I would happily not put words in your mouth if... you said something. Most of what your replies consist of is "nope.. you're not right there" and then you decline to say how I am, in fact, not right. This is the first post you've made where you actually explored some of your own opinions, instead of just stating them and moving on.
Lets see.. I have explained quite a few times what position I have on patents, yet you keep arguing as if I deny any usefullness of patents alltogether. I point at the existance of trade secrets as an alternative to keep your competition out, and you say I am all in favor of trade secrets....
No, what you just described has nothing to do with putting words in my mouth.
I do indeed expect you to have 1. some reading capability, 2. some brains, and 3. the ability to use those 2 together. WHen I point at a very well known and documented case like Fernsworth vs RCA, I do indeed expect that if you studied the patent system and its consequences to the level you are suggesting, that you are either familiar with it, or bother to look it up. It is way too long to describe in a few posts here.
It doesn't ignore that inventions are frequently built on other inventions. Have I, at any point, suggested that a patent should give you a right to deny any research potential until the expiration of the patent? No. I would quite passionately argue that the patent should give you commercial rights only.
By allowing research, but not commercial exploitation of such an enhanced invention, you do not make for a better situation (not to mention that at least where I live, and from what I understand also in the USA, you can quite use patents for research already)
You encourage the situation where someone can do research, invent something new that as a component uses an existing and patented invention, just to find that he can not license it and hence, cannot benefit from his own invention. The new invention is still withheld from society in this case, and its inventor still won't get his 'reward'. Oh, but he can wait till the old patent expires? sure he can, and depending on how closely his invention followed on the old patent, he might actually still squeeze out a bit of time in which his new patent is valid while the old one is not.
What would solve this, but seems extremely difficult to implement in an anywhere fair way, is mandatory licensing for a 'reasonable' fee.. but, what is reasonable? And what about an inventor who wants to try to commercialize his invention before others can do so? (can modify such a mandatory licensing idea to deal with that, but it remains a very difficult one)
It might not be what we have.
Actually, for all I know it is pretty much what we have, but as argued above, it doesn't address the issue.
But patents do have utility. I'm not willing to discard that because the current system is overly restrictive.
Please reread everything I have said so far. I never said patents do not have utility. I have some doubts about some of their claimed advantages, and believe that there are disadvantages outweighting the advantages in quite a few cases, but that would not even be a discussion if I'd think patents are useless alltogether.
Remember, I do not want to do away with patents alltogether, but I do want to limit them to fields of technology where such an incentive is really needed. That should have told you I do believe they have utility because that statement would not make sense at all if I believed otherwise.
I agree with this. Completely. I might've said "in most cases" but otherwise, yeah.
I think we agree completely here.. the 'some cases' is my judgement that that protection is not needed that often, it is not trying to say that you should only be able to profit from your own inventiveness in some cases. Our disagreement seems to be about when it is needed, and if the default assumption should be that it is needed unless or not needed un
I'm not muslim, I'm an atheist Irish-American, who is in the rather small minority of being pro-palestine in the 'states.
Sadly enough there is indeed only a very tiny minority for that, and even worse, trying to say so is bound to get you quite some response..
As an aside, just because I think its funny, it seems that trying to argue that Sweden is just as badly affected by Arab political machinations as the United States is by Israeli ones is kind of silly. You're annoyed by arab actions, the United States is made an internationally dangerous rogue state by the Israeli's.
Uh, that was not what I was arguing. I was arguing that Sweden is similarely affected by slander over their neutrality in the second world war as Ireland is.
For the rest, yes, I am 'annoyed' by certain 'Arab' actions, but unlike many, I don't respond by declaring them to be 'the enemy' as a result, just like I am quite annoyed by certain Israeli actions, but won't declare them the enemy as a result either.
Then, the USA is in theory quite a powerfull country which Israel depends on directly. It is interesting how that resulted in Israel basicly dictating the foreign policy of the USA for as far as the middle east is concerned. This points at a very serious problem with the political system in the USA. You can blame Israel for bad intentions here, and I won't argue that. I will however point out that whatever the USA does with that is the responsibility of the USA government, and not of Israel.
I do agree btw that the USA with its current government is acting like a rogue state. (and yet, I won't see all 'Americans' as evil as a consequence)
I do see big advantages in the sharing of ideas. I also believe that you can have a situation where it would not work, hence:
trade secrets are anathema to that ideal.
They are indeed when applied to every idea. They can also be a usefull exception.
Because they're secrets. You don't get to build anything off my ideas because I haven't told you. Maybe you come up with the same idea. Which, to be frank, is a waste. Twice the effort to develop the same invention.
That has always been an important argument behind the patent system but it ignores that few inventions exist that do not build on other pre-existing inventions. The 'exclusive rights' have on more then one occation hindered that, thereby delaying or denying an invention to society.
The conclusion is imho that you need a bit of both. Yes, you need sharing of ideas, and yes, you need to be able to build on top of someone elses ideas. But you also seem to need some protection so that you can indeed profit from your invention at least in some cases.
If you're not big on the free sharing of ideas, then whats the beef with patents? You've argued that sharing ideas freely is good. You've argued that trade secrets are good. Which position do you actually hold?
Neither are inherently good or bad. The question is how to create a good environment for inventiveness. I am not arguing that invention needs any protection, but I do for now accept your argument that it does at least in quite some cases. I am offering an alternative to patents for those cases where such protection is needed, and pointed out an advantage of that alternative. I like neither.
So you say. At least I can demonstrate having thought out the situation. And the consequences of altering the system.
Not exactly. You are ignoring the problems of the system and their consequences.
You cannot.
You can predict the future as well as I can... we both don't know. That you disagree with my view on how that would work doesn't mean either you or me did not think about it.
People are greedy. They like having stuff. People are risk-adverse. When you make an activity more risky, they do less of it. When you make research more risky, they do less of it.
Ignoring that that same patent system actually also introduces quite some risks for inventors.
When people do less research, they discover fewer things. People understand that if they can spend less money to get a product to market by copying someone else's research rather than doing the research themselves, they're less willing to do the research. You can tell me that isn't how people work. You can tell me that isn't how businesses work. You can say anything you very well like. That will not, in any way, make it sensible or believable. You have to demonstrate. You have not.
I'm not arguing this point at all, rather, I am arguing that the patent system in quite some cases causes risks on a similar level as not having the patent system. You keep ignoring those risks.
Not at all. Person A thought it up, Person B gets to use it.
Unless person A operates with trade secrets. Cause those're good, right?
Then person B has to reverse engineer it. And with regards to 'those are good', see above.
If I refuse to license you my invention then you cannot. If you came up with the thing yourself without reverse engineering, spying or anything, you still cannot.
True. And what of it? So you don't get rich off somebody else's idea.
Wrong, I don't get to get rich of the idea I came up with to improve someone elses idea, and society does not get the improved invention, at least not untill much later.
You will say that if it was a trade secret I could not even have started to improve the idea, which of course isn't true. It would however required me to reverse engineer or somehow independently come up with said i
Um, in what way does a fight for survival NOT justify killing (pretty much anyone as far as that goes).
If you hapen to be a muslim, then the Islamic code of war has some things to say about this.
But in general, it does damage without helping a solution in any way, and that makes it illegitimate, and what is more, it gives more people a legitimate reason for revenge, just making the problem bigger and bigger.
What the Palestinians are doing is RIGHT by any standard I can imagine. Self defense from a material threat to life and liberty is always justified.
Self defense is justified, but self defense does not justify all means.
The Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world act as they do because they perceive (rightly or wrongly) that the rest of the world is against them. Now, I might be able to take your point of view of neutrality, except for a large list of issues including but not limited to:
I do understand why the Arab world feels about 'the west' as they do, and I don't blame them.
1. A concerted international campaign to deny any non-jewish victims of the holocaust recognition or memorial.
This is not correct, what is correct is that the jewish victims are considered more important then anything else. This is of course rubbish, and should be addressed for what it is, yet another 'superiority' claim by yet another people. It is as stupid and dangerous as previous such cases.
2. A notable slander campaign against the Irish for their neutrality (for good reason) in the second world war.
Interestingly, the country I am from tried to stay neutral during that war but couldn't. We managed in the first world war however, and got slandered in a similar way. You may notice that Sweden is getting the same thing as Ireland over their 2nd world war neutrality.
But you may also notice that anyone who tries to take a neutral position in the Israel Palestinian conflict, is slandered in a similar way by both sides.
It is a consequence of taking a neutral position in a very emotional (and violent) conflict.
3. Millions of dollars in donations and advertising to the American polical radical right, and religious fundamentalist organizations, which scews politics in the USA in ways which materially affect me.
As opposed to billions of dollars in donations from the Wahhabists which affect me and the country I live in directly?
Pot, meet kettle. May I notice you have a similar color?
The sum total of these issues swings my position from one of conflicted neutrality to "Fuck Israel. Free Palestine!"
Only one of those issues directly relates to Israel Palestine conflict, that of financial support. However, I have never been neutral in this. I believe, and have always believed that those who lost out over the creation of Israel deserve compensation, and are the real victims of this conflict. I don't need to involve all kinds of external and unrelated issues in this.
I don't care about jews that live elsewhere, I'm utterly uninterested annhilitating an ethnic group. I don't care about their religion (other than my general wish for reduced religiosity in the world, which applies equally to all monotheistic religions, as in my studied opinion Hinduism and Buddhism are pretty benign.)
I can agree with that.
