Sorry if I wasn't clear, I only meant to apply this to government funded research organizations. When you put the government funded part into it, the need for funding it through royalties is arguably negated.
I don't think you have to own the patents to be protected by prior art. iirc, Red Hat recently used some old Amiga designs for defense in court against a patent troll.
I would agree that NASA should release their patents as well, and the same would go for any other US government agencies and agencies of other governments. It's a waste of taxpayer's money all around (unless you are a lawyer, perhaps). If you want others to put in a share for research, do it collectively with an organization like CERN, or have your research be privately funded.
Lenovo sells hardware outside of China. If you want to sell things in the US, you have to follow US law. If you want to sell things in Germany, you have to follow German law.
One could argue that this is worse. I expect multinational conglomerates to sue or demand royalties if given the chance, but a research body should arguably be above this, and their research should be freely available to all. This attitude is reflected in the way works for the US government are put into the public domain, and universities both public and private often release software under permissive license (BSD stands for 'Berkeley Software Distribution' and the MIT license comes from MIT).
Adobe's tools are primary for web developers. according to the stats from w3schools, a site for web developers, GNU/Linux currently has a larger market share (presumably among web developers) than OS X did a few years back. The potential market is larger than what they considered enough to support OS X for.
No, it's not. Anything that is patentable is also protectable by trade secret. Absent the patent system, companies would have to expend additional resources on keeping the inventions secret or litigating in private law, but they would have absolute and indefinite protection.
Accounting for patents within a company is difficult enough, let alone the total cost and benefits to society. Some patents could be trade secrets, but some couldn't.
Liberty interests and delegations of sovereign power, underlying your second example, aren't exclusive, either.
How about the President of the United States, or other similar political positions? It certainly bestows certain exclusive rights for a limited time, as POTUS is the only person who can appoint federal judges. These rights are legal rights and they are as exclusive as they get. Some may argue that exclusive rights are what define property, but that's far from a unanimous definition.
And you would be wrong. There is literally no one alive who is capable of defending his possessions against the world without relying on the law.
With 100% efficiency? Certainly not. But the legal system is nowhere near that either. If you are saying that nobody could defend their possessions without a legal system, you've got to be kidding. The people protecting their property may not be inside the law, but we are assuming we aren't relying on the law.
There is no serious contention that the patent system on the whole has not been wildly successful.
That is very difficult to prove either way. Also, I'm not talking about patents in the last 200 years, I'm talking about patents today. There are scholarly people that suggest that patents act as a x% tax outside of perhaps the pharmaceutical industry, let alone justifying the freedoms that the public sacrifices in order for patents to be enforced. However, what I am arguing for is not the need to abolish the patent system, but the needs to reform it, which I think most anyone can acknowledge.
I don't believe that is the case. I think if you conducted a poll, you'd find that most people care very little about either, as most people are not shopowners or copyright holders.
Most people have private property. If someone were to take their stuff without any consequences, they would be displeased. They may not care deeply about someone stealing small amounts of things from Wal-Mart, but personal property is quite important to them.
As for patents being property, they simply are not. They are defined in different sections of law and have a fundamentally different natures. What you seem to be referring to is simply legal rights or agreements. I have a legal right to not testify against myself, but that is not property. A police officer has rights to use force when others don't, but that is not his property.
The patent system is not broken. It is imperfect, as it will always be. There are real issues with the practical implementation, and plenty of improvements to be made, but most of the commonly-griped aspects exist by design or are human limitations.
It has numerous problems that make it habitually fail to perform it's intended purpose, which is to be a net benefit to the public. That's about the most clear way a system could be broken.
The term does not connote anything resembling an inherent entitlement. People are not inherently entitled to any property except that which already belongs to them. I'm not sure what the basis of this perceived "suggestion" is.
The general public is quite keen on strong legal protections of property. People feel much stronger about shoplifting than for example copyright infringement. By equating the two, you'll have an easier time convincing the public to support further enforcement of copyright and less support for the protections of fair use. You can argue that property is not a natural right, but John Locke famously put it after life and liberty, and there are quite a few people that subscribe to that notion. The 'you wouldn't steal a car' anti-piracy campaign capitalizes on this.
Further, most property does not last in perpetuity, and most purchases of property accomplish far less than a complete exhaustion of attached property rights. So the idea that buying something makes it "yours" and it lasts "forever" is a foolish notion even if the subject of intellectual property is never mentioned
I didn't say it lasts forever. I said that it doesn't disappear after 20 years. I might consume, lose, break, or sell my personal property. I might hide it or I might bestow it to my heirs. The lifespan of property is not fixed by legal statutes, and it could potentially last indefinitely. There are certain time elements of laws regarding statutes of limitations, but that is very different from the public domain.
They're all unique, often in grossly dissimilar ways, but they're all property because they all share the elemental trait of property: legal exclusivity.
Patents and other legal intangibles are assets, not property. Property is a kind of asset, but not all assets are property.
Not many people are completely opposed to patents, but the patent system is broken and our viewpoints on patents are broken as well. The clause in the constitution that allows for copyright and patents to exist clearly defines the reason behind them as 'To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.' This makes it clear that patents in the US exist for the benefit of the public. not because inventors are inherently entitled to it, as calling them 'intellectual property' suggests. Patents act very different from physical property, as one's physical property doesn't disappear after 20 years.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry if I wasn't clear, I only meant to apply this to government funded research organizations. When you put the government funded part into it, the need for funding it through royalties is arguably negated.
