMBjornerud]

The IP "thing" is the monopoly. The property right is the ability to own that thing. A "monopoly" is not a thing. And there are laws that specifically prevent you from "owning a monopoly".

So when a monopoly is created, it's a thing? Then we cannot convict monopolist and split up the monopoly, because that would also be some kind of theft?

No. It does not work that way.

My take:

The essence of the Internet is to be the biggest, baddest information manipulation unit the world have ever seen. Not only did we build computeres - machines designed from the scratch for the purpose of copying, moving and transforming information. Oh, no, we have hooked a huge amount of those those information manipulating things into a fucking global network.

If you have digital information and consider it property. And also release said information into the global information maelstrom called the Internet: Good luck!

I intended that to look like this:

[Uart]

"ou really ought to read the Constitution before you comment on it, you know. It only grants Congress the power (though not the requirement) 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 in no way mentions "intellectual property"."

Oh, I've read it. I have also read any number of Supreme Court decisions that interpret that and related aspects of the Constitution. The US Constitution is a living animal. Lots of things that don't necessarily compute as "property" are called such by the Supreme Court, on a Constitutional basis. One of these things is IP. You can play games with the exact wording all you want, but the passage you quote gave the right to create Intellectual Property as we know it, AND, once that right has been granted it becomes a PROPERTY RIGHT in the same vein as the land you live on. Property rights cannot be revoked by the Government without Due Process -- which is where the 4th Amendment comes in... etc.

"The authorized copyrights and patents are nothing like land deeds, which are 1) issued by states, 2) perpetual, 3) issuable to anyone, not just "authors and inventors" (I didn't create the land my house is on, after all) and 4) not are required to promote the public good. This is because the framers had the good common sense to understand that ideas are not like physical property."

#1 is not really correct -- maybe a piece of paper is issued by the state government giving you deed to the land, BUT, the RIGHTS to that land are protected by the Federal Government in the 4th and 14th Amendments.

#3 is not entirely correct -- gaining land possession through squatters rights is a parallel to "authors and inventors" (you build on the land and live there and it becomes yours). Besides, the IP rights are transferrable.

#4 is entirely false -- while the constitution may not describe real property as "for the public good," they also certainly didn't feel that it was necessary to do so. It was to be understood. They went out of their way to protect those property rights through the various due process procedures mentioned. Additionally, (once again) the Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto writes extensibly about how the public good is served by strong protection of property rights.

Nonetheless, the parallel isn't really to be drawn on a direct basis -- the similarities are in what YOUR RIGHTS to the property are designed (and do) accomplish (and the means for those rights to be sold, leased, shared, etc.).

Jefferson may not have believed that Ideas could be property, but he did support the concept of Patent Rights for the same reasons that I do: to encourage invention through financial incentive. "Jefferson, always the scientist, warmed to his duties and became more open to the idea of patents when he saw how many inventors put forth their ideas as a result of the new system of protection, claiming that "it had given spring to invention beyond my conception. " (cited)

As for Dowling, I would mostly agree with the decision in that case. Theft, in regard to copyright and other forms of IP would usually occur when someone else undertook an enterprise to PROFIT from your IP. The rights are not related to the physical media that may contain the IP, but rather to the idea itself. From your own link: "Infringement implicates a more complex set of property interests than does run-of-the-mill theft, conversion, or fraud." As I've said, the SCOTUS recognizes IP as property.

In this case, they found that an illegally-made copy of a copyrighted work doesn't equate to run-of-the-mill theft. The man, Dowling was convicted of multiple counts of interstate transportation of stolen property. This was overturned on appeal (obviously) on the grounds that the copyright infringement did not equate to run-of-the-mill theft or conversion (most likely because the

Re:I intended that to look like this:

[BootNinja]

#3 is not entirely correct -- gaining land possession through squatters rights is a parallel to "authors and inventors" (you build on the land and live there and it becomes yours). Besides, the IP rights are transferrable.

Then by this logic, in order to appropriate your copyright/patent, all I have to do is build on your book/program/invention, and through my expanding of the work/invention I become owner of the copyright. Which says to me that we shouldn't have copyrights/patents at all since this is one of the scenarios that copyright/patent attempts to combat.

Re:I intended that to look like this:

[Uart]

AH.. but this is why you have to defend your property rights in court...

Re:I intended that to look like this:

[falconwolf]

Jefferson may not have believed that Ideas could be property, but he did support the concept of Patent Rights

In the beginning Thomas Jefferson opposed patents, saying "That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property." It was only after his friend James Madison convinced him when he came to supporting patents.

Falcon

Re:I intended that to look like this:

[Uart]

oh? So, you agree then?

Re:I intended that to look like this:

[Mr. Slippery]

One of these things is IP. You can play games with the exact wording all you want, but the passage you quote gave the right to create Intellectual Property as we know it, AND, once that right has been granted it becomes a PROPERTY RIGHT in the same vein as the land you live on.

Courts and politicos can play games all you want, but the passage I quoted makes no mention of property. Calling copyrights and patents "intellectual property" is a deliberate misnomer by those who would like ideas to be treated the same way as real property; the phrase was almost unknown until the founding of the "World Intellectual Property Association" in the 1960s.

Court rulings - even SCOTUS rulings - don't change the text or meaning of the Constitution. But it seems you've already bought into the "living document" fallacy, whereby the courts can redefine phrases like "right of the people" or "commerce...among the several states" and give us bullshit like Wickard v. Filburn, to allow the federal government to absorb more and more power.

#1 is not really correct -- maybe a piece of paper is issued by the state government giving you deed to the land, BUT, the RIGHTS to that land are protected by the Federal Government in the 4th and 14th Amendments.

The Fourth protects my house against search by the federal government, the Fifth says they can't take it without paying me, and the Fourteenth extends that to the states. But none of these protects any of the rights that makes property useful. It's the armed might of the State of Maryland (through the chartered government of Baltimore County) that kicks kids off my lawn and prevents my neighbor from dumping trash in my backyard, not the federal government. And if the Constitution meant a damn, it would even be the militia of the State of Maryland, not a standing army, protecting my house from invasion by Canada. Trying to make rights of real property into a federal issue is a huge stretch.