But the reality is that there will not be peace in the middle east while israel is in existance (even should they suceed in genociding the palestinian people inside the borders, Palestinian refugees are scattered throughout the world. There WILL be conflict there for hundreds of years. There is no option for peace that doesn't involve a free and independent Palestine (or a Pan-Arab nuclear/biological genocide, but I sincerely hope the rest of the world wouldn't stand by while that happened).
The problem is that what you describe here is more or less what happened to Israel and its people during roman times and thereafter. You su
So you contend that education is the primary reason for the fall of guilds?
No, I am saying that there were many reasons to do away with guilds, including but not limited to education and there being a supposedly betetr way to deal with IP.
So.. it seems as if you're arguing that patents are bad because they prevent inventors from incorporating and utilizing the ideas of other people. But trade secrets are good because they prevent inventors from incorporating and utilizing the ideas of other people.
I'm sorry to say, but can't you read or what?
Patent: regardless of if I come up with the same idea myself independently, I can still not use it Secret: If I come up with it independently I can use it.
Of course, if you assume free spread of knowledge, there's no reason to believe that the original inventor is going to be able to provide 'quality.' I know what you know under these circumstances, remember? Additionally, you may not buy the 'clones' in the current market; however, not everyone wants top quality.
Of course not everyone wants top quality. Guess what, such a choice is rather desirable to society.
Quality, after all, can be expensive to produce. There's no disservice in providing lesser quality in a market,
No, it is a service by adding to the available choice.
so long as you serve the market well. If the knowledge isn't being spread freely (trade secret protection?) what's the advantage? Sure I can reverse engineer stuff. But with patents, I could just license your invention.
If I refuse to license you my invention then you cannot. If you came up with the thing yourself without reverse engineering, spying or anything, you still cannot.
Or I could come up with my own competing technology. We both end up in the market. Just like the current market.
In some markets that is a possibility, in others it is not. Assuming it is always a possibility is wrong.
Except that I've said, multiple times, that IP law provides a remedy for a market inefficiency. You could argue that current IP law is inefficient. But to take that argument and conclude that we should eliminate patents is a huge step. One which does not have a clear purpose. It is incumbent upon you who would change the system to show, not that the system we have does more harm than good, but that the system you propose would do less harm while maintaining the same benefits. Or more good for the same amount of harm.
You have said that multiple times, but saying it again and again does not make it such.
If you put a restriction on competition in a free market it is really upto you who favors the restriction to provide a good argument as to why we really need that restriction. The default choice is to not have such a restriction, hence wanting to remove a restriction does not require any argument, while keeping that restriction requires showing it is needed.
Conclusion, beyond showing how it is a restriction on trade and competition, I do not really have to show how patents are 'bad', rather, those in favor of such restrictions have to show why they are absolutely needed.
The problem with this position is that it is, at best, potentially indicative of the US patent system as we know it today has problems. It is in no way indicative that patents as a practice are bad. Nor is it indicative that no patents would be better.
The Farmsworth vs RCA incident is from almost a century ago.
Look up the case of a certain mr. Leeghwater, it predates the USA and its patent system by almost 2 centuries, took place in a slightly different patent system, and still shows the same kind of problem.
A possible alternative remedy would be mandatory licensing btw. ie, you obtain a patent, you are required to licence it to others. It won't solve everything, but stops patents from very blatently hindering progress.
I'm kind of amused by this. You say the idea is 'yo
We indeed did away with most but not all trade guilds some time ago. Your argument misses one point of guilds however which is at least as relevant as interlectual property protection: education.
Your point here? You have a knack for leaving thoughts incomplete. I decline to speculate as to what you actually meant.
The point was that trade guilds not only protected the interlectual property but also passed it on. That it is outdated isn't just because patents came up as a better idea to protect ip, it was getting outdated in many aspects.
It is far from pointless in the face of the argument that inventions would not happen without patents. It proves that statement untrue. You can argue that patents help getting more inventions, and at least in specific areas of technology that is true.
Never did I assert that invention would halt without patents. Merely that there would be less inventing going on.
In specific areas, esp. there where research requires large upfront investment? sure. In general? I strongly doubt that.
For those areas where little upfront investment is required, patents can create a minefield that has at quite some occations prevented the exact thing that patents are supposed to provide for an inventor, a chance to make a buck on his invention. I mentioned Fernsworth and RCA earlier on, it is an interesting case, but not really unique. For software such situations are especially likely to arrise (abeit in part due to bad patent approvals), and where is the incentive in having to spend my time as inventor figuring out which silly details of my invention someone else thought of as well and bothered to patent? And that knowing that I'll miss out on a few and someone will come and sue me anyway?
No, they're not more desirable from an individual or societal point of view. Trade secrets are predicated upon keeping the secret a secret. Patents are predicated on disclosure of your idea without completely destroying the financial incentive of disclosure.
And? you get to keep it forever or untill someone else figures it out on their own. Oh, they stole your trade secret? Go talk to uncle sam, he has some laws for dealing with that.
For the individual there seems to be quite an advantage there I'd think?
Socially this may be more desirable then the patent minefield we see for software also, in other cases it is less desirable for sure.
Indeed, and so when AltruCorp sinks USD 10 million into a product and BenignCo drops USD 3 million to improve it and BorgLTD swoops in for USD 0.00 and we all compete in the marketplace.. you'd be okay with that?
If somehow BorgLTD can do that without investing in reverse engineering your product, building production facilities, doing a good enough job at quality control, and can offset their 'late to market' disadvantage all for USD 0.00 then why not?
It of course depends on the initial cost of R&D. I agree that there are situations where there has to be protection for large upfront investment.
The other side is that when looking for a quality product for some purpose, I seldom end up with such 'clones'. I want the quality control of the 'real thing' there if it exists.
Note for me the parts where I said that direct money concern wasn't what drove open source's innovation. Curiousity and indirect money concerns were. Also note where I said that curiousity and indirect money hopes are neither a requirement or a result of the open source model, and thus the open source model itself is not the driving factor in open source's innovation.
By having the source code available, it invites people to look at how things work, it makes it easy to tinker with it, and it makes that you can easily learn. By that it allows many more people to be involved in inventing, resulting in more invention.
Do you get paid more for releasing your code openly? No? Then you don't have a direct financial gain. If you finish jobs faster, what you gai
What incentive did the large company Microsoft have to innovate and develop an online browser?
Wanting to jump on the 'online' bandwagen started by others obviously.
If you were an investor and a similar situation would crop up today, let's say someone were to come up with better search engine then Google's PageRanking, and the company told you "we're going to implement it and market it and not bother with going applying for a patent because we think we can stay ahead of Google" - would you still invest with them?
1. If someone (say Yahoo) had patented the web search engine as such, there would have been no Google to begin with. 2. How pagerank works is kept secret. I bet specific parts of it are protected by patents, but keeping it secret is important for preventing people from cheating the system, and that makes me feel pretty confident that patenting pagerank or some competing but similar system quite a bad idea actually.
I guess point 2 answers your question.
The lessons learned from Mosaic/Netscape vs Microsoft are exactly indicative of the David vs Golaith and why patents are needed. You can go on and on about how Netscape screwed themselves, well any company that innovative should be able to make a few mistakes and still survive but they didn't. Any other company that would have come up with that if NCSA/Mosaic/Netscape hadn't also would have met a similar fate without any kind of protection.
Actually, the law should have protected them (and many others in a similar situation) from this exact behavior already. It sortof happened but by the time it was irrelevant for Netscape anyway. I find it slightly curious that you somehow expect you can stop them with the help of patent law in that light, even more so after having seen how patents helped Stacker defending itself from MS stealing their stuff.
The lesson to be learned from Netscape is that if you get into a position where Microsoft might find your business interesting, you either get bought by them, outcompeted by them (fairly or more often not) or you are actually strong and smart enough to outflank them. Oh, of course there is also the option of simply being invulnerable to their 'traditional' business practises (this changes with the proliferation of software patents however) by simply not being a business that they can buy or drive into bankrupcy.
Nobody was paying for the browser but one way Netscape was originally generating revenue was by the advertising on their home page. That was fair since people could easily change their home page too. Maybe that wasn't sustainable but they also got into selling servers and some ecommerce products if I remember correctly. They could and should have survived if it wasn't for the behemoth looking to take them down and some protection against him.
Was absolutely fair. Maybe they should have provided more usefull content there so people actually wanted to keep it as their homepage? I still doubt it would have gotten them enough to make for a decent business.
When looking at the server and ecommerce business today, Microsoft is a big player, but is far from a monopoly. They probably did profit from the demise of Netscape there, but they have been unable to consolidate the market, rather, we find a very healthy market with a variety of small, medium and large 'solution providers' there.
Even with some patent on their web browser (some simple ideas might be something like bookmarks, or some function of a home page, or Back button, etc...) something that a competitor would have had to improve upon to create some incentive for users to switch. Any of those could have had workarounds, and maybe would have pushed the web browser envelope farther, maybe instead of a home page it somehow determines some page/news appropriate for the user to see, maybe instead of bookmarks might have pushed us into tags and social bookmarking in the early 90's, etc...
Well, protecting 'simple' ideas sounds like contradicting t
This is sad that you feel this way. Mosaic innovated, who knows what we'd be doing today without Mosaic (maybe still BBS or telnet to forums)
Mosaic combined some pre-existing ideas and a relatively new medium. Seeing how hypertext help had been conceived by the time of Mosaic, it is very likely that someone else at some other point would have done the same as them. Yes, they invented, but their invention is not groundbreaking due to its uniqueness, but due to many being able to jump on the bandwagon.
then Microsoft pounced and stole the idea
And it took 2 generations of their implementation to make something a lot better then Mosaic/Netscape ever produced.
and used monopoly power to completely destroy Netscape.
