| > Patents started out as a 20 year protection on mechanical mechanisms or chemical processes as long as what was protected was publicly documented in full. 1) Patents are not an American invention. England had them before, and the Romans before that. 2) I'll assume you implied U.S. patents. The Founders regarded patents so highly that they wrote them into the U.S. Constitution. It was written generically and not limited or fixed to only "mechanical or chemical" but rather "to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries". > Thing is though that 20 years is a very long time when we are talking software. By the time the RSA patent ran out, the algorithm described was largely obsolete. RSA patent expired nearly 20 years ago yet RSA is still used today. For example, the public key used to secure https://news.ycombinator.com is RSA. > Not that patents have not been a problem even before computers. Serious refinements of the steam engine for example didn't happen until after the initial patent ran out.
>
> Similarly Smith and Weston sat on their refinements for the Colt revolver until the patent ran out. The myth is that patents block innovation. The reality is that blocking someone from doing something incentives them to find another way to do it. Afterall, if all you want to do is copy then how is that "blocking innovation"? |