#3 is not entirely correct -- gaining land possession through squatters rights is a parallel to "authors and inventors" (you build on the land and live there and it becomes yours).

Building on the land would at best be analogous to creating a derivied work. But the point is you don't have to live there to get a land deed, they are often issued to speculators who do jack shit to improve or preserve the land.

Besides, the IP rights are transferrable.

Not if the Constition were strictly followed. "[S]ecuring for limited Times to Authors and Inventors" - not their assignees, heirs, employers, or anyone else, and not to anyone after the author is dead. Of course the author can allow agents to exercise his rights for him, but they remain his. (Yes, I recognize this is just about a lost cause. Doesn't change the wording of Article I Section 8 and Amendment X.)

Jefferson may not have believed that Ideas could be property, but he did support the concept of Patent Rights for the same reasons that I do: to encourage invention through financial incentive.

Not a point under dispute. Said encouragement is however a merely trade-off between our right to use inventions and creations and our desire to have more inventions and creations made. There is no "natural right" of authors and inventors to copyrights and patents.

And - getting back to the point - it certainly doesn't mean that software patents, which impede rather than promote the progress in software development, ought to be permitted.

Open Source Software is Path to Efficient Market

[stacey7165]

The summary of their work explored one angle of how to create efficient markets, citing that the

"... the market implements fully efficient outcomes only under very stringent (unrealistic) conditions such as perfect competition, freely available information, private goods, and the absence of any environmental effects of production and consumption.

In his earlier research on software markets, Maskin cites

"...when discoveries are "sequential" (so that each successive invention builds in an essential way on its predecessors) patent protection is not as useful for encouraging innovation as in a static setting. Indeed, society and even inventors themselves may be better off without such protection. Furthermore, an inventor's prospective profit may actually be enhanced by competition and imitation."

Open Source develops code out in the open, encouraging reuse and improvement. This is an open economy of ideas, development and invention. Customers typically test and use products and understand its value faster and more completely, shortening sales processes. Feedback, through contributions and forum discussions happen openly and in real-time, correcting and improving product direction. Competition also occurs openly, where the vendors backing projects have an open view of their competition's activities and it is really up to the vendor to push themselves to "one-up" the rest of the market. This open competition spurs faster economics, which means better products at a better price.

I think as long as vendors manage to stay away from the whole "environmental effects of production and consumption" issue, we have a pretty good argument that Open Source is software's solution to creating the perfect efficient market.

Full disclosure: I robbed the majority of this posting from a blog post I did on the same subject earlier today, and I work in Open Source. For the whole enchilada of the previous blog post see: http://www.hyperic.com/blog/hyperic/2007/10/16/nobel-prize-implies-open-source-is-a-perfect-market/

Stacey Schneider
http://www.hyperic.com/

Re:Exactly

[ej0c]

And there you go again. Using the word demonizing. Why in the world do you think any of these words apply to what I and others wrote here? I don't feel you understand their meanings.

But then that's the point. You folk don't have to engage in the issues. You just call people stupid, assume their ignorance if they disagree with you, denounce them as close-minded, remove their views from the mainstream press, censure them from the Senate floor if you need to, and most offensive to me personally as an 8 year user, mod them down on Slashdot. Discussing the issue never occurs to you all; why would it, you can look down your nose and thats it. My, my, how admirable.

socialism

[falconwolf]

Americans have a negative connotation with "socialism", which most of the rest of the world hasn't.

Any economic system where the community, government, owns land, natural resources, and the means of production is BAD! Despite what some open source advocates believe most people people work best and hardest when their and their family's economic situation improves. If everyone is treated the same there is no incentive to work for many. Sure some will work out of ego or because of love for what they do but I seriously doubt most people are that way. Take people who start businesses, many who do work a lot harder for their own business than they will for anybody else's business.

Falcon

Re: Copyright for written works...

[falconwolf]

Software is written work?

Yes it is. Only a few may be able to understand the machine code with more, but still not many, able to understand the object or source code however it's still written.

When was the last time your uncle sat down and READ Windows?

It's illegal to read Windows, the source is closed. However many can and do read at least parts of the Linux kernel as well as other open source programs whether GPLed or not such as slashcode.

The microwave, like software, performs an action.

The microwave is hardware, with computers it's the hardware such as the processor that does the work. The software is just the instructions the hardware follows.

Falcon

Socialism and Capitalism

[Morosoph]

You've first got to prove that patents are naturally property; the capitalism of intelligent free-marketeers is not that everything should be property (how to we propertise air with any precision), but rather that law should reflect natural human interaction. By this reckoning, socialism is bad because it is unnatural.

But then, even a stuck clock is right twice a day.

Re:Socialism and Capitalism

[Uart]

What you describe is Natural Law theory, the opposing idea is Positive law, which accepts law as a human construct that isn't based on some moral premise that needs to be discovered. In a common law system, everything and anything can and often is, property. Referring to Air: in a common law system you own the rights to the air above your land and all the dirt/rocks/lava/oil below as well.

In other words, I don't need to prove that patents are naturally ANYTHING. I can very easily prove that they are legally property, and therefore, they ARE property.

Re:Socialism and Capitalism

[Morosoph]

What you describe is Natural Law theory, the opposing idea is Positive law, which accepts law as a human construct that isn't based on some moral premise that needs to be discovered. In a common law system, everything and anything can and often is, property. Referring to Air: in a common law system you own the rights to the air above your land and all the dirt/rocks/lava/oil below as well. You can be done for trespass, but not for breathing. You own the space, not the air.

In other words, I don't need to prove that patents are naturally ANYTHING. I can very easily prove that they are legally property, and therefore, they ARE property. I was responding to the emotional content of your message, in particular with regards to the charge of socialism.

Socialists eat, you know. Do you eat?

My point is that someone can be a capitalist and oppose patents on software. Since you brought in a moral angle (the charge of "socialism") concerning how a society should run its economy, I thought that it was appropriate to show that there was a moral foundation that a capitalist could reasonably adhere to and oppose software patents.