Monopoly power and having it pre-installed with their OS definitely helped, but like it or not, their browser was simply a lot better after some time of development.
No business model Netscape could have come up with would have competed with a 'built into the OS with 90%+ market share and free' business model. In fact that's all Microsoft wanted to do was kill them off.
Microsoft wanted its own network with proprietary client first. Then this idea of a web browser had shown itself, and they changed their mind. Yes, they definitely try to dominate any market they enter, and often they manage.
The 'free' part however is a silly argument. Most private users where I have seen Netscape were using either free 'trial' versions, 'branded' versions provided by their ISP, or the always available and much used beta versions. People actually paying for the browser wasn't happening much way before MS entered the browser game, and it couldn't work without something else to support it, not before and not after Microsoft entered the market.
That same Microsoft is still struggling bigtime in the webserver and proxy markets, two other markets where Netscape was active in. Netscape lost there, but to itself, not to Microsoft and their tactics.
This is like alcohol addiction - before you can rehab you have to understand that this is ailing you, you believe a company as innovative and beneficial to society as Netscape could have survived, or maybe you have better business sense then they did and know of a way they could have. Either that or you believe Internet Explorer would have come along within a few years anyways.
This is like alcohol addiction - before you can rehab you have to understand that this is ailing you, you believe a company as innovative and beneficial to society as Netscape could have survived, or maybe you have better business sense then they did and know of a way they could have. Either that or you believe Internet Explorer would have come along within a few years anyways.
I believe that it is not so unique that it would have taken long for someone else to come up with something pretty equivalent. I also believe that the huge benefit to society from Mosaic/Netscape innovation is a direct consequence of it not being locked up behind patents. If it were it would likely have gone the way of Microsoft's initial attempt to reinvent the idea.
Also, I do indeed believe that Netscape had a chance initially despite the obvious disadvantage against Microsoft.
(oh, and I know them and their tactics. I have been involved quite a bit in OS/2 in the late 80s and early 90s and worked both with and against them in that...)
I believe patents are the one weapon a truly innovative small company has to innovate and survive. I'm not talking about the next web design or professional service or desktop publishing company, etc... I'm talking about the next Mosaic, the next RSA, the next VMWare, the next Apple Macintosh/Xerox, the next mouse, the next Google, etc...
VMWare is all about implementation, the idea behind their virtualisation is so old that had it been patented, that patent would have expired some 2 decades ago. Oh, they sure have some novel ideas of themselves also with regards to how exactly to implement and manage it.
Mosaic and Netscape lost due to their implementations being inferior to those of others, not because of lack of patents.
Microsoft succeeded despite lack of patents there (actually, thanks to lack of patents of course)
As a whole, the web is as succesfull as it is thanks to those same patents lacking.
I think you're talking more about the regular guy making his $120,000/year. I'm talking home runs (and lots of strikeouts)
I am talking about a stable and good climate for doing business. I am not interested in the single individual becomming amazingly rich (not against it either).
, you're talking about steady singles and doubles. In the end your model clearly benefits more people, but I would like a place for the true innovators to be able to survive.
I'm saying that society pays a price for patents, and if the result is not better for society then patents are undesirable and that price should no longer be payed. For those in the USA that is consistent with the constitutional provision for patents and the stated goals there btw.
Mosaic/Netscape failed (maybe because no patent on web browser and Microsoft mostly copied), RSA survived and prospered (with patents), etc... The existing system allows for this. Your point about "not needed" seems to indicate that you don't feel patents are worthwhile to protecting those small companies at all.
I believe the disadvantage to outweight such a possible advantage by far, as is evident from Internet Explorer having been a better browser then the old Netscape for a very long time. If Netscape had done a better job at their business model as well as their browser they very likely would be around still. In this case, lack of patents means having to inovate again and again. I indeed see no reason to put a break on that to protect a few who happen to have a very good idea once but fail to profit from it.
Of course this discussion doesn't even touch on how such a small but innovative company that did hold a patent, and actually managed to get judgement in its favor also, still lost out to Microsoft copying its idea and basicly putting the small company out of business.
Patents only really work if you have quite deep pockets (or some scheme to finance your case against an arbitrary industrial gorilla)
nobody ever said inventions wouldn't happen, they would happen far less though.
In case of software they are quickly becoming a barrier to entry, arguably reducing the number of people trying to invent things and the resulting number of inventions.
No, you didn't even understand the point of view I have on the benefit of protecting ideas it seems, even less so why I see it that way.
I am convinced that it makes sense in specific cases to protect ideas, but not in general. Do it for the cases where it is needed, but don't hinder the free flow of ideas untill it is needed.
Sorry for replying twice, was a bit quick to hit submit there.
As for the rest of your post,
In today's software world, #1 is dirt cheap (reverse engineer, etc...), #2 is dirt cheap - buy PC, get broadband, setup website and/or burn CD's, #3 is dirt cheap - website or mail CD, #4 cost of salary of paying some programmers and their PC's. Then add to this the fact this can be done anywhere and we all know where you can obtain those programmers at substantial discount.
So in fact I might even argue that software patents are even more important then before.
That an individual company might be served well by protecting its ideas does not in itself make it desirable for society to protect those ideas. The fact that it is very easy to enter the software market and implement some floating idea however is very desirable to society, it means lots of choice and lots of attempts to implement an idea as good as cost and technology allow at that moment. Patenting software must result in benefits at least equal to that.
If you can't compete without patent protection then you most likely have one or more of the following problems - Your implementation sucks (if it can be done on a comparable level by substandard programmers without any kind of real involvement with the project it most likely does) - You are not making good use of the other forms of protection that exist - Despite it being 'easy' according to you, your distribution and promotion suck.
Then, let me tell you that quite a few companies are in fact selling Apache quite succesfully as part of their web 'solutions', and companies seem quite willing to pay for it.
That does not change that when direct profit for the inventor is not the motive for inventing something, using direct profit for the inventor to judge success is silly at best really.
And yes, I have developed software for a living since the mid 80s and still do so parttime. I have worked for very large and very small companies in that business also. Patents on software are a direct restraint on trade comparable to guilds of old. No, we do not want a protected market where a few can determine who can enter, and it is not needed either.
Maybe, and I can say I've been on both sides of the fence (big open source proponent 10 years ago) and have realized over the past few years the value of patents especially with the: 1) incredibly small barriers to entry in software world, 2) easy copying (much more easier than with physical products and cost of making manufacturing plants), 3) why would any company spend the significant costs on R&D to innovate if instead they could just copy their competitors successful products (and just ignore the ones not making any ground), 4) cheap labour offshore
I don't consider 'incredibly small barriers to entry' a problem, rather the opposite. Of course it means you have a lot of competition, and from the perspective of a single business that is not always nice, but it is desirable for the bigger picture. Patents exist to serve society, not a specific business.
I do agree however that it also causes a problem in combination with the other things you mention. The answer to that however is simple, copyright. No, you cannot protect the method you thought up that way, but you can protect your implementation. That is also exactly what the argument against patents on software is about. Everyone can make a spreatsheet, but you can't just copy the work from another spreatsheet maker. This has done a very good job at stimulating innovation, and if it had been possible and practical back then to patent the idea, we would have been without lots of what makes excel an entirely different thing then the original visicalc, even if they use the same idea.
Without software patents you can have both sides of the coin at once.. You can for once eat your cake and have it.
And for those who so desire, they can write all the open source software they like without worry as long as they are not copying your work (eventho they may copy your idea and make a much better implementation, but you can do the same with theirs, or with the ideas of your commerical competition).
Yes, there was that era of staggering rates of innovation that I believe we know as the dark ages. Tradeguilds were, essentially, a primitive intellectual property system. They protected the knowledge of their crafts for the financial gain of the members.
We indeed did away with most but not all trade guilds some time ago. Your argument misses one point of guilds however which is at least as relevant as interlectual property protection: education.
Observing that people invented for centuries without patents is accurate. But somewhat pointless. Individuals and civilizations have done things for centuries that we don't do anymore. Why? Because better ways have come along.
It is far from pointless in the face of the argument that inventions would not happen without patents. It proves that statement untrue. You can argue that patents help getting more inventions, and at least in specific areas of technology that is true.
It should be noted that an invention that made electronic tv practical was done by exactly the kind of person and motivation you are arguing has been outdated, a farmboy wanting to solve the problem, and doing so while thinking 'on the job'. (And yes, he did apply and got his patent on his invention, and then it didn't see any practical use for another 20 years due to being locked up in a fight with RCA over.. patents). This despite huge amounts of money having been poored into such projects by big business at the time.
Investment may help invention, but in many fields, it is not exactly a requirement for invention.
The government believes that a free market of ideas would select an ineffecient level of invention.
That same government supposedly also believes it should grow to become a 'small and efficient government'. If you don't mind I don't take their 'desires' and reasoning for granted.
Thus, they intervene in the market with patents to provide an incentive to inventors.
Which is fine when such a need can be shown.
A lack of patents decreases the rate of invention. How, you ask? Well, either individuals do the inventing, in which case they have to work day jobs to pay bills, and can only devote their 'free' time to the research. Less time available to invent == less inventions. Alternatively, businesses could foot the bill. But why would they? Businesses exist for profit, and the lack of patents all but guarantees that the cost of research is a sunk cost rather than an investment.
