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Patents That Kill
wabrandsma (2551008) writes From The Economist: "The patent system, which was developed independently in 15th century Venice and then in 17th century England, gave entrepreneurs a monopoly to sell their inventions for a number of years. Yet by the 1860s the patent system came under attack, including from The Economist. Patents, critics argued, stifled future creativity by allowing inventors to rest on their laurels. Recent economic research backs this up."
Post!
Why was this modded down? This is probably his single accomplishment in life. Let the man have this one thing!
Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.
- Thomas Jefferson
I think we need reasonable limits on just about all "intellectual property". For copyrights, the content creator's remaining natural life plus ten years, or 40 years total, which ever is longer. For patents, there should be a requirement to produce and sell the idea in the patent after a few years or to demonstrate a reasonable attempt to do so, and that different kinds of inventions should have different lengths of patent protection.
I want people to get paid for their work, but at the same time, if that work has caused significant cultural change then there should be a point when that work is released to that culture, instead of licensed to that culture for a fee.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I wish I could find the link, but no luck so far. There was a speech given to the house of lords in England in the 1700s where an attorney argues that copyrights are only beneficial to the copyright owner, which tends to not be the artist where the copyright is intended. Print shops would demand copyright to print a book, but of course they would pay the artist a few pennies for their troubles. The speech covers a well known English auhor's family woes after his death. Even though he was a well known author and sold enough books that he should have been wealthy, after he died his family was left destitute. The reason was because a publisher owned all of his copyrights and his family never received a penny in royalties.
Of course the copyright holder (publisher) was suing the house to extend copyrights, because it's so beneficial to the economy.
A bit off topic I realize, since TFA is about patents. The thing is though, the arguments stay the same. It is not like John the inventor gets to hold his patent and benefit, it's more like John the inventor's patent was 90% owned by the company he worked for because they sued him for the rights.
Some things never change. This has a lot to do with why they try and make backroom laws like TPP, CISPA/SOPA type laws, etc.. Rational people would point out the flaws, so in the US we just make the discussions a matter of national security so people don't know. Thank goodness a few companies got on the bandwagon with CISPA/SOPA, but the next versions are not being discussed publicly and are works in progress in the Senate and House.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
It's a word-for-word copy of an entire post made by someone else. The copyright for it will expire in 2150, give or take, unless more copyright extensions are added before then. Until then said post is infringing on copyright and must be taken down.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Since a stated reason of the copyright and patent systems are to encourage creation, how does letting someone collecting money off of one thing their entire life, much less after they are dead, encourage them to continue to do more work to keep getting their paycheck?
You replace patents with nothing. Empirical research has shown that patents don't do squat and lead to less overall innovation and wealth creation than without patents.
There are many ways to research it empirically. You can compare/contrast countries where one country disallowed patents in a particular field. You can compare/contrast where one country had a stronger patent regime than another in the same field. (It goes without saying you want to look at countries with similar industrialization levels). You can compare across fields in the same economy by, for example, looking at innovation in a field with weak--or no--IP protection with a field with stronger protections. And you can use historical or contemporary data.
Anyhow, there are many sources of empirical data to judge the efficacy of patent policies. It turns out that when you do rigorous research and look at all the data, patents are a net loss across the board. The only place where patents arguably make sense according to empirical data is in pharmaceuticals, but only because without patents companies provably couldn't afford the regulatory cost imposed upon them by the FDA. But FDA regulation is has been shown to be too strict and unnecessary at current levels. So we'd be better off with a market free of patents (more, cheap drugs with higher efficacy), as long as some other regulations were changed.
You can read a short book describing all the arguments and with a summary of the empirical research. It's called "Against Intellectual Monopoly", and one of the authors also wrote the paper mentioned above.
See http://www.amazon.com/Against-Intellectual-Monopoly-Michele-Boldrin/dp/0521127262/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top
Free version is here: http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm
People love to use hypotheticals to defend patents and IP in general. But at the end of the day it's an empirical question, not a question of theory. Common hypotheticals always have unstated premises which even in classical economics are not necessarily true. When you look at the empirical data, those hypotheticals and their premises are shown to be bogus.
Why should a copyright ever extend past the life of the author? For those 10 years you propose after the author dies, what additional works will that author create as a result of the additional copyright protection? And will zombie works be good enough to be worthy of copyright protection?
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
I think we need reasonable limits on just about all "intellectual property".
TFA makes the opposite point that, at least for pharmaceuticals, the time limit is too short. After a drug is patented, it must go through a long series of testing, and once it is approved, there are only a few years of profit before the patent expires. So Big Pharma concentrates on drugs for critical illnesses, like late term cancer. That way they can run the test and get a die or no-die result quickly. They have little incentive to develop long term preventative drugs, because decades may go by before the result is clear, and the patent has long since expired. Since preventative drugs are often far more effective, this is a perverse incentive.
My opinion is that most patent durations should be shortened, and we should get rid of most patents for medicine, and find a completely different way to fund pharmaceutical R&D.
Well for great feats of man, more investment is required. Could Pixar have been kickstarted for ToyStory 1? I think they went to great lengths because there was more money to be made.
I agree there should be a limit on copyrights, but it shouldn't be much more than 10 years. At this time, people can use your characters and such, but guess what, after 10 years of the public enjoying something, it is a part of their life too.
Finally, everyone remember radio? Radio was invented way before it was it actually became reality. Why? Because everyone had patents on different parts of the radio and they didn't want to collaborate. I hear it wasn't until around WWI that the government stepped in to be able to use it for the military.
Anyone who thinks patents help the little guy haven't seen troll lawsuits smack little guys senseless. Anyone who thinks patents help the little guy haven't seen big corporations crush their competitors they perceive as a threat.
God spoke to me
OMG What will Capital Records and Disney do if they could only own their IPs for 10 years? Billionaires would starve and their kids would only have 15 lifetimes worth of money to inherit! Perish the thought!