Misdirections like yours here probably don't work in a courtroom if the other guy's lawyer is any good, BTW.

Re:Socialism and Capitalism

[Uart]

"You can be done for trespass, but not for breathing. You own the space, not the air."

In theory, you could trespass my land by purposely polluting my air (of course, it IS just a theory. Courts invoke "policy" to prevent that theory from being useful).

"My point is that someone can be a capitalist and oppose patents on software. Since you brought in a moral angle (the charge of "socialism") concerning how a society should run its economy, I thought that it was appropriate to show that there was a moral foundation that a capitalist could reasonably adhere to and oppose software patents."

Yes, and someone can be a pro-life Democrat. Ultimately they are all labels. However, I would argue that capitalism does not necessarily equate to free-markets, and that in practice, industry/corporations prefer to avoid free markets. There IS a free market/libertarian argument against patents. I don't agree with it.

"Misdirections like yours here probably don't work in a courtroom if the other guy's lawyer is any good, BTW."
Dude... a good lawyer is especially good at misdirections ;-)

Re:Socialism and Capitalism

[Morosoph]

In theory, you could trespass my land by purposely polluting my air (of course, it IS just a theory. Courts invoke "policy" to prevent that theory from being useful). Interestingly, Ron Paul buys your theory.

Yes, and someone can be a pro-life Democrat. Ultimately they are all labels. However, I would argue that capitalism does not necessarily equate to free-markets, and that in practice, industry/corporations prefer to avoid free markets. There IS a free market/libertarian argument against patents. I don't agree with it. I don't think that being a pro-life democrat is a good analogy, in that opposition to software patents isn't a poor fit. In fact, I would say that a free-marketeer who favours positive law, and doesn't believe in natural law is unusual. Natural law theory is the moral basis of free-marketry; without it slanders against socialism have no moral depth. The dreadful regimes that started by breaking the market are no longer unnatural, but simply mistaken in their social policy. Hayek's critique becomes nonsense.

There is a reason why the left favours positive law: appeals to nature seem very strongly to favour the status quo. To the left, it is a clever way in which to entrench power by making it appear unassailable. The left make a mistake here, though: natural law is law that follows the grain of human nature; it is not uncritical approval of human acts.

Dude... a good lawyer is especially good at misdirections ;-) All too true :o(

Beware, though; when you're caught, it can undermine trust in your whole approach. Socrates is as persuasive as he is precisely because he is arguing in good faith.

Re:Socialism and Capitalism

[Uart]

"In fact, I would say that a free-marketeer who favours positive law, and doesn't believe in natural law is unusual. Natural law theory is the moral basis of free-marketry; without it slanders against socialism have no moral depth."

Tell Ron Paul that... He may not specifically speak of it, but the manner in which it seems that he intends to use the constitution is far more compatible with a positive law theory. The MORAL basis of the free-market is built upon the GOOD that it can do for the world. Adam Smith claimed that the free-market alone can lead to socially beneficial results, ultimately the same goal as other systems like Socialism (although, someone who believes in the Free-Market would most likely believe that Socialism does not achieve those benefits).

Software Patents

[Morosoph]

I can believe that you're not a deliberate troll, but you give away your training in law rather than economics.

How come? Propertarian essentialism. An economist would argue in terms of costs and benefits, but you have argued in terms of the nation's "intellectual property based economy". It is clear that software patents have both costs and benefits: the benefits are the usual "incentive" benefits, but the costs are the obstruction to future innovation.

Problems that we bump up against whilst attempting to do other things often need innovative steps to be solved, so the default level of innovation is not zero in the absence of patents (assuming that copyright is still present). Accordingly it is not a priori true that patents are a boon, since there is something (potentially) to be lost, as well as gained.

That innovation is necessary for the economy is not synonymous with intellectual property of various kinds necessarily being a boon.

Also, you've not followed this economist's argument, but have dismissed it out of hand. If he is right that invention piles upon invention, it isn't only the next step that is obstructed (which might be worth the wait for the patent to expire, or the costs of licencing), but several steps (which, by his analysis, isn't).

Politicians' jargon phrases don't mean a whole lot. The software boom has led to an invention and innovation based economy; intellectual property is a means to an end. Also, governments granting temporary monopolies is not inherently capitalist.

Re:Software Patents

[Uart]

In respect to his argument I think that there is perhaps a viable debate to limit the scope of software patents -- but I still believe that the existence of patent rights in software is not inherently bad.

Re:Software Patents

[Morosoph]

In respect to his argument I think that there is perhaps a viable debate to limit the scope of software patents -- but I still believe that the existence of patent rights in software is not inherently bad. Not just scope. Duration. The "20 year" magic number is poorly justified in this case.

Trouble is, shorter timespans are not on the table.

Re:Software Patents

[Uart]

Perhaps a decent duration would be, "the amount of time it takes to recoup the cost of development plus xx years."

That way, cheaper technologies would expire quicker, while more expensive developments would be given a more appropriate amount of time to recoup their cost. The xx years would be rather short, but long enough to encourage development, through the promise of profit. Five years, maybe.

Of course, you can't make such a rule retroactive, for a number of reasons.

Re:Software Patents

[Morosoph]

Too complex, easy to game, and impossible to pre-judge.

Also, what if someone thinks of an (infringing) process that is much cheaper? It's as likely to cause inefficiencies as efficiencies.

Re:Software Patents

[Uart]

Well... you wouldn't pre-judge it. For an owner to enforce a patent claim in that system, they would have to factually prove the financial figures at trial.

Re:Software Patents

[Morosoph]

Fair enough, but it's still to easy to game.

You can patent to deliberately obstruct, as well as to win yourself an incentive. Relatedly, there's little incentive to make use of the time available, and the elimination of risk changes the game entirely. Also, there's little incentive to develop as cheaply as possible, since you'll be compensated for your extra costs.