And there is the real problem with your argument.
First of all, patents are not the only way to protect an investment. Are trade secrets more desirable? That depends on what 'field of invention' you are talking about, but isn't a clear cut case.
Second, as shown and even argued by yourself in reply to my comment about ipsec, there can be good motivations to do such an investment and make the result available to everyone for free. Sometimes this is a good idea, sometimes not.
Third, as argued above, invention and investment are related, but in quite a few cases investment is not a requirement for invention.
Patents are fine for those fields of development where invention would be unattractive otherwise, but that should be the exception, not the rule.
Sunk costs are generally unattractive to businesses. Businesses pay them because they must to do business. That means that competitors face similar sunk costs if they're going to be your competitors. Not so with inventions. Once you've figured out how to make it, you've also figured out how I can make it, too.
Yes, and that is exactly why a free flow of ideas works. It also means you get to use and improve on what others did.
Okay.. so because software is different, we should take rules that work in software markets and apply them to other markets? If you want to assert that patents (or IP in general, even) are unnecessary in the software market, thats fine.
Uh, no. The Israelis have stolen the homeland of an ethnic group through Brittish Imperial fiat
They did indeed take a piece of land where other people were already living among a lot of jews. Matter of fact is that it wasn't their land of course.
They took this land following a proposal dating back to the end of the Ottoman Empire. A proposal that would have provided for home countries for jews, palestinians and kurds. A plan that never got executed, except for the creation of the state of Israel some 30 years later. This happened despite attempts from the Brits to prevent it. You may want to read up a bit on that bit of history.
Fact is also that jews have been living in what is now Israel for almost as long as history is being written, and it was by far the most logical place for a home country from that point of view.
Regardless, people have been driven off their land, and the least that needs to happen is that those people get compensated for their losses. Israel is of course doing the exact opposite of this.
and are waging a very literal war of genocide so they can keep. THEY are in the wrong. The Palestinians are fighting for survival,
Fighting for survival does not legitimize things like attacking Israeli civilians. Those who do that are wrong regardless of their motivation (and yes, by the same token Israel is wrong in attacking civilian targets and possibly civilians themselves in Gaza and Lebanon as well regardless of their motivation).
the any other arab groups involved are generally trying to aid them in this.
Other Arabs only made things worse, not better.
Because what the israelis are doing is 100% wrong.
That does not change that what Palestinians are doing is wrong as well.
Just as wrong as what the Nazis did to the Gypsies, Slavs, and Jews. The ONLY difference is that Israel is genociding slowing, a family farm in Gaza here, a bus load of students there, and 50 years later we have millions of palestian dead.
And somehow the answer to that is hate of all jews and killing them regardless of where they are or what they support?
You my friend are full of anger. Your anger is justified, but it clouds your judgements and as a result your conclusions are wrong.
Oh, and if you want to compare things to Europe, you may want to put a lot more time into figuring out how Europe managed to put an end to 1000 (!!) years of war and territorial conflict between France and Germany.
Also, read http://soapbox.bartsplace.net/article.php/20060720 023409472 to find out a bit more about what I think about this conflict. Just keep in mind that I don't really care about who is right or wrong, rather, I care about who is willing to actually solve something. In that both parties in the conflict are not doing too well.
IPSec is also not really open source originations, it's driven by a bunch of companies all concerned about interoperability and a controlling body.
And incidentely they use open source and related methods to achieve this. Small detail maybe, but still..
You're missing the main point
Not really, but you are definitely trying to ignore those things that don't fit your picture.
- without patent protection businesses would spend much less on R&D and more on just watching the competition and copying the best ideas and therefore innovation would be reduced.
That is at best an unproven assumption. Yes, it makes logical sense, yet, there is a long history suggesting the opposite of what you say. Inventions have been made for thousands of years without patents.
Without patents copying your competitor would be more cost effective and provide more lower hanging fruit.
In some industries, maybe, in others not. Software is not a manufactured prodict and different rules apply anyway.
If you believe otherwise, that is fine, but you'll have to make an actual argument, seeing how history tells the opposite story. I'd dare to argue that most inventions in software already took place before patent protection was allowed at all for it
In the industry so many people go on and on about how open source model is the be all end all but they fail to realize that it isn't driving innovation at all.
And you are really being ignorant of the achievements of many here. If it takes me a fraction of a minute and no research whatsoever to come up with examples, I'm sure you could have done better by putting in a few minutes of research. You are not willing to do that much even, so why should anyone consider your statements as more then unfounded anti open source banter?
Not exactly, but for the most part the two (usefulness & financial compensation) are more closely attached then the anti-patents proponents want to admit.
No, they are by far not as tightly related as patent proponents want to believe.
Financial compensation is an indicator for usefullness only when an invention is made available with the purpose to achieve such compensation directly. It ignores many cases where the compensation isn't as direct, and of course cases where compensation is not by financial means.
In other words, in specific cases financial compensation is a good indicator but in quite a few it is not, and incidentely the cases where it is not are among the cases you want in your comparison.
The problem with your approach becomes painfully clear from your statements about Apache, saying that it may have some very non obvious uses, but that financial compensation for its inventors is low so it should not be considered? Its market share says it is extremely usefull. So usefull in fact that people also pay for it in quite a few cases.
Ok I'll call you on your argument/bluff that the open source world is the place where innovations happen. Name some important innovations that even come close to some of the patented world innovations in software: RSA algorithm, Netscape SSL, Google PageRanking, SecurId.
Well, it looks like tcp/ip and many protocols on top of it were first implemented as open source. Real inventions? if you consider the ones above to be real inventions then those are as well.
Except for the RSA algorithm, the things you mention would not have existed without it. The reason why it became so inmensely popular as to turn into the defacto standard network protocol for most purposes is exactly because of working examples being available and noone effectively owning it.
Something more recent? hmm, ipsec comes to mind inmediately, I guess that actually looking would turn up some more examples.
While open source products like Apache, Firefox,... might have some non-trivial usage behind them the financial numbers they brought to their inventors pales in comparison to their patent example counterparts. In fact, how far would those OSS products have made it IF they did have a financial cost to obtaining them?
Silly argument. Measuring how well open source does with a metric that is irrelevant to inventions and in the case of open source not even measurable?
The usefullness of an invention is measured by its use, not by the financial compensation the inventor got.
It's not such much 'no involvement' as 'actually trusted by both side'. Someone who has a lot of Israel and Palestine interests is actually perfect for the job.
Yep..
The only countries that would really be ruled out are other Arab countries, or Muslim theocracies, by Israel, and America and possibly England, by Palestine. (Although England used to manage that whole area just fine.)
Hmm, one could make a good argument that the current mess is at least partially a result of the teritorial mess that England left there.
Eeh, that's still destruction of property. My method's simply more dramatic, and cathartic.;)
Could have an argument there aout if removial of power or disconnecting the speaker is actually damaging the device.. but you have a point of course and there is no clear line.
Consider if you lived next-door to this person, and could hear the noise -all day-. That whining would drive me absolutely nuts within the span of a day, and would probably keep me from sleeping. If you fed this into a prison cell, it'd be classified as torture.
Consider that I have a microphone and recording and measurement equipment that can quite show this sound being there, evenm if an elderly police officer wouldn't hear it. We'll see eachother in civil court if that is how it has to end..
1. That is a publication from an extremely biassed organisation. I will not say it is false, but I will say that I have found no other
sources mentioning that incident whatsoever, so I have zero reason to believe it being true, nor do I have any background information
that can be verified by multiple sources.
Reading through their online publications makes clear that any critical comment about Israel or any possibly supportive comment about
Palestinian people is inmediately recorded as 'anti Israel stance of the UN' by this supposed eye on the UN. Also, the map in question
is Arab in origin, but the pictures are way to unclear to say what is exactly on it and what is not.
2. There is no country called Palestine, so the UN cannot be having a meating with the representatives of Palestine.
There is however a Palestinian authority, maybe you meant those?
Palestine is a territory, incidentely, a territory that covers all of Israel and some areas around it (West bank mostly)
3. Again, this website is extremely biassed, to the point of calling one of the people present a suicide bomber.. Now, suicide bombers
blow themselves up, and are not very capable of being present at a UN meeting afterward.. I guess using that kind of language helps
'getting their point across' but clearly shows what this site is about.
So.. come with some verifiable sources and background on this incident please, it is an interesting incident.
Because destruction of property is a higher level of escalation then trying to annoy eachother?
Sometimes violence is the only answer and morals are a thing best put on the shelf for a while.
What escapes you is that you can use violence without putting morals on the shelf for a while. Anytime you can't, your problem is much more likely rejecting non violent solutions then there being none.
Seems they are looking at France for this one.. Hmm.. interesting since they have involvement in both sides of the conflict instead of no involvement at all. Sounds like the right choice for the job tho.
You throw snowballs, not other stuff. Usually you actually throw them at eachother, you stop when someone might get hurt (beyond being a bit cold from the snow)... Beyond that, it might depend on whom you are whith, but not much:)
Anyway.. you are right, no point in arguing since we basicly agree.
The point was that neighborhood battles can be fun as long as both parties decide on roughly the same kind of 'rules', otherwise they usually get out of control after some time. A good way to deal with them is to organize some kind of neighborhood competition instead... Keeps people busy and makes sure there are some rules that all have to agree with in order to participate.
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I would happily not put words in your mouth if ... you said something. Most of what your replies consist of is "nope.. you're not right there" and then you decline to say how I am, in fact, not right. This is the first post you've made where you actually explored some of your own opinions, instead of just stating them and moving on.
