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Patent Attorney On Why We Need To Rethink Intellectual Property

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the undermining-from-the-inside dept.

Techdirt called our attention to an interesting video of patent attorney Stephan Kinsella's presentation on 'Rethinking Intellectual Property Completely.' It's a long presentation, but well worth the time to watch. There is also an ongoing series of posts discussing intellectual property rights on Techdirt for additional reading.

7 of 226 comments (clear)

  1. Re:A better way of saying this... by blackraven14250 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ..somehow get congress to stop their continuous feeding at the trough of corporate lobbyists... Congress doesn't want to stop feeding on the trough. It's in their best interest, in the form of donations, to continue getting their money. They are, after all, only their for their reelection, and not really there for the people.
  2. Re:Old concept in a new world by CSMatt · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Is the money you gain from prohibiting others from using the same idea in a generic drug worth the lives lost by those who are unable to afford your prices?

  3. Re:Old concept in a new world by QuantumRiff · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Drug companies love to talk about the cost of developing their drugs, but they easily spend more money Marketing their drugs than they do developing them. If there drugs are so good and wonderfull, shouldn't they sell themselves?

    This gives much more information.

    --

    What are we going to do tonight Brain?
  4. Re:Old concept in a new world by WaltBusterkeys · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The millions and billions are collective research, not just solely put on one product. It's throwing money at the wall, waiting for some to stick, Yes, because it's impossible to know in advance which concept will work. There is no way to know that Molecule #1512 will be the one that will become a successful therapy, and that #1-#1511 will be failures. Investigating the first 1511 is an absolute prerequisite to finding out that #1512 is the one that will work. You call it "throwing money at the wall," but that's the only practical way to do drug research these days. You start with a bunch of compounds that look like possible candidates, then slowly weed out the ones that don't work or cause unacceptable side-effects or otherwise aren't promising.

    If there were a way to know in advance which drugs would work then nobody would waste time looking at the unsuccessful ones.
  5. Re:Intellectual Property Tax by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    you Sir are a freaking Genius.

    Tax ALL intellectual property based on it's value. All OSS and FSF IP has zero tax as it is given away freely.

    Holy crap you hit the nail on the head in such an elegant way none of them will see it coming.

    You found a solution to All if the Intellectual Property messes by giving the politicians something to tax. Holy crap I'm going to start talking about this to the right people to see if I can get it rolling in my state.

    This is in fact the answer. As soon as governments start taking tax on IP these idiots at the RIAA, MPAA and BSA will stand back and go... wooooah. Wait a minute.

    Base the TAX they get on how much they sued for infringement. That would make it that record companies need to ante up billions in taxes.

    BRILLIANT!

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  6. The death of IP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Generally speaking,
    I'm not a software pirate. I use FOSS.
    I'm not a media pirate. I listen to CC stuff.
    I'm not an encyclopedia pirate. I use wikipedia.

    When all is open, patents are basically unenforceable. You can own an implementation via copyright, but you can't own an idea.

    I won't drive anyone out of business pirating their stuff. I'll drive them out of business by obsoleting it.
    ~ethana2 (too lazy to login)

  7. Re:Old concept in a new world by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 4, Interesting

    But if there is not a perceived investment opportunity, many drugs sold for high prices today (and lower prices tomorrow) would never have been developed.

    This is true, but maybe if we allocated our tax dollars better we would have better drugs yet. The way things are now, a lot of the research is already funded by tax dollars, even though private companies end up with the patents. They also pass up avenues for research that might result in cures, which are much less profitable than treatments.

    The drug industry and health industry in general is a situation where the government interferes with the free market by enforcing patents and subsidizing some research and restricting other research. The problem is not necessarily government interference, but the fact that the government interference is directed by lobbyists making campaign contributions instead of by representatives acting in the best interests of the people.