If you can't make enough money by the watershed, it might be better to let technology advance in other ways first. Naturally this is a loss, but it has to be measured against the delays induced in further innovation by being obstructed. Also, innovation in software is generally very cheap; it isn't the idea, but the execution and integration that is costly, and it might be better for the economy for the idea to be executed by more competent programmers who can implement the idea more cheaply. Since the idea is cheap, there isn't a lot of money that is spent upon research, which is the real justification for the monopoly. Development is not the same as research, since it is a matter of normal skill.

Comparing the costs of pure research (rather than R&D) with the costs of the additional patent clerks, I strongly suspect that far from being a boon, software patents are a cost to the economy. Besides, the real advantage of invention is that your workforce are ahead of the curve (I know this from talking with venture capitalists), rather than that they've got a protected monopoly. As well as being costly to administer, software patents are simply unnecessary.

Keeping the edge in innovation is a matter of using that edge. An invention and innovation-based economy is not an "IPR-based" economy; that is simply clever sophistry.

Oh look. yet another fundamentalist.

[jotaeleemeese]

Sweden has a capitalist economic system mister Dumbo.

They have many socialized services provided by the government, but this does not mean that if you have the dosh you are forbidden to go to private doctors or hospitals (unlike a country with a socialist or communist system like Cuba or North Korea).

Your completely gratuitous Open Source jive is preposterous. All the people that matter in the Open Source movement make very clear that Open Source is a tool to create wealth by means of entrepreneurship in the most capitalistic of ways.

Re:Oh look. yet another fundamentalist.

[falconwolf]

Sweden has a capitalist economic system mister Dumbo.

Can you point one place in my post you replied to where I said anything about Sweden? Nope, so who's the Dumbo?

Falcon

length of copyrights

[falconwolf]

I can see reasonable arguments for copyrights lasting the lifetime of an artist or writer, but who in history has ever copyrighted a valuable work, and lived another 100 years?

There is no reason copyrights should last the writer's lifetime. In the USA copyrights are granted to encourage the creation of works of art, and progress of the sciences. A person who writes a blockbuster has no reason, financially, to write anything else. But make copyrights last 1 year and the writer is encouraged to write yearly to keep the money flowing. Copyrights may need to last longer for some works, I think it took Leo Tolstoy 7 years to write "War and Peace", if not that book then another of the classics took 7 years.

Falcon

Re:length of copyrights

[smilindog2000]

I'm not sure I agree... surely the popular works don't need long-term copyrights, but the vast majority of writers, musicians, and artists live on very low incomes, have no savings for retirement, and will need any tiny royalty that still comes in during their old age. However, the same argument in no way translates to software. Software naturally has a useful lifetime of only several years, and then it needs to be upgraded.

Re:length of copyrights

[falconwolf]

the vast majority of writers, musicians, and artists live on very low incomes, have no savings for retirement, and will need any tiny royalty that still comes in during their old age

I partially admitted this when I brought up that it took Leo Tolstoy 7 years to write "War and Peace". A few months back I had a discussion like this but my role was reversed, I was the one who wanted copyrights, and lasting 14 years with one 14 year extension possible. Now I'm not so sure anymore. Even in their old age though many writers can still write. Also some people will pay more for signed copies and such. While not a writer now 10 years ago I was one and and was writing articles for magazines and a book, so copyright was important to me. Now however I want to work as a photographer, who also use copyrights, but as stated above I'm not sure copyrights are needed.

However, the same argument in no way translates to software.

If there are copyrights I can see software being copyrighted, however I strongly oppose software patents!!!

Falcon

Re:length of copyrights

[smilindog2000]

I think we basically agree. I think software should not have the same copywrites as art. We should allow them to be different.

What is worng with Carter and Gore?

[jotaeleemeese]

Carter managed that Egyptians and Israelis, then sworn enemies, signed a peace treaty (which most certainly cost the Presidnet of Egypt, Anwar el Sadat is life).

After his presidency (failed according to right wing zealots) he has applied himself to quietly using his influence in worthwhile causes worldwide.

As for Gore, apart of being a real statesman (yes, that is boring and does not play well on TV, but I think by now most USians understand that choosing an uninformed idiot pretending to be your buddy is not the best choice of President), he has devoted his time to an issue that if unattended, will cause very serious conflicts in the future.

money in the bank

[falconwolf]

With the banks I use, they don't actually keep my gold coins in a vault somewhere. The number on the statement is all there is.

It's more than just that, your bank balance is how much the bank owes you. Even if the bank is robbed it is still liable to pay you back your balance up to $100,000 per account if it's federally registered. If you walk into your bank and here's $100,000 in your account if you want to withdraw it they have to hand you $100,000. Of course if you try it you may find the FBI or IRS banging down your door to drag you to the housgow and charged as a drug dealer, by law financial institutions in the US have to report any financial transaction of $10,000 or more.

Falcon

Barriers to software patent reform

[NetSettler]

The trouble with [the way the US manages IP] is that innovation will move to other countries and America will be left behind.

Perhaps. And I agree with your position, btw, so don't take this the wrong way but...

What you say here seems to me, in some bizarre and twisted way, almost a best case outcome. Because if we were being left behind, we might start to respond. This isn't really a national issue, though, and the worst case is that other countries follow our lead and do the same dumb thing we do on software patents.

That was what happened with encryption. I was sure that when the US made that stupidity about not exporting strong crypto that we'd end up with a market where people made it outside the US and sold it back to us. But that would have actually been good, because (a) we'd have mail delivery software that used encrypted technology through-and-through even if we (in the US) had to buy it from overseas and (b) we'd have a commercial threat that we felt a need to respond to. (I'd ever-optimistically hope, anyway.) What happened was much worse. A small and relatively elite set used up their political energy downloading PGP and whatnot for themselves, but the market didn't take it. Instead, they followed the lead of the US (probably mostly Microsoft) and continued with lots of unsecure technologies as the core of the Internet. And so there was no real lesson there that I can point to now, even though the issue of software patent and of encryption seem structurally similar to me in some ways (though I'd accept it if others might not totally agree that this is the best model to compare to).