Lets see.. I have explained quite a few times what position I have on patents, yet you keep arguing as if I deny any usefullness of patents alltogether. I point at the existance of trade secrets as an alternative to keep your competition out, and you say I am all in favor of trade secrets....
No, what you just described has nothing to do with putting words in my mouth.
I do indeed expect you to have 1. some reading capability, 2. some brains, and 3. the ability to use those 2 together. WHen I point at a very well known and documented case like Fernsworth vs RCA, I do indeed expect that if you studied the patent system and its consequences to the level you are suggesting, that you are either familiar with it, or bother to look it up. It is way too long to describe in a few posts here.
It doesn't ignore that inventions are frequently built on other inventions. Have I, at any point, suggested that a patent should give you a right to deny any research potential until the expiration of the patent? No. I would quite passionately argue that the patent should give you commercial rights only.
By allowing research, but not commercial exploitation of such an enhanced invention, you do not make for a better situation (not to mention that at least where I live, and from what I understand also in the USA, you can quite use patents for research already)
You encourage the situation where someone can do research, invent something new that as a component uses an existing and patented invention, just to find that he can not license it and hence, cannot benefit from his own invention. The new invention is still withheld from society in this case, and its inventor still won't get his 'reward'. Oh, but he can wait till the old patent expires? sure he can, and depending on how closely his invention followed on the old patent, he might actually still squeeze out a bit of time in which his new patent is valid while the old one is not.
What would solve this, but seems extremely difficult to implement in an anywhere fair way, is mandatory licensing for a 'reasonable' fee.. but, what is reasonable? And what about an inventor who wants to try to commercialize his invention before others can do so? (can modify such a mandatory licensing idea to deal with that, but it remains a very difficult one)
It might not be what we have.
Actually, for all I know it is pretty much what we have, but as argued above, it doesn't address the issue.
But patents do have utility. I'm not willing to discard that because the current system is overly restrictive.
Please reread everything I have said so far. I never said patents do not have utility. I have some doubts about some of their claimed advantages, and believe that there are disadvantages outweighting the advantages in quite a few cases, but that would not even be a discussion if I'd think patents are useless alltogether.
Remember, I do not want to do away with patents alltogether, but I do want to limit them to fields of technology where such an incentive is really needed. That should have told you I do believe they have utility because that statement would not make sense at all if I believed otherwise.
I agree with this. Completely. I might've said "in most cases" but otherwise, yeah.
I think we agree completely here.. the 'some cases' is my judgement that that protection is not needed that often, it is not trying to say that you should only be able to profit from your own inventiveness in some cases. Our disagreement seems to be about when it is needed, and if the default assumption should be that it is needed unless or not needed un
I'm not muslim, I'm an atheist Irish-American, who is in the rather small minority of being pro-palestine in the 'states.
Sadly enough there is indeed only a very tiny minority for that, and even worse, trying to say so is bound to get you quite some response..
As an aside, just because I think its funny, it seems that trying to argue that Sweden is just as badly affected by Arab political machinations as the United States is by Israeli ones is kind of silly. You're annoyed by arab actions, the United States is made an internationally dangerous rogue state by the Israeli's.
Uh, that was not what I was arguing. I was arguing that Sweden is similarely affected by slander over their neutrality in the second world war as Ireland is.
For the rest, yes, I am 'annoyed' by certain 'Arab' actions, but unlike many, I don't respond by declaring them to be 'the enemy' as a result, just like I am quite annoyed by certain Israeli actions, but won't declare them the enemy as a result either.
Then, the USA is in theory quite a powerfull country which Israel depends on directly. It is interesting how that resulted in Israel basicly dictating the foreign policy of the USA for as far as the middle east is concerned. This points at a very serious problem with the political system in the USA. You can blame Israel for bad intentions here, and I won't argue that. I will however point out that whatever the USA does with that is the responsibility of the USA government, and not of Israel.
I do agree btw that the USA with its current government is acting like a rogue state. (and yet, I won't see all 'Americans' as evil as a consequence)
If you're so big on the free sharing of ideas,
I do see big advantages in the sharing of ideas. I also believe that you can have a situation where it would not work, hence:
trade secrets are anathema to that ideal.
They are indeed when applied to every idea. They can also be a usefull exception.
Because they're secrets. You don't get to build anything off my ideas because I haven't told you. Maybe you come up with the same idea. Which, to be frank, is a waste. Twice the effort to develop the same invention.
That has always been an important argument behind the patent system but it ignores that few inventions exist that do not build on other pre-existing inventions. The 'exclusive rights' have on more then one occation hindered that, thereby delaying or denying an invention to society.
The conclusion is imho that you need a bit of both. Yes, you need sharing of ideas, and yes, you need to be able to build on top of someone elses ideas. But you also seem to need some protection so that you can indeed profit from your invention at least in some cases.
If you're not big on the free sharing of ideas, then whats the beef with patents? You've argued that sharing ideas freely is good. You've argued that trade secrets are good. Which position do you actually hold?
Neither are inherently good or bad. The question is how to create a good environment for inventiveness. I am not arguing that invention needs any protection, but I do for now accept your argument that it does at least in quite some cases. I am offering an alternative to patents for those cases where such protection is needed, and pointed out an advantage of that alternative. I like neither.
So you say. At least I can demonstrate having thought out the situation. And the consequences of altering the system.
Not exactly. You are ignoring the problems of the system and their consequences.
You cannot.
You can predict the future as well as I can... we both don't know. That you disagree with my view on how that would work doesn't mean either you or me did not think about it.
People are greedy. They like having stuff. People are risk-adverse. When you make an activity more risky, they do less of it. When you make research more risky, they do less of it.
Ignoring that that same patent system actually also introduces quite some risks for inventors.
When people do less research, they discover fewer things. People understand that if they can spend less money to get a product to market by copying someone else's research rather than doing the research themselves, they're less willing to do the research. You can tell me that isn't how people work. You can tell me that isn't how businesses work. You can say anything you very well like. That will not, in any way, make it sensible or believable. You have to demonstrate. You have not.
I'm not arguing this point at all, rather, I am arguing that the patent system in quite some cases causes risks on a similar level as not having the patent system. You keep ignoring those risks.
Not at all. Person A thought it up, Person B gets to use it.
Unless person A operates with trade secrets. Cause those're good, right?
Then person B has to reverse engineer it. And with regards to 'those are good', see above.
If I refuse to license you my invention then you cannot. If you came up with the thing yourself without reverse engineering, spying or anything, you still cannot.
True. And what of it? So you don't get rich off somebody else's idea.
Wrong, I don't get to get rich of the idea I came up with to improve someone elses idea, and society does not get the improved invention, at least not untill much later.
You will say that if it was a trade secret I could not even have started to improve the idea, which of course isn't true. It would however required me to reverse engineer or somehow independently come up with said i
Um, in what way does a fight for survival NOT justify killing (pretty much anyone as far as that goes).
If you hapen to be a muslim, then the Islamic code of war has some things to say about this.
But in general, it does damage without helping a solution in any way, and that makes it illegitimate, and what is more, it gives more people a legitimate reason for revenge, just making the problem bigger and bigger.
What the Palestinians are doing is RIGHT by any standard I can imagine. Self defense from a material threat to life and liberty is always justified.
Self defense is justified, but self defense does not justify all means.
The Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world act as they do because they perceive (rightly or wrongly) that the rest of the world is against them. Now, I might be able to take your point of view of neutrality, except for a large list of issues including but not limited to:
I do understand why the Arab world feels about 'the west' as they do, and I don't blame them.
1. A concerted international campaign to deny any non-jewish victims of the holocaust recognition or memorial.
This is not correct, what is correct is that the jewish victims are considered more important then anything else. This is of course rubbish, and should be addressed for what it is, yet another 'superiority' claim by yet another people. It is as stupid and dangerous as previous such cases.
2. A notable slander campaign against the Irish for their neutrality (for good reason) in the second world war.
Interestingly, the country I am from tried to stay neutral during that war but couldn't. We managed in the first world war however, and got slandered in a similar way. You may notice that Sweden is getting the same thing as Ireland over their 2nd world war neutrality.
But you may also notice that anyone who tries to take a neutral position in the Israel Palestinian conflict, is slandered in a similar way by both sides.
It is a consequence of taking a neutral position in a very emotional (and violent) conflict.
3. Millions of dollars in donations and advertising to the American polical radical right, and religious fundamentalist organizations, which scews politics in the USA in ways which materially affect me.
As opposed to billions of dollars in donations from the Wahhabists which affect me and the country I live in directly?
Pot, meet kettle. May I notice you have a similar color?
The sum total of these issues swings my position from one of conflicted neutrality to "Fuck Israel. Free Palestine!"
Only one of those issues directly relates to Israel Palestine conflict, that of financial support.
However, I have never been neutral in this. I believe, and have always believed that those who lost out over the creation of Israel deserve compensation, and are the real victims of this conflict. I don't need to involve all kinds of external and unrelated issues in this.
I don't care about jews that live elsewhere, I'm utterly uninterested annhilitating an ethnic group. I don't care about their religion (other than my general wish for reduced religiosity in the world, which applies equally to all monotheistic religions, as in my studied opinion Hinduism and Buddhism are pretty benign.)
I can agree with that.
But the reality is that there will not be peace in the middle east while israel is in existance (even should they suceed in genociding the palestinian people inside the borders, Palestinian refugees are scattered throughout the world. There WILL be conflict there for hundreds of years. There is no option for peace that doesn't involve a free and independent Palestine (or a Pan-Arab nuclear/biological genocide, but I sincerely hope the rest of the world wouldn't stand by while that happened).
