[aoriste]

Alright, trash patents right now - tell me what would happen.

"where is the evidence..." I was having this discussion with a friend of mine, an engineering PhD. At first, I took your side, and ideally, I still do. Don't get me wrong: I WANT a patentless world to work.

He put it like this: what do you do when you work for years on an idea, you finally get enough to publish, and to get your idea patented. You know that your career depends on your getting the "first stake" on this idea - others (who you can name) are working on the idea too. If you cannot patent it, then you cannot build the rest of your career on your having gotten there first.

Now I know, immediately, this notion sounded utterly evil to me. You SHOULDN'T, I protested, be able to found your career on having gotten there first. You should want to share your idea with all of those people who are also working on it - and afterall - isn't this how academic science moves forward?

Yes, he said, but still - if you cannot patent your idea, then somebody who ALREADY has the resources will snatch it up and use it to dominate the field BEFORE you can acquire the resources to do it youself. And so you end up just giving somebody an idea for free, and you get nothing in exchange for your years of work.

Ideologically, I am still rubbed the wrong way by this argument - on the other hand, what else is my friend the engineer supposed to do?

The benefit of patents is not to civilization as a whole - that is the problem with them - their benefits are local and incremental to individuals - and even that benefit is imperfect. The system requires reform - but I do not think we are ready for the system to be abolished.

[ZeroGravitas]

The lone inventor defeating entrenched interests with the power of a patent is a fairy tale.

The only patent holders large organisations fear are non-practicing entities (aka trolls) because anyone actually trying to build a product can be undermined in any one of a thousand ways.

[aoriste]

Precisely, the system requires reform - but abolishment would even further deprive that "lone inventor" of right to her own work.

Trouncing patents now would only give the already successful less to worry about, and would force the budding minds into the dirt.

I, for one, am so anti-capitalist that I don't use a single piece of proprietary software, and I own only what I can carry. I'm an idealist with the causes that I can control (personal use) - I'm a realist when I want to actually see change in the right direction (political voice).

[kiba]

As far as ideology goes, I suspect mine would be the opposite of your. I am a pro-capitalist, going as far to assert that nobody have the right to make money from their work. However, on the flip side, I also argue that everyone have the right of property. I have no qualm in letting engineers starve themselves working on an invention. However, I have qualms about people destroying my community in addition to my business which I have established without the monopoly mechanisms.

I love open source software so much that I gladly stake my whole business model on it, to the point of wishing to experiment without the protection of copyright.

Those patent entrepreneurs wish to live in a world that would take my property right and freedom away in favor of their monopolistic business models.

This is liberty versus economic security.

I rather be a free dog who don't know what his next meal at, then an enslaved dog who get a small but a sure pittance.

[aoriste]

on that final point, we can agree.

And you're right, we must be somewhat disparate in our thought - If I were the architect of the world - I would have it that material property is the only sort that qualifies, and that nobody can make a living except by their work (or by the services they work to offer).

[loup-vaillant]

The lone inventor probable doesn't exist at all. We often observe that ideas are found independently and nearly simultaneously by several people. (IIRC, pg says so in one of his essays.) That would mean that when an ideas is ready for prime time, it will be discovered anyway.

Assume that the absence of patents could send some would be lone inventors to poverty, while allowing the ideas they would have found to be found anyway. That's probably not OK for most people. However that's also a net benefit for society, and so is most probably OK. But "benefit for the society" is a vague and abstract notion. The "lone inventor" is something you can understand, feel, identify yourself with. I think a good argument against software patents would have to make people cry just as much.

[kiba]

Yes, he said, but still - if you cannot patent your idea, then somebody who ALREADY has the resources will snatch it up and use it to dominate the field BEFORE you can acquire the resources to do it youself. And so you end up just giving somebody an idea for free, and you get nothing in exchange for your years of work.

This is assuming your competitors have the ability to predict which ideas in the pool of not-so great inventions idea that would have ultimately brought them nothing if they were to use it.

In business you relies on the ignorance of others to establish yourself, and your ability to predict which inventions will rake in the cash.

That is how entrepreneurship work.

In any case, you advocate the existence of patent system. It is your burden to prove it against the grain of established literatures.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

You should want to share your idea with all of those people who are also working on it

I don't know you personally, but if you owned a business that had sunk $10M into developing that concept into something patentable, I doubt very much that you would be interested in sharing your idea freely with your competitors.

Furthermore, the reason behind patents is definitely that they will benefit society: it's just that the patent holder gets to benefit first