Yes, if only government funded research organizations had some way of getting money from the government.
I don't exactly see Slashdotters up in arms accusing the NIH of being a patent troll. Is this some kind of weird US-centric bias?
I think it's more likely to be because slashdot's audience is more concerned with software than medicine or patents in general.
I don't think you have to own the patents to be protected by prior art. iirc, Red Hat recently used some old Amiga designs for defense in court against a patent troll.
I would agree that NASA should release their patents as well, and the same would go for any other US government agencies and agencies of other governments. It's a waste of taxpayer's money all around (unless you are a lawyer, perhaps). If you want others to put in a share for research, do it collectively with an organization like CERN, or have your research be privately funded.
Lenovo sells hardware outside of China. If you want to sell things in the US, you have to follow US law. If you want to sell things in Germany, you have to follow German law.
One could argue that this is worse. I expect multinational conglomerates to sue or demand royalties if given the chance, but a research body should arguably be above this, and their research should be freely available to all. This attitude is reflected in the way works for the US government are put into the public domain, and universities both public and private often release software under permissive license (BSD stands for 'Berkeley Software Distribution' and the MIT license comes from MIT).
Adobe's tools are primary for web developers. according to the stats from w3schools, a site for web developers, GNU/Linux currently has a larger market share (presumably among web developers) than OS X did a few years back. The potential market is larger than what they considered enough to support OS X for.
No, it's not. Anything that is patentable is also protectable by trade secret. Absent the patent system, companies would have to expend additional resources on keeping the inventions secret or litigating in private law, but they would have absolute and indefinite protection.
Accounting for patents within a company is difficult enough, let alone the total cost and benefits to society. Some patents could be trade secrets, but some couldn't.
Liberty interests and delegations of sovereign power, underlying your second example, aren't exclusive, either.
How about the President of the United States, or other similar political positions? It certainly bestows certain exclusive rights for a limited time, as POTUS is the only person who can appoint federal judges. These rights are legal rights and they are as exclusive as they get. Some may argue that exclusive rights are what define property, but that's far from a unanimous definition.
And you would be wrong. There is literally no one alive who is capable of defending his possessions against the world without relying on the law.
With 100% efficiency? Certainly not. But the legal system is nowhere near that either. If you are saying that nobody could defend their possessions without a legal system, you've got to be kidding. The people protecting their property may not be inside the law, but we are assuming we aren't relying on the law.
There is no serious contention that the patent system on the whole has not been wildly successful.
That is very difficult to prove either way. Also, I'm not talking about patents in the last 200 years, I'm talking about patents today. There are scholarly people that suggest that patents act as a x% tax outside of perhaps the pharmaceutical industry, let alone justifying the freedoms that the public sacrifices in order for patents to be enforced. However, what I am arguing for is not the need to abolish the patent system, but the needs to reform it, which I think most anyone can acknowledge.
I don't believe that is the case. I think if you conducted a poll, you'd find that most people care very little about either, as most people are not shopowners or copyright holders.
Most people have private property. If someone were to take their stuff without any consequences, they would be displeased. They may not care deeply about someone stealing small amounts of things from Wal-Mart, but personal property is quite important to them. As for patents being property, they simply are not. They are defined in different sections of law and have a fundamentally different natures. What you seem to be referring to is simply legal rights or agreements. I have a legal right to not testify against myself, but that is not property. A police officer has rights to use force when others don't, but that is not his property.
The patent system is not broken. It is imperfect, as it will always be. There are real issues with the practical implementation, and plenty of improvements to be made, but most of the commonly-griped aspects exist by design or are human limitations.
It has numerous problems that make it habitually fail to perform it's intended purpose, which is to be a net benefit to the public. That's about the most clear way a system could be broken.
The term does not connote anything resembling an inherent entitlement. People are not inherently entitled to any property except that which already belongs to them. I'm not sure what the basis of this perceived "suggestion" is.
The general public is quite keen on strong legal protections of property. People feel much stronger about shoplifting than for example copyright infringement. By equating the two, you'll have an easier time convincing the public to support further enforcement of copyright and less support for the protections of fair use. You can argue that property is not a natural right, but John Locke famously put it after life and liberty, and there are quite a few people that subscribe to that notion. The 'you wouldn't steal a car' anti-piracy campaign capitalizes on this.
Further, most property does not last in perpetuity, and most purchases of property accomplish far less than a complete exhaustion of attached property rights. So the idea that buying something makes it "yours" and it lasts "forever" is a foolish notion even if the subject of intellectual property is never mentioned
I didn't say it lasts forever. I said that it doesn't disappear after 20 years. I might consume, lose, break, or sell my personal property. I might hide it or I might bestow it to my heirs. The lifespan of property is not fixed by legal statutes, and it could potentially last indefinitely. There are certain time elements of laws regarding statutes of limitations, but that is very different from the public domain.
They're all unique, often in grossly dissimilar ways, but they're all property because they all share the elemental trait of property: legal exclusivity.
Patents and other legal intangibles are assets, not property. Property is a kind of asset, but not all assets are property.
Not many people are completely opposed to patents, but the patent system is broken and our viewpoints on patents are broken as well. The clause in the constitution that allows for copyright and patents to exist clearly defines the reason behind them as 'To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.' This makes it clear that patents in the US exist for the benefit of the public. not because inventors are inherently entitled to it, as calling them 'intellectual property' suggests. Patents act very different from physical property, as one's physical property doesn't disappear after 20 years.
MS and Apple lose their lock-in on the market. Lock-in is very valuable