I also think this issue is blurred by the constant reference to software IP as if they were the same thing. I have very different positions than others on software copyright, but I side completely with those that think that software patent is utterly broken. So it pains me to see things like the GPL v3, which in their zealous attempts to apply political leverage to two problems at the same time, also do damage by intertwining these two unrelated issues people's minds.

I'll close by just remarking that it's amusing to me, and maybe a hopeful sign, that the issue of the Nobel prize and this software patent issue have been linked in the public eye because maybe it gives hopes to my personal proposal that the right way to reform the software patent problem is to reduce the patent system to an award system with few or no prizes, similar to the Nobels.

Re: Copyright for written works...

[Uart]

The practical use of software isn't the reading of source code. The practical use of software is the application and the instructions it gives the hardware.

intellectual property

[falconwolf]

It's a constitutional right to property -- 4th Amendment (check it out).

Amendment 4 - Search and Seizure:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

I must be blind, no matter how many tymes I read or search the text of the 4th Amendment I don't see anywhere in it where "intellectual" never mind "intellectual property" is mentioned once. Nor do I see "intellectual" anywhere else in the USA Constitution.

I would have little incentive to develop my water-heating technology without a patent

May I suggest you read Adam Smith, the Father of Capitalism, sometime. He opposed patents generally. He described patents as "necessary evils, to be handed out sparingly" .

Without Patents, my technology (if marketable) would surely be recreated by some large corporation who would have no reason to pay me a royalty.

Who do you think owns a lot of patents? Those same corporations, well they don't really own the patents so much as patents are assigned to them by the employee who earned the patent. Or something like that. Without patents it would be harder for large corporations to exist.

The patent rewards it's creator, and encourages creation by ensuring the ability of the creator to earn money from his creation.

By giving one person a monopoly, especially for software and algorithms, others are in fact barred from further creations along the same line. General ideas should never receive any "protection", in a small number of cases at most only a specific implementation should be protected.

In regards to the Nobel winner's assertion that software patents reduce or restrict creation, I think he is wholly and completely wrong on this matter.

Again read Adam Smith sometime. "Patents were a conspiracy against the public" he said.

mankind has (thanks to property rights) been able to develop quite an expansive portfolio of technologies.

Far more software has been created without patent protection than software has been patented. Heck it's only been recently that any software was patented. How could all of that software been created without patents?

1) If I have a software patent, I would certainly be interested in developing derivative technologies of my OWN product.

And you'd be able to prevent a multitude of others from doing the same, the more people working on it the more things progress.

2) Patents can be a) licensed and b) transferred -- if YOU want to develop a product that derives from MY technology, you need only approach me with your idea and come to terms with me on a royalty for your use of my patent.

Or you can compleatly refuse and leave me with nothing. However without a patent then anyone else could make improvements without your approval.

Falcon

Re:intellectual property

[Uart]

"I must be blind, no matter how many tymes I read or search the text of the 4th Amendment I don't see anywhere in it where "intellectual" never mind "intellectual property" is mentioned once. Nor do I see "intellectual" anywhere else in the USA Constitution."

Do a quick scan for your right to privacy in there... when you find it, let me know. Just because it doesn't say it, doesn't mean that the SCOTUS doesn't see it there. Anyway, the IP relation to the 4th amendment is more in terms of it being property, and the 4th amendment is designed to protect your property rights. Congress has declared that a patent is a form of personal property (like a car), and the invention it covers is therefore protectable as such. The 4th Amendment makes that property right difficult to revoke. Of course, it works better when you consider it alongside the 14th Amendment (which I may have neglected to mention?), together they establish the concept of due process -- which must be applied to ALL takings of property for them to be legitimate.

"2) Patents can be a) licensed and b) transferred -- if YOU want to develop a product that derives from MY technology, you need only approach me with your idea and come to terms with me on a royalty for your use of my patent.

Or you can compleatly refuse and leave me with nothing. However without a patent then anyone else could make improvements without your approval."

Right. I can refuse, but if I do not have the resources to pursue a particular development on my own, and you wish to fund it, there would be plenty of incentive for me to work out a royalty deal with you. And hey, without real property rights, anyone else could build a Starbucks in your garage. It'd be awfully convenient for your neighbors... you won't mind, right?

I think it's the "without your approval" part that gets at me. You didn't develop my technology, but you want to build something that requires my tech. to be incorporated -- and since it is inconvenient for you to pay me for it, you will take my work? By what right? Is my time and effort of no value? Am I to work for no gain? Without my technology your technology would be impossible, and yet you would profit from the combined technologies fully without compensating me for my work?

Would you like it if your boss stopped paying you, but demanded that you still work 40 hours per week?

Re:intellectual property

[jc42]

Do a quick scan for your right to privacy in [the 4th Ammendment to the US Constitution] ... when you find it, let me know.

Hmmm ... I've always been puzzled by how English-speaking people could not see it.

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, ..."

How could you read that and not think "privacy". Have you just started learning English? I'm sure any dictionary translating English to your native language would explain it well enough that you'd understand.

Being secure against searches is what "privacy" means.

(And being secure against seizures is what "property" means. Either that, or it's a guarantee of universal medical care. English does have a few ambiguities. ;-)

Re:intellectual property

[Uart]

It doesn't SAY privacy (so you are interpreting this right to go beyond criminal prosecution), and in fact, the SCOTUS had to combine clauses in three or four amendments in the Griswold v. CT case to actually establish a right to privacy.

Thojmas Jefferson

[falconwolf]

As Jefferson (no mean author and inventor himself) put it,

Thanks for the link.

Falcon

Do a quick scan for your right to privacy in there

[falconwolf]

Privacy is not intellectual property, I don't know how anyone can say it is.

IP relation to the 4th amendment is more in terms of it being property

I also don't see how an idea can be property either, nor do I see how only one person can have the same idea. "Sorry you can't have that idea because it's mine."

Congress has declared that a patent is a form of personal property (like a car), and the invention it covers is therefore protectable as such.

