I haven't seen anything good about patents in years. Maybe the government should just get rid of them, along with copyright. The idea of granting someone a monopoly to an idea is crazy to me.
I agree about software patents. But I disagree about all patents, and I especially disagree about getting rid of copyright. I think copyright needs to be reigned in, the DMCA is horrid, but the concept itself generally protects artists and creators (and gets abused by the likes of Disney, etc.).
If I make something, I should be capable of earning money with it if I want to. Copyright protects software in that regard, as well as music and images, etc.
The same arguments generally apply to patents. There are monetization models like live shows, subscriptions, Patreon, advertising, sponsorships, etc that work very well for creators.
Especially in the internet age, we shouldn't act like copyright and patents do anything to stop people. Creators would likely do better if the publishers weren't in the middle controlling access to their works.
I can say with confidence that >90% of new small-molecule pharmaceuticals would not be created in a patent-free world. Now, not every new small molecule drug is important, in fact probably the majority aren’t. But those that are, save a lot of lives.
The market for pharmaceuticals is already very far from being a free market. It's a heavily regulated industry with extremely high compliance costs. In this specific case, further market distortions in the form of patent monopolies might be necessary to make the market work. Most industries do not have this level of regulation.
The economic harm to society that comes from patents is more than enough to fund public research that could employ the same smart people to discover the same medicines.
If you want to make money, offer it to people who consider your work valuable. Establish a patronage and paywall yourself. Those of us who believe in decency and social good will continue to create and distribute for free.
You know, those of us with sense about this need to start working together and lobby the government actively to demolish patents, copyrights, and trademarks. Ideas need to be free for society to grow.
Patents for software are fairly nonsense. Patents for drugs, for example, are absolutely crucial to incentivizing complex drug development that may take billions of dollars of research to create something that can be copied easily without patent protection.
You can't get rid of those types of patents unless you also start either handing out massive research subsidies or perform research with government money.
> ... unless you also start either handing out massive research subsidies or perform research with government money.
Which might be a good idea if the goal is to develop vaccines or new, effective antibiotics - things which are desperately needed but still do not seem to produce a strong enough incentive even with patents.
The cell phone I’m typing this on is fueled by two patent-powered business models: ARM’s and cellular companies’. Also, a substantial fraction of all modern computing paradigms came from PARC, which was fueled by Xerox’s patent monopoly.
Because it is crazy. Ideas aren't patentable, nor are they copyrightable.
You haven't seen anything good about patents in years? Look around you, do you like the objects you see? Many of them exist because of patents.
Not true. Patents play very little role in consumer products. Large corporations hold patents to defend themselves against other large corporations, just so they can compete against each other. Think of the Samsung-Apple fiasco.
If I make something, I should be capable of earning money with it if I want to. Copyright protects software in that regard, as well as music and images, etc.