The problem is that what you describe here is more or less what happened to Israel and its people during roman times and thereafter. You su
So you contend that education is the primary reason for the fall of guilds?
.. it seems as if you're arguing that patents are bad because they prevent inventors from incorporating and utilizing the ideas of other people. But trade secrets are good because they prevent inventors from incorporating and utilizing the ideas of other people.
No, I am saying that there were many reasons to do away with guilds, including but not limited to education and there being a supposedly betetr way to deal with IP.
So
I'm sorry to say, but can't you read or what?
Patent: regardless of if I come up with the same idea myself independently, I can still not use it
Secret: If I come up with it independently I can use it.
Of course, if you assume free spread of knowledge, there's no reason to believe that the original inventor is going to be able to provide 'quality.' I know what you know under these circumstances, remember? Additionally, you may not buy the 'clones' in the current market; however, not everyone wants top quality.
Of course not everyone wants top quality. Guess what, such a choice is rather desirable to society.
Quality, after all, can be expensive to produce. There's no disservice in providing lesser quality in a market,
No, it is a service by adding to the available choice.
so long as you serve the market well. If the knowledge isn't being spread freely (trade secret protection?) what's the advantage? Sure I can reverse engineer stuff. But with patents, I could just license your invention.
If I refuse to license you my invention then you cannot. If you came up with the thing yourself without reverse engineering, spying or anything, you still cannot.
Or I could come up with my own competing technology. We both end up in the market. Just like the current market.
In some markets that is a possibility, in others it is not. Assuming it is always a possibility is wrong.
Except that I've said, multiple times, that IP law provides a remedy for a market inefficiency. You could argue that current IP law is inefficient. But to take that argument and conclude that we should eliminate patents is a huge step. One which does not have a clear purpose. It is incumbent upon you who would change the system to show, not that the system we have does more harm than good, but that the system you propose would do less harm while maintaining the same benefits. Or more good for the same amount of harm.
You have said that multiple times, but saying it again and again does not make it such.
If you put a restriction on competition in a free market it is really upto you who favors the restriction to provide a good argument as to why we really need that restriction. The default choice is to not have such a restriction, hence wanting to remove a restriction does not require any argument, while keeping that restriction requires showing it is needed.
Conclusion, beyond showing how it is a restriction on trade and competition, I do not really have to show how patents are 'bad', rather, those in favor of such restrictions have to show why they are absolutely needed.
The problem with this position is that it is, at best, potentially indicative of the US patent system as we know it today has problems. It is in no way indicative that patents as a practice are bad. Nor is it indicative that no patents would be better.
The Farmsworth vs RCA incident is from almost a century ago.
Look up the case of a certain mr. Leeghwater, it predates the USA and its patent system by almost 2 centuries, took place in a slightly different patent system, and still shows the same kind of problem.
A possible alternative remedy would be mandatory licensing btw. ie, you obtain a patent, you are required to licence it to others. It won't solve everything, but stops patents from very blatently hindering progress.
I'm kind of amused by this. You say the idea is 'yo
We indeed did away with most but not all trade guilds some time ago. Your argument misses one point of guilds however which is at least as relevant as interlectual property protection: education.
Your point here? You have a knack for leaving thoughts incomplete. I decline to speculate as to what you actually meant.
The point was that trade guilds not only protected the interlectual property but also passed it on. That it is outdated isn't just because patents came up as a better idea to protect ip, it was getting outdated in many aspects.
It is far from pointless in the face of the argument that inventions would not happen without patents. It proves that statement untrue. You can argue that patents help getting more inventions, and at least in specific areas of technology that is true.
Never did I assert that invention would halt without patents. Merely that there would be less inventing going on.
In specific areas, esp. there where research requires large upfront investment? sure. In general? I strongly doubt that.
For those areas where little upfront investment is required, patents can create a minefield that has at quite some occations prevented the exact thing that patents are supposed to provide for an inventor, a chance to make a buck on his invention. I mentioned Fernsworth and RCA earlier on, it is an interesting case, but not really unique. For software such situations are especially likely to arrise (abeit in part due to bad patent approvals), and where is the incentive in having to spend my time as inventor figuring out which silly details of my invention someone else thought of as well and bothered to patent? And that knowing that I'll miss out on a few and someone will come and sue me anyway?
No, they're not more desirable from an individual or societal point of view. Trade secrets are predicated upon keeping the secret a secret. Patents are predicated on disclosure of your idea without completely destroying the financial incentive of disclosure.
And? you get to keep it forever or untill someone else figures it out on their own. Oh, they stole your trade secret? Go talk to uncle sam, he has some laws for dealing with that.
For the individual there seems to be quite an advantage there I'd think?
Socially this may be more desirable then the patent minefield we see for software also, in other cases it is less desirable for sure.
Indeed, and so when AltruCorp sinks USD 10 million into a product and BenignCo drops USD 3 million to improve it and BorgLTD swoops in for USD 0.00 and we all compete in the marketplace.. you'd be okay with that?
If somehow BorgLTD can do that without investing in reverse engineering your product, building production facilities, doing a good enough job at quality control, and can offset their 'late to market' disadvantage all for USD 0.00 then why not?
It of course depends on the initial cost of R&D. I agree that there are situations where there has to be protection for large upfront investment.
The other side is that when looking for a quality product for some purpose, I seldom end up with such 'clones'. I want the quality control of the 'real thing' there if it exists.
Note for me the parts where I said that direct money concern wasn't what drove open source's innovation. Curiousity and indirect money concerns were. Also note where I said that curiousity and indirect money hopes are neither a requirement or a result of the open source model, and thus the open source model itself is not the driving factor in open source's innovation.
By having the source code available, it invites people to look at how things work, it makes it easy to tinker with it, and it makes that you can easily learn. By that it allows many more people to be involved in inventing, resulting in more invention.
Do you get paid more for releasing your code openly? No? Then you don't have a direct financial gain. If you finish jobs faster, what you gai
What incentive did the large company Microsoft have to innovate and develop an online browser?
Wanting to jump on the 'online' bandwagen started by others obviously.
If you were an investor and a similar situation would crop up today, let's say someone were to come up with better search engine then Google's PageRanking, and the company told you "we're going to implement it and market it and not bother with going applying for a patent because we think we can stay ahead of Google" - would you still invest with them?
1. If someone (say Yahoo) had patented the web search engine as such, there would have been no Google to begin with.
2. How pagerank works is kept secret. I bet specific parts of it are protected by patents, but keeping it secret is important for preventing people from cheating the system, and that makes me feel pretty confident that patenting pagerank or some competing but similar system quite a bad idea actually.
I guess point 2 answers your question.
The lessons learned from Mosaic/Netscape vs Microsoft are exactly indicative of the David vs Golaith and why patents are needed. You can go on and on about how Netscape screwed themselves, well any company that innovative should be able to make a few mistakes and still survive but they didn't. Any other company that would have come up with that if NCSA/Mosaic/Netscape hadn't also would have met a similar fate without any kind of protection.
Actually, the law should have protected them (and many others in a similar situation) from this exact behavior already. It sortof happened but by the time it was irrelevant for Netscape anyway. I find it slightly curious that you somehow expect you can stop them with the help of patent law in that light, even more so after having seen how patents helped Stacker defending itself from MS stealing their stuff.
The lesson to be learned from Netscape is that if you get into a position where Microsoft might find your business interesting, you either get bought by them, outcompeted by them (fairly or more often not) or you are actually strong and smart enough to outflank them. Oh, of course there is also the option of simply being invulnerable to their 'traditional' business practises (this changes with the proliferation of software patents however) by simply not being a business that they can buy or drive into bankrupcy.
Nobody was paying for the browser but one way Netscape was originally generating revenue was by the advertising on their home page. That was fair since people could easily change their home page too. Maybe that wasn't sustainable but they also got into selling servers and some ecommerce products if I remember correctly. They could and should have survived if it wasn't for the behemoth looking to take them down and some protection against him.
Was absolutely fair. Maybe they should have provided more usefull content there so people actually wanted to keep it as their homepage? I still doubt it would have gotten them enough to make for a decent business.
When looking at the server and ecommerce business today, Microsoft is a big player, but is far from a monopoly. They probably did profit from the demise of Netscape there, but they have been unable to consolidate the market, rather, we find a very healthy market with a variety of small, medium and large 'solution providers' there.
Even with some patent on their web browser (some simple ideas might be something like bookmarks, or some function of a home page, or Back button, etc...) something that a competitor would have had to improve upon to create some incentive for users to switch. Any of those could have had workarounds, and maybe would have pushed the web browser envelope farther, maybe instead of a home page it somehow determines some page/news appropriate for the user to see, maybe instead of bookmarks might have pushed us into tags and social bookmarking in the early 90's, etc...
Well, protecting 'simple' ideas sounds like contradicting t
This is sad that you feel this way. Mosaic innovated, who knows what we'd be doing today without Mosaic (maybe still BBS or telnet to forums)
Mosaic combined some pre-existing ideas and a relatively new medium. Seeing how hypertext help had been conceived by the time of Mosaic, it is very likely that someone else at some other point would have done the same as them. Yes, they invented, but their invention is not groundbreaking due to its uniqueness, but due to many being able to jump on the bandwagon.
then Microsoft pounced and stole the idea
And it took 2 generations of their implementation to make something a lot better then Mosaic/Netscape ever produced.
and used monopoly power to completely destroy Netscape.