Sure, something that physically concrete can be property but not an idea. Car ugh? I have a car, as do others, others having theirs doesn't interfere in me using mine. However if I have an idea I can't use it if someone else patented it first, even if I came up with it independently. Heck I may never even know about any patent, I could just get a lightbulb turn on in my brain about something I think is new. Too bad.

"2) Patents can be a) licensed and b) transferred -- if YOU want to develop a product that derives from MY technology, you need only approach me with your idea and come to terms with me on a royalty for your use of my patent.

I said it before but I guess I have to say it again. If I create something but you have a patent on part of you can for whatever reason compleatly refuse to allow me to use the patent, even if it makes it better. Even if I came up with it on my own. That prevents not encourages progress.

without real property rights, anyone else could build a Starbucks in your garage. It'd be awfully convenient for your neighbors

Ah, the keyword "real". I was wondering when that would come up. By you opening a Starbucks on my real property you are hindering if not preventing me from using my REAL, not FAKE, property. However if I independently come up with an idea, artificial "property", you patented my use of it does not prevent you from using it however you want.

you want to build something that requires my tech. to be incorporated -- and since it is inconvenient for you to pay me for it, you will take my work? By what right?

By the fact I came up with it independently. I stole nothing from you instead using my own mind I created something.

Is my time and effort of no value? Am I to work for no gain? Without my technology your technology would be impossible, and yet you would profit from the combined technologies fully without compensating me for my work?

Nobody is stopping you from trying to make money with your technology but you ARE trying to prevent me from doing the same. In a freemarket, and the Father of free market capitalism Adam Smith opposed patents, everyone would have the same chances of making money off an invention. If someone other than the inventor could make it better, or cheaper, (s)he should be able to. That, competition, is the essence of a free market.

Is my time and effort of no value? Am I to work for no gain?

Sure your tyme and effort is of value but so is mine. But by you having the patent it's saying mine tyme and effort is worth nothing as I couldn't do anything without your approval.

Without my technology your technology would be impossible, and yet you would profit from the combined technologies fully without compensating me for my work?

See above where I explain you have just as much an opportunity as anyone else if there are no patents. You could even incorporate my improvements in your product, much like open source works. With your patent however you can prevent me from making a profit even with my improvements.

Falcon

IP laws

[falconwolf]

Intellectual property laws are created to restrict the rights of individuals for the benefit of society as a whole.

No, IP laws only benefit the owners of IP to the detriment of the rest of society.

Falcon

Re:IP laws

[Medievalist]

Intellectual property laws are created to restrict the rights of individuals for the benefit of society as a whole. No, IP laws only benefit the owners of IP to the detriment of the rest of society. These statements are not contradictory. I spoke of what IP laws were created to do, and you are now talking about what current laws actually do.

"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" (Constitution of the United States, Section 8, paragraph 8) pretty clearly states the intentions of IP law. It's for the benefit of society and only indirectly benefits individuals, and thus is thoroughly socialist... just like public schools, sewers, roads, universal access to legal representation, and so on.

Like capitalism, socialism is a very useful thing when properly restricted and implemented. I attended public school and I am now privately employed, so I have little grounds to criticize either system - they've both worked well for me.

oh? So, you agree then?

[falconwolf]

Agree with what?

On having patents? No I disagree, instead I agree with Adam Smith, patents should not be allowed. Especially today, we don't need more monopolies, we need less.

Falcon

Re:oh? So, you agree then?

[Uart]

You re-stated my assertion that Jefferson ultimately supported Patents, as if it was a rebuttal.

Anyway, are you SURE you agree with Adam Smith?

"Adam Smith has sometimes been caricatured as someone who saw no role for government in economic life. In fact, he believed that government had an important role to play. Like most modern believers in free markets, Smith believed that the government should enforce contracts and grant patents and copyrights to encourage inventions and new ideas." [cite]

The quotes that people are using to claim that Smith was in fact anti-patent are misleading. Adam Smith believed that patents were necessary to encourage innovation.

Watson and Cricket

[falconwolf]

Watson and Crick didn't just discover the structure of DNA

You're right, Watson and Cricket didn't discover DNA at all, Rosalind Franklin discovered and described the double helix of DNA.

The same is true of software patents. If you believe in patents in general, but disagree with software patents, I think the true objection actually lies in the length of the term and excessive protection.

Though I used to believe in patents I no longer do and would rather see patents abolished.

Falcon

Re:Do a quick scan for your right to privacy in th

[Uart]

"Privacy is not intellectual property, I don't know how anyone can say it is."

I didn't... I was using it as a reference point to demonstrate that a right can be engendered in the language of the constitution without necessarily being literally written out.

"I also don't see how an idea can be property either, nor do I see how only one person can have the same idea. 'Sorry you can't have that idea because it's mine.'"

Is it possible for two people to both 'think of' War and Peace? Probably not. It is THAT sort of idea that is protected. NOT the common ideas like, "driving across town is quicker than walking..." These are ideas that require time and effort to develop. Even then... the published works of an economist, for example, don't protect the actual meaning of his idea, but rather the WAY he expresses it. Adam Smith couldn't prevent anyone else from thinking, or using his idea of the Invisible Hand, but he could prevent you from publishing the words he used to describe it.

So yes, two people can have the same idea, and both of them can often have their idea protected.

Patents serve a slightly different purpose. It is conceivable that two parties would come to the same means of producing a result at the same time. Rarely will they complete their work at the same time (or even really close). Does it not serve the purpose of expediency that the person who first completed their work ought to gain the right to produce it? A system that rewards the expedient party also provides for an efficient system where people planning to undertake research will be encouraged to discover what others might be working on, so as not to duplicate anyone else's work.

"you want to build something that requires my tech. to be incorporated -- and since it is inconvenient for you to pay me for it, you will take my work? By what right?

By the fact I came up with it independently. I stole nothing from you instead using my own mind I created something."

So now we are changing the hypo to one where you redevelop my technology on your own? If you were already aware of my technology, then this is highly unlikely. If you were not, then see above -- it would be inefficient for you to replicate my work, and you should rather seek an agreement where you could license the work I've already done. If I hear the Doors play "Light My Fire" and then sit down a week later and play the same tune on my organ, even if I never looked at any notes/tablature for the song, I cannot call it "Walking on Sunshine" and declare it a product of my own mind -- even if I add an extra verse, it is still a derivative of someone else's efforts.

