[rhino369]

That's sorta the purpose of patents. Incumbent companies create a ton of valuable technology that new competitors would otherwise get access to only because the incumbents invested in them.

You can disagree with rewarding it, but it's not totally insane.

[jeswin]

That an idea can have ownership is totally insane. The only reason it doesn't sound insane is because we've been told over and over that it's a good thing.

- People will invent no matter what. Money is just one type of reward.

- If you don't want competitors copying immediately, don't announce or demo it before hand and keep it secret until you have all marketing in place. Or limit distribution and offer it in controlled, supervised environments.

The solution can't be "this idea is mine". Nobody must own ideas.

[rayiner]

That really misses the point of how R&D works in most fields. LTE wasn't invented by people tinkering in their basement. It took rooms full of PhDs and those cost money. At the same time, it's not technology where having a first-mover marketing advantage matters much. It may take six months for someone to reverse-engineer your technology, but much longer than that to recoup your initial R&D.

There is a reason companies like Qualcomm and most Internet companies are on opposite sides of the patent debate, and its not because Qualcomm is evil and Twitter isn't. It's because what it takes to make their respective products, and what it takes to protect their markets from copycats is fundamentally different.

[jeswin]

LTE could very well be invented by international collaboration involving academia, industry and individuals. Why should industry get into it? To build expertise. Need to shift from companies seeing patents as assets to expertise/people as assets. That will also create better work environments.

[throwawaykf05]

Not all collaboration is equal, or even comparable. If your part of the collaboration is sinking huge amount of resources into inventing the technology, and somebody else's is turning it into marketable products, shouldn't both enjoy the rewards? There are straightforward mechanisms for the latter party. What mechanism would you propose for adequate compensation to the former?

[digi_owl]

Well patents are not really an ownership. It is a time limited exclusive use of what the patent covers, in exchange for writing it down. This so that once the patent runs out, the wider society benefits.

Mind you, patents came about when the steam engine was a new thing.

Also, that they cover software is a very recent thing. Initially they covered mechanical systems (pistons, rods, cogs etc etc) set up to specific tasks, and chemicals (put X parts of Y into Z under boil).

What seemed to happen was that at some point software got involved as controlling these earlier items in a more precise manner than humans or mechanics alone could (monitor temperature, put stuff into other stuff when it hits the exact one, extract everything a precise number of seconds later etc).

This was then declared, by court, to be a distinct patent from the same process done via purely manual or mechanical means. A ruling that later lawyers built on to basically get de-facto software patents.

[forgotpwtomain]

It's a tricky subject. The argument from the patent side is that if these companies could not patent their technologies / products, they would not be willing to invest nearly as much in development and this would generally hurt human progress.

On the other-hand if you look at big companies like Apple, Facebook the amounts the are investing in genuine human progress is truly paltry compared to their net-worth, and what they are patenting is often ridiculous, generic and clearly not in any way conducive to human progress.

[tracker1]

The problem is that in certain segments, most specifically in terms of software development... the "valuable technology" can generally be implemented by anyone skilled in the crafy, and generally speaking doesn't have a lot of outlay in terms of research/development. That's not to say there aren't segments of software development that should qualify, but imho if allowed should really be more like 5 years, not 20 for software patents. And most software patents should simply have been denied outright.

[throwawaykf05]

Sure, most things in software can be implemented by anyone skilled in the craft, but how many can invent it? And furthermore, when speaking of "skilled in the art", let's keep in mind the perennial HN threads about hiring and how 99% of developers can't do FizzBuzz.

[tracker1]

I'm pretty sure a significant portion of software developers working a decade ago could "invent" one click ordering, podcasts, or double-tap actions.