Monopoly power and having it pre-installed with their OS definitely helped, but like it or not, their browser was simply a lot better after some time of development.
No business model Netscape could have come up with would have competed with a 'built into the OS with 90%+ market share and free' business model. In fact that's all Microsoft wanted to do was kill them off.
Microsoft wanted its own network with proprietary client first. Then this idea of a web browser had shown itself, and they changed their mind. Yes, they definitely try to dominate any market they enter, and often they manage.
The 'free' part however is a silly argument. Most private users where I have seen Netscape were using either free 'trial' versions, 'branded' versions provided by their ISP, or the always available and much used beta versions. People actually paying for the browser wasn't happening much way before MS entered the browser game, and it couldn't work without something else to support it, not before and not after Microsoft entered the market.
That same Microsoft is still struggling bigtime in the webserver and proxy markets, two other markets where Netscape was active in. Netscape lost there, but to itself, not to Microsoft and their tactics.
This is like alcohol addiction - before you can rehab you have to understand that this is ailing you, you believe a company as innovative and beneficial to society as Netscape could have survived, or maybe you have better business sense then they did and know of a way they could have. Either that or you believe Internet Explorer would have come along within a few years anyways.
This is like alcohol addiction - before you can rehab you have to understand that this is ailing you, you believe a company as innovative and beneficial to society as Netscape could have survived, or maybe you have better business sense then they did and know of a way they could have. Either that or you believe Internet Explorer would have come along within a few years anyways.
I believe that it is not so unique that it would have taken long for someone else to come up with something pretty equivalent. I also believe that the huge benefit to society from Mosaic/Netscape innovation is a direct consequence of it not being locked up behind patents. If it were it would likely have gone the way of Microsoft's initial attempt to reinvent the idea.
Also, I do indeed believe that Netscape had a chance initially despite the obvious disadvantage against Microsoft.
(oh, and I know them and their tactics. I have been involved quite a bit in OS/2 in the late 80s and early 90s and worked both with and against them in that...)
I believe patents are the one weapon a truly innovative small company has to innovate and survive. I'm not talking about the next web design or professional service or desktop publishing company, etc... I'm talking about the next Mosaic, the next RSA, the next VMWare, the next Apple Macintosh/Xerox, the next mouse, the next Google, etc...
VMWare is all about implementation, the idea behind their virtualisation is so old that had it been patented, that patent would have expired some 2 decades ago. Oh, they sure have some novel ideas of themselves also with regards to how exactly to implement and manage it.
Mosaic and Netscape lost due to their implementations being inferior to those of others, not because of lack of patents.
Microsoft succeeded despite lack of patents there (actually, thanks to lack of patents of course)
As a whole, the web is as succesfull as it is thanks to those same patents lacking.
I think you're talking more about the regular guy making his $120,000/year. I'm talking home runs (and lots of strikeouts)
I am talking about a stable and good climate for doing business. I am not interested in the single individual becomming amazingly rich (not against it either).
, you're talking about steady singles and doubles. In the end your model clearly benefits more people, but I would like a place for the true innovators to be able to survive.
I'm saying that society pays a price for patents, and if the result is not better for society then patents are undesirable and that price should no longer be payed. For those in the USA that is consistent with the constitutional provision for patents and the stated goals there btw.
Mosaic/Netscape failed (maybe because no patent on web browser and Microsoft mostly copied), RSA survived and prospered (with patents), etc... The existing system allows for this. Your point about "not needed" seems to indicate that you don't feel patents are worthwhile to protecting those small companies at all.
I believe the disadvantage to outweight such a possible advantage by far, as is evident from Internet Explorer having been a better browser then the old Netscape for a very long time. If Netscape had done a better job at their business model as well as their browser they very likely would be around still. In this case, lack of patents means having to inovate again and again. I indeed see no reason to put a break on that to protect a few who happen to have a very good idea once but fail to profit from it.
Of course this discussion doesn't even touch on how such a small but innovative company that did hold a patent, and actually managed to get judgement in its favor also, still lost out to Microsoft copying its idea and basicly putting the small company out of business.
Patents only really work if you have quite deep pockets (or some scheme to finance your case against an arbitrary industrial gorilla)
nobody ever said inventions wouldn't happen, they would happen far less though.
In case of software they are quickly becoming a barrier to entry, arguably reducing the number of people trying to invent things and the resulting number of inventions.
No, you didn't even understand the point of view I have on the benefit of protecting ideas it seems, even less so why I see it that way.
I am convinced that it makes sense in specific cases to protect ideas, but not in general. Do it for the cases where it is needed, but don't hinder the free flow of ideas untill it is needed.
Sorry for replying twice, was a bit quick to hit submit there.
As for the rest of your post,
In today's software world, #1 is dirt cheap (reverse engineer, etc...), #2 is dirt cheap - buy PC, get broadband, setup website and/or burn CD's, #3 is dirt cheap - website or mail CD, #4 cost of salary of paying some programmers and their PC's. Then add to this the fact this can be done anywhere and we all know where you can obtain those programmers at substantial discount.
So in fact I might even argue that software patents are even more important then before.
That an individual company might be served well by protecting its ideas does not in itself make it desirable for society to protect those ideas. The fact that it is very easy to enter the software market and implement some floating idea however is very desirable to society, it means lots of choice and lots of attempts to implement an idea as good as cost and technology allow at that moment. Patenting software must result in benefits at least equal to that.
If you can't compete without patent protection then you most likely have one or more of the following problems
- Your implementation sucks (if it can be done on a comparable level by substandard programmers without any kind of real involvement with the project it most likely does)
- You are not making good use of the other forms of protection that exist
- Despite it being 'easy' according to you, your distribution and promotion suck.
Then, let me tell you that quite a few companies are in fact selling Apache quite succesfully as part of their web 'solutions', and companies seem quite willing to pay for it.
That does not change that when direct profit for the inventor is not the motive for inventing something, using direct profit for the inventor to judge success is silly at best really.
And yes, I have developed software for a living since the mid 80s and still do so parttime. I have worked for very large and very small companies in that business also. Patents on software are a direct restraint on trade comparable to guilds of old. No, we do not want a protected market where a few can determine who can enter, and it is not needed either.
Maybe, and I can say I've been on both sides of the fence (big open source proponent 10 years ago) and have realized over the past few years the value of patents especially with the: 1) incredibly small barriers to entry in software world, 2) easy copying (much more easier than with physical products and cost of making manufacturing plants), 3) why would any company spend the significant costs on R&D to innovate if instead they could just copy their competitors successful products (and just ignore the ones not making any ground), 4) cheap labour offshore
I don't consider 'incredibly small barriers to entry' a problem, rather the opposite. Of course it means you have a lot of competition, and from the perspective of a single business that is not always nice, but it is desirable for the bigger picture. Patents exist to serve society, not a specific business.
I do agree however that it also causes a problem in combination with the other things you mention. The answer to that however is simple, copyright. No, you cannot protect the method you thought up that way, but you can protect your implementation. That is also exactly what the argument against patents on software is about. Everyone can make a spreatsheet, but you can't just copy the work from another spreatsheet maker. This has done a very good job at stimulating innovation, and if it had been possible and practical back then to patent the idea, we would have been without lots of what makes excel an entirely different thing then the original visicalc, even if they use the same idea.
Without software patents you can have both sides of the coin at once.. You can for once eat your cake and have it.
And for those who so desire, they can write all the open source software they like without worry as long as they are not copying your work (eventho they may copy your idea and make a much better implementation, but you can do the same with theirs, or with the ideas of your commerical competition).
Yes, there was that era of staggering rates of innovation that I believe we know as the dark ages. Tradeguilds were, essentially, a primitive intellectual property system. They protected the knowledge of their crafts for the financial gain of the members.
We indeed did away with most but not all trade guilds some time ago. Your argument misses one point of guilds however which is at least as relevant as interlectual property protection: education.
Observing that people invented for centuries without patents is accurate. But somewhat pointless. Individuals and civilizations have done things for centuries that we don't do anymore. Why? Because better ways have come along.
It is far from pointless in the face of the argument that inventions would not happen without patents. It proves that statement untrue. You can argue that patents help getting more inventions, and at least in specific areas of technology that is true.
It should be noted that an invention that made electronic tv practical was done by exactly the kind of person and motivation you are arguing has been outdated, a farmboy wanting to solve the problem, and doing so while thinking 'on the job'. (And yes, he did apply and got his patent on his invention, and then it didn't see any practical use for another 20 years due to being locked up in a fight with RCA over.. patents). This despite huge amounts of money having been poored into such projects by big business at the time.
Investment may help invention, but in many fields, it is not exactly a requirement for invention.
The government believes that a free market of ideas would select an ineffecient level of invention.
That same government supposedly also believes it should grow to become a 'small and efficient government'. If you don't mind I don't take their 'desires' and reasoning for granted.
Thus, they intervene in the market with patents to provide an incentive to inventors.
Which is fine when such a need can be shown.
A lack of patents decreases the rate of invention. How, you ask? Well, either individuals do the inventing, in which case they have to work day jobs to pay bills, and can only devote their 'free' time to the research. Less time available to invent == less inventions. Alternatively, businesses could foot the bill. But why would they? Businesses exist for profit, and the lack of patents all but guarantees that the cost of research is a sunk cost rather than an investment.
And there is the real problem with your argument.
First of all, patents are not the only way to protect an investment. Are trade secrets more desirable? That depends on what 'field of invention' you are talking about, but isn't a clear cut case.