"Nobody is stopping you from trying to make money with your technology but you ARE trying to prevent me from doing the same."
No. I am trying to prevent you from making money from MY technology.

"In a freemarket, and the Father of free market capitalism Adam Smith opposed patents, everyone would have the same chances of making money off an invention. If someone other than the inventor could make it better, or cheaper, (s)he should be able to. That, competition, is the essence of a free market."

That is wonderful, but Adam Smith may actually be in the wrong here. A lack of patent rights creates a barrier to entry that actually encourages the monopolies that Smith thought he was speaking out against. A Patent monopoly is ultimately limited, and while it may help a large yet creative corporation to grow, it also protects the small time inventor from having his work taken by the large corporation and sold to the public without need to compensate the small time inventor. If I develop a product over two years, it will surely cost me more to bring it to market, than it would cost a large company that simply copied my work.

Meanwhile, part of the patent process is full-disclosure of my technology. When the patent expires, everyone knows exactly how it works. It is a trade-off that benefits society.

"Sure your tyme and effort is of value but so is

is the study pro or anti patents?

[falconwolf]

If this is considered a "pro patent" study, then the case for the current strong patent regime is even weaker than I had thought.

I don't think the study is pro patents at all, if anything it's anti patents. For instance where it says: "For industries like software or computers, there is actually good reason to believe that imitation promotes innovation and that strong patents (long patents of broad scope) inhibit it. Society might be well served if such industries had only limited intellectual property protection. Moreover, many firms might genuinely welcome competition and the prospect of being imitated.3"

Falcon

Re:is the study pro or anti patents?

[argent]

I believe you're quoting from the Maskin paper, not the Yao paper I'm referring to.

http://www.nber.org/~confer/2005/IPEs05/yao.pdf

Re:is the study pro or anti patents?

[falconwolf]

I believe you're quoting from the Maskin paper, not the Yao paper I'm referring to.

I didn't finish the study you linked to, of the 29 pages I've only read the first 5, but it seems he thinks patents are good. Weak patents better than nothing, but strong patents are better from what I've read so far.

I just saved the study to my hdd and will finish it later. I'll then search for more studies on patents. I don't particularly agree with patents but depending on what I find I may support them later, reformed though. For instance if more than one person at the same tyme come up with an invention, it's not right for those who invented something independently to be shutout because they didn't file for or get a patent before someone else did.

Falcon

They gave Al Gore and Jimmy Carter Peace Prizes

[falconwolf]

I can't see Gore getting the Peace Prize but Carter has done a lot to promote peace. Heck he was able to get Egypt and Israel to sign, and keep, a peace agreement as president. Since then he has been involved in monitoring elections to make sure they were free and his Habitat for Humanity has allowed many to own homes they never would of been able to own otherwise. All this helps in the cause of peace. And like Nixon before him he turned out to be a better elder statesman than a president.

Falcon

Re:Do a quick scan for your right to privacy in th

[falconwolf]

Adam Smith couldn't prevent anyone else from thinking, or using his idea of the Invisible Hand, but he could prevent you from publishing the words he used to describe it.

I doubt it, Adam Smith was against patents and copyrights, except for a limited tyme period, instead he believed in selling a better product at a lower cost. He equated monopolies as a mercantile system and he was dedicated to defeating this system. He wanted to replace it with that Invisible hand, a free market where there was a voluntary exchange.

So yes, two people can have the same idea, and both of them can often have their idea protected.

Not if one patents the idea. The other looses any right to it. In the US it's First to Invent whereas elsewhere it's First to File. If they both invent as the same tyme independently only one can get the patent.

Does it not serve the purpose of expediency that the person who first completed their work ought to gain the right to produce it?

No, not to the exclusion of the other, they should both have the same right to produce, or try to produce their invention.

A system that rewards the expedient party also provides for an efficient system where people planning to undertake research will be encouraged to discover what others might be working on, so as not to duplicate anyone else's work.

You seem to be mixed up here, if they are undertaking the same thing then they are duplicating each other's work, they may not know it but they are duplicating each other's work. Or do you have a different definition for "duplicate"? If so we're never come to any understanding.

If you were already aware of my technology

Can you please tell me where I said I was aware of your technology here? You even included where I said "By the fact I came up with it independently. I stole nothing from you instead using my own mind I created something." There's nothing in that where I said I was aware of "your technology" but it does specifically state that I came up with it "independently". It was only later when I said "make it better, or cheaper, (s)he should be able to." I should be able to make improvement, then you can take those and make more improvements. We can both have a piece of the pie.

No. I am trying to prevent you from making money from MY technology.

You mean the technology I developed INDEPENDENTLY. You may of put work into it but so did I. You and your patent however would say my efforts mean nothing.

If I develop a product over two years, it will surely cost me more to bring it to market, than it would cost a large company that simply copied my work.

Ever hear of Trade secrets? If you're invention is a trade secret it's already protected. Now how did that large company learn about it? Perhaps you didn't get a sign non disclosure agreement? Or did you but whoever violated it? If so sue them. On the other hand if they did come up with it independently as well then they should be able to try to profit as well. Maybe they build cheap ones that don't last long, then you can offer a higher quality product that last a long tyme. Kind of like Levi Strauss did in the 1800s. Typical clothing for miners and others living outdoors didn't last long. So he took the canvas material that was used for covered wagons and used it to make clothing and by using rivets in places it prevented seams from bursting thus his clothing lasted. Levi Strauss offered a better product so his business grew.

"Sure your tyme and effort is of value but so is mine. But by you having the patent it's saying mine tyme and effort is worth nothing as I couldn't do anything without your approval."

I'm sorry, I don't follow you. You seem to be saying that my time and effort has value, and yet you still wish to profit based on that effort wi

Re: Copyright for written works...

[KnuthKonrad]

It's illegal to read Windows, the source is closed.

