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by BraveNewCurency
3039 days ago
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> how do we allocate rewards to innovators The goal of the patent system is not to "pay innovators" - they already get paid by putting good products on the market. The goal of the patent system is to get innovators to PUBLISH their solutions so that the public can benefit from them. (And build on them in the future.) If the patent is obvious, then the public gets no benefit, and we're handing out monopolies for free. |
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Having innovators publish isn't, big picture, important. The big picture importance is getting people to actually use the fruits of research in society where that would be optimal. Publication is a tiny element of making that happen, by facilitating tech transfer (but not really, because a huge chunk of patented innovations can't be replicated from the filed documents or published research papers. Intentionally.).
So why is publication treated as the aim? Because the rewards associated with innovation are best secured by secrecy in the absence of other anti-free-rider measures. Hence secrecy is replaced as the source of reward for innovators because secrecy is directly at odds with the social desire to implement superior tech or processes.
Your refrain is a common one used by patent maximalists to describe patents as a transaction between the public and the innovator, rather than a grant of privilege. This is because if we divorce patents from their actual social utility, and instead focus on their immediate results, we can ignore their externalities and create a self-fullfilling positive KPI to talk about ("Hey look, we published n innovations in public! More than last year!" vs. "On a Net basis, we've bettered things in society.")