Second, as shown and even argued by yourself in reply to my comment about ipsec, there can be good motivations to do such an investment and make the result available to everyone for free. Sometimes this is a good idea, sometimes not.
Third, as argued above, invention and investment are related, but in quite a few cases investment is not a requirement for invention.
Patents are fine for those fields of development where invention would be unattractive otherwise, but that should be the exception, not the rule.
Sunk costs are generally unattractive to businesses. Businesses pay them because they must to do business. That means that competitors face similar sunk costs if they're going to be your competitors. Not so with inventions. Once you've figured out how to make it, you've also figured out how I can make it, too.
Yes, and that is exactly why a free flow of ideas works. It also means you get to use and improve on what others did.
Okay.. so because software is different, we should take rules that work in software markets and apply them to other markets? If you want to assert that patents (or IP in general, even) are unnecessary in the software market, thats fine.
I am arguing that patents should only be allo
Uh, no. The Israelis have stolen the homeland of an ethnic group through Brittish Imperial fiat
0 023409472 to find out a bit more about what I think about this conflict. Just keep in mind that I don't really care about who is right or wrong, rather, I care about who is willing to actually solve something. In that both parties in the conflict are not doing too well.
They did indeed take a piece of land where other people were already living among a lot of jews. Matter of fact is that it wasn't their land of course.
They took this land following a proposal dating back to the end of the Ottoman Empire. A proposal that would have provided for home countries for jews, palestinians and kurds. A plan that never got executed, except for the creation of the state of Israel some 30 years later. This happened despite attempts from the Brits to prevent it. You may want to read up a bit on that bit of history.
Fact is also that jews have been living in what is now Israel for almost as long as history is being written, and it was by far the most logical place for a home country from that point of view.
Regardless, people have been driven off their land, and the least that needs to happen is that those people get compensated for their losses. Israel is of course doing the exact opposite of this.
and are waging a very literal war of genocide so they can keep. THEY are in the wrong. The Palestinians are fighting for survival,
Fighting for survival does not legitimize things like attacking Israeli civilians. Those who do that are wrong regardless of their motivation (and yes, by the same token Israel is wrong in attacking civilian targets and possibly civilians themselves in Gaza and Lebanon as well regardless of their motivation).
the any other arab groups involved are generally trying to aid them in this.
Other Arabs only made things worse, not better.
Because what the israelis are doing is 100% wrong.
That does not change that what Palestinians are doing is wrong as well.
Just as wrong as what the Nazis did to the Gypsies, Slavs, and Jews. The ONLY difference is that Israel is genociding slowing, a family farm in Gaza here, a bus load of students there, and 50 years later we have millions of palestian dead.
And somehow the answer to that is hate of all jews and killing them regardless of where they are or what they support?
You my friend are full of anger. Your anger is justified, but it clouds your judgements and as a result your conclusions are wrong.
Oh, and if you want to compare things to Europe, you may want to put a lot more time into figuring out how Europe managed to put an end to 1000 (!!) years of war and territorial conflict between France and Germany.
Also, read http://soapbox.bartsplace.net/article.php/2006072
IPSec is also not really open source originations, it's driven by a bunch of companies all concerned about interoperability and a controlling body.
And incidentely they use open source and related methods to achieve this. Small detail maybe, but still..
You're missing the main point
Not really, but you are definitely trying to ignore those things that don't fit your picture.
- without patent protection businesses would spend much less on R&D and more on just watching the competition and copying the best ideas and therefore innovation would be reduced.
That is at best an unproven assumption. Yes, it makes logical sense, yet, there is a long history suggesting the opposite of what you say. Inventions have been made for thousands of years without patents.
Without patents copying your competitor would be more cost effective and provide more lower hanging fruit.
In some industries, maybe, in others not. Software is not a manufactured prodict and different rules apply anyway.
If you believe otherwise, that is fine, but you'll have to make an actual argument, seeing how history tells the opposite story. I'd dare to argue that most inventions in software already took place before patent protection was allowed at all for it
In the industry so many people go on and on about how open source model is the be all end all but they fail to realize that it isn't driving innovation at all.
And you are really being ignorant of the achievements of many here. If it takes me a fraction of a minute and no research whatsoever to come up with examples, I'm sure you could have done better by putting in a few minutes of research. You are not willing to do that much even, so why should anyone consider your statements as more then unfounded anti open source banter?
Not exactly, but for the most part the two (usefulness & financial compensation) are more closely attached then the anti-patents proponents want to admit.
No, they are by far not as tightly related as patent proponents want to believe.
Financial compensation is an indicator for usefullness only when an invention is made available with the purpose to achieve such compensation directly. It ignores many cases where the compensation isn't as direct, and of course cases where compensation is not by financial means.
In other words, in specific cases financial compensation is a good indicator but in quite a few it is not, and incidentely the cases where it is not are among the cases you want in your comparison.
The problem with your approach becomes painfully clear from your statements about Apache, saying that it may have some very non obvious uses, but that financial compensation for its inventors is low so it should not be considered? Its market share says it is extremely usefull. So usefull in fact that people also pay for it in quite a few cases.
Ok I'll call you on your argument/bluff that the open source world is the place where innovations happen. Name some important innovations that even come close to some of the patented world innovations in software: RSA algorithm, Netscape SSL, Google PageRanking, SecurId.
... might have some non-trivial usage behind them the financial numbers they brought to their inventors pales in comparison to their patent example counterparts. In fact, how far would those OSS products have made it IF they did have a financial cost to obtaining them?
Well, it looks like tcp/ip and many protocols on top of it were first implemented as open source. Real inventions? if
you consider the ones above to be real inventions then those are as well.
Except for the RSA algorithm, the things you mention would not have existed without it. The reason why it became so inmensely popular as to turn into the defacto standard network protocol for most purposes is exactly because of working examples being available and noone effectively owning it.
Something more recent? hmm, ipsec comes to mind inmediately, I guess that actually looking would turn up some more examples.
While open source products like Apache, Firefox,
Silly argument. Measuring how well open source does with a metric that is irrelevant to inventions and in the case of open source not even measurable?
The usefullness of an invention is measured by its use, not by the financial compensation the inventor got.
It's not such much 'no involvement' as 'actually trusted by both side'. Someone who has a lot of Israel and Palestine interests is actually perfect for the job.
Yep..
The only countries that would really be ruled out are other Arab countries, or Muslim theocracies, by Israel, and America and possibly England, by Palestine. (Although England used to manage that whole area just fine.)
Hmm, one could make a good argument that the current mess is at least partially a result of the teritorial mess that England left there.
Hmm, so lets move a significant part of the Israeli population into refugee camps?
Yeah, they rather have their friends from the SLA rape and kill Lebanese children instead.
Eeh, that's still destruction of property. My method's simply more dramatic, and cathartic. ;)
Could have an argument there aout if removial of power or disconnecting the speaker is actually damaging the device.. but you have a point of course and there is no clear line.
Consider if you lived next-door to this person, and could hear the noise -all day-. That whining would drive me absolutely nuts within the span of a day, and would probably keep me from sleeping. If you fed this into a prison cell, it'd be classified as torture.
Consider that I have a microphone and recording and measurement equipment that can quite show this sound being there, evenm if an elderly police officer wouldn't hear it. We'll see eachother in civil court if that is how it has to end..
Do you actually have some kind of argument? you sound a bit like an angry teenager not getting his way for now..
1. That is a publication from an extremely biassed organisation. I will not say it is false, but I will say that I have found no other
sources mentioning that incident whatsoever, so I have zero reason to believe it being true, nor do I have any background information
that can be verified by multiple sources.
Reading through their online publications makes clear that any critical comment about Israel or any possibly supportive comment about
Palestinian people is inmediately recorded as 'anti Israel stance of the UN' by this supposed eye on the UN. Also, the map in question
is Arab in origin, but the pictures are way to unclear to say what is exactly on it and what is not.
2. There is no country called Palestine, so the UN cannot be having a meating with the representatives of Palestine.
There is however a Palestinian authority, maybe you meant those?
Palestine is a territory, incidentely, a territory that covers all of Israel and some areas around it (West bank mostly)
3. Again, this website is extremely biassed, to the point of calling one of the people present a suicide bomber.. Now, suicide bombers
blow themselves up, and are not very capable of being present at a UN meeting afterward.. I guess using that kind of language helps
'getting their point across' but clearly shows what this site is about.
So.. come with some verifiable sources and background on this incident please, it is an interesting incident.
How is that going to make the monster bigger?
Because destruction of property is a higher level of escalation then trying to annoy eachother?
Sometimes violence is the only answer and morals are a thing best put on the shelf for a while.
What escapes you is that you can use violence without putting morals on the shelf for a while. Anytime you can't, your problem is much more likely rejecting non violent solutions then there being none.
Seems they are looking at France for this one.. Hmm.. interesting since they have involvement in both sides of the conflict instead of no involvement at all. Sounds like the right choice for the job tho.
Implicit rules for a snowball fight?
:)
You throw snowballs, not other stuff. Usually you actually throw them at eachother, you stop when someone might get hurt (beyond being a bit cold from the snow)... Beyond that, it might depend on whom you are whith, but not much
Anyway.. you are right, no point in arguing since we basicly agree.
The point was that neighborhood battles can be fun as long as both parties decide on roughly the same kind of 'rules', otherwise they usually get out of control after some time. A good way to deal with them is to organize some kind of neighborhood competition instead... Keeps people busy and makes sure there are some rules that all have to agree with in order to participate.