[turc1656]

He's an inventor. Inventors usually work towards patents. Also, it's not so "no one else can use it". It's so that he can license out his work to a company like Intel. The patent is to protect him from a company like Intel going "sweet, thanks for the fix." And then profiting off his work. Or do you expect this guy to work for free?

[vec]

I don't expect him to work for free, but I do want Intel (and AMD, ARM, NVIDIA, TI, and anyone else who makes a floating point module) to go "sweet, thanks for the fix" as quickly and, almost more importantly, as collectively as possible.

I want this guy to be compensated, but I'd prefer this guy be compensated in a manner that doesn't prevent third parties from fixing their hardware. In general, I think bounties are a good solution to this. Failing that, there are plenty of trade groups and nonprofits and regulatory bodies that could be tasked (and funded) with acquiring and freely redistributing this class of innovation if we wanted to.

[sirclueless]

You're living in a fantasy world. You're looking at the status quo: some guy has invented a better floating point circuit, and you think there are two options. 1) The guy releases it to the public for general use, or 2) the guy patents it and holds a monopoly over its use.

Obviously 1) is a greater public good than 2), but in reality these are not the only options.

Here's some other realistic situations: 3) With no incentives to make things public, this guy either stops working on this much earlier, doesn't tell anyone, or throws it in the garbage. 4) This guy goes and talks to Intel about his design. They quietly pay him some money or hire him and implement it in secret. Two years from now they launch a processor with this feature and for the indefinite future, until their competitors spend costly time reverse engineering the secret hardware, only Intel processors have this circuit. 5) Same as 4) except Intel says, "Haha, thanks for being a sucker" and doesn't pay anyone.

This is the patent system at its best: incentivizing some guy to work on this invention, then publish his work and describe it in detail. For the next 20 years, he can license it to anyone he wants and profit from his work. After that point everyone can implement it as a public good.

[ad_hominem]

The fantasy world is thinking that plucky little inventors creating something is the status quo. You think big companies like Intel don't have hundreds of people working on research full-time? That they freely lease all fruits of their research out to their competition rather than keeping a 20-year monopoly?

Patents, like any monopoly-granting device, benefit market incumbents much more than encourage new entrants

[sharemywin]

maybe large companies shouldn't be able to own patents.

[oh_sigh]

Okay, so now we will have a bunch of 1 person in-name-only companies which hold patents, which offer exclusive licenses to big companies for $1 per 1000 years.

[sbuttgereit]

This. I know of someone that invented what appears to be useful medical technology; certain trusted professionals in the field that reviewed the work agreed.

However, some of the case law around what they'd need to patent the turned unfavorable around the time they were pursuing this and looking to turn it into a business. For your reasons 3) and 5), they've shelved it. This was an individual, not a large company, and without sufficient legal protection to reasonably hold large companies at bay, there simply was not sufficient reason to pursue this effort given how questionable the return would be.

[SiempreViernes]

Since it means getting less bits to store numbers in while also having to buy new hardware it doesn't seem like a very good solution though... and this is the patent system at its best apparently.

[Eyas]

Patents are the way the government allows the inventor to require compensation.

Ideally, that would be how patents are "supposed" to be use: An idea you patent can be used by others in exchange for a royalty fee. In reality, that happens quite a bit, but we also get anti-competitive tech companies who wish to keep advances to themselves, and patent trolls who wait on violations to sue.

[Joe-Z]

>Or do you expect this guy to work for free?

Apparently he did up until now, didn't he?

I agree he should get a percentage of the profits other companies make off of his invention, but it's not like he's entitled to any payments just because he liked to tinker around. Inventor's not a real profession.

[macintux]

> I agree he should get a percentage of the profits other companies make off of his invention, but it's not like he's entitled to any payments just because he liked to tinker around.

The first clause in your sentence is exactly what patents are for; the second clause is...tangential at best.

[Retra]

Everything is done for free up until it is paid for. That doesn't mean that it is fair to not pay for any work done in advance of payment. Not sure what kind of thought process led you say this, but it is not a productive one.