Not quite correct, Sir! Besides the fact that you can license the Windows source code, there are some countries (e.g. Germany) where laws are in effect that allow you - under certain circumstances - to disassemble and rewrite/modify software. Regardless of copyrights, patents and EULAs.

In summary

[Anonymous Coward]

In summary:

You assert that "Global Warming" - which has been a platform for politicians, the subject of proposed legislation and treaties, and the subject of debate from the Senate floor all the way down (or up) to Slashdot - is not a political issue. You've compared it to coffee table chat over the health effects of tea.

You assert that you have no reason to question the legitimacy of the Nobel committee awarding Gore a prize for peace. And you support that by quoting them stating that they awarded the prize to put focus on climate change. You left off the last sentence where they state that action on global warming is required immediately.

Ok. I'm good with that.

Re:Do a quick scan for your right to privacy in th

[Uart]

"I doubt it, Adam Smith was against patents and copyrights, except for a limited tyme period, instead he believed in selling a better product at a lower cost. He equated monopolies as a mercantile system and he was dedicated to defeating this system. He wanted to replace it with that Invisible hand, a free market where there was a voluntary exchange."

1) I didn't claim that he WOULD or WOULDN'T -- the key word was COULDN'T.
2) He wasn't against Patents and Copyright at all. This is incorrect. He didn't like them, but much like Thomas Jefferson, he accepted their usefulness and was in favor of granting them.

http://adamsmithslostlegacy.com/2006/08/wretched-spirit-of-inaccurate.html
http://adamsmithslostlegacy.com/2005/10/patents-are-monopolies.html

"No. I am trying to prevent you from making money from MY technology.

You mean the technology I developed INDEPENDENTLY. You may of put work into it but so did I. You and your patent however would say my efforts mean nothing."

Why did you recreate my work when you could more cheaply offer to license that work from me? Why didn't you look into it before undertaking your work? To determine if someone else was already undertaking similar work, or holding a patent. Seems inefficient to me. Also sounds like a case of tough-noogies. You have the opportunity to discover if I already hold a patent and license it -- it is your legal responsibility to either do so, or to be prepared to pay the costs at trial.

"Ever hear of Trade secrets? If you're invention is a trade secret it's already protected. Now how did that large company learn about it? Perhaps you didn't get a sign non disclosure agreement? Or did you but whoever violated it?"

I'm a small-time inventor. I work out of my garage, and I don't have a lawyer to draft an NDA for me. OR, maybe I got drunk at a bar and told someone what I was working on... or maybe I just started building and selling my widgets and the company in question takes it apart, sees how it works and makes there own without investing as much in development. Etc.

Trade secrets only apply to things that you are able to keep a secret... like the recipe for Coca-Cola. I can prevent the VP of Operations from selling that recipe to Pepsi, but if I publish it in a book, I cannot protect it anymore. If someone else figures out my recipe on their own, I cannot protect it.

"Maybe they build cheap ones that don't last long, then you can offer a higher quality product that last a long tyme. Kind of like Levi Strauss did in the 1800s."

Levi Strauss' jeans were patented -- or at least parts of them, like the rivets, that made them more durable and a better quality product.

"And you're saying the same thing with your patent. Because you got a patent my tyme and effort means nothing.

We're just going around in circles. Like you I supported patents at one tyme however someone who did a better job of explaining the problems than I can with patents convinced me otherwise, unfortunately I don't have the ability he had. So I think we should agree to disagree."

We're going around in circles because you are putting forth the preposterous notion that one who re-creates a patented work (and should have known that work was patented) ought to be compensated for work that was an infringement from the outset. That's like saying that I ought to pay you to trespass on my land because you spent three hours scaling the wall around my property.

For the sake of me not spending any more time during class lectures in this thread, I'll agree to disagree. But you should know: it is spelled "time."

Windows' closed source

[falconwolf]

It's illegal to read Windows, the source is closed.

Not quite correct, Sir! Besides the fact that you can license the Windows source code

you and I use "open source" differently then. Open source allows people to view the source code for free, not just those licensed to view the code. And some licenses allow modification and or resale of said code.

there are some countries (e.g. Germany) where laws are in effect that allow you - under certain circumstances - to disassemble and rewrite/modify software.

Maybe in other countries people are allowed to do so however MS is a US company and I live in the US. Without paying for that license I can't legally look at the Windows source code. Without paying anything though I can look at, read, and modify all the source code for Linux I want and can understand. Don't come to the conclusion I'm a Penguinhead though. Though I have 2 PCs with Linus, one is an old DEC Alpha setup as a dualboot booting both Linux and Windows NT 4.0 and the other is a PC I got preinstalled with Linux a bit over a year ago and haven't booted up the last 2 months, I am typing this on a MacBook Pro I got 2 months ago to replace my Windows PC.

Falcon

Re:Do a quick scan for your right to privacy in th

[falconwolf]

I give up, you keep twisting things, like many lawyers, so this is my last post on this.

Falcon

Re:Do a quick scan for your right to privacy in th

[Uart]

Twisting? No sir. I am presenting my viewpoint.

Utilitarianism

[Morosoph]

Well, there are always the constitutionalists, but those who authoured the US constitution clearly buy into (specifically) Locke's theory of natural law.

Also, I agree that the state of law is for the good that it does; indeed, natural law theory is itself implicitly utilitarian, in that not working with the grain of nature is inefficient. However, explicit utilitarianism focuses upon the calculable, throwing out the role of intuition. We know when the natural flow of things is being obstructed, but if we cannot use that intuition, we will fail to find the optimum.

Professor Maskin's analysis is a utilitarian argument, which IMO works, but it seems to me to be an argument that follows common sense: the programmer's workflow is obstructed by patents, which sit there like mines.

The nature of the obstruction seems bizarre in that the space of ideas has a very different geometry than that of land (say). It's one thing to rip off another, but to have to be cautious when coding is another matter. You have to be careful whenever you use something slightly innovative (and therefore potentially could have been patented), and if you actually check up on it, you risk triple damages. Being careful not to be too clever is the opposite of the intended effect of patents.