[est31]

Why would you want to innovate when the bigger competitor can just copy you without paying you anything?

This current situation is unfortunate, but I think it's an imperfection of the market. If the patent owning company had been a bit less greedy, they could have made far more money with it.

[deeviant]

The whole "innovate" word is just loaded and overblown.

Many software patents written today cover average work done by average engineers to solve average problems in a way that if you asked 100 engineers to solve said problem, the majority of them would could up with exactly the method in the patent.

Software patents are just a truncheon for incumbent companies to wield against other companies unlucky enough to try to enter the same space as patent-holding incumbent.

[est31]

I agree with you about the software patents. They should go in the places they still exist. My statement was mainly meant about non-software patents. Sometimes a lot of research/experimentation/thought goes into a single patentable invention.

[HeadsUpHigh]

For the same reason startups can win over existing giants: first to market is important.

[RobertoG]

How E ink innovations come to happen?

I think it was developed by MIT and not by E INK, is that right?

[hobofan]

It was developed _by_ professors and students _at_ MIT, who then went on to found the E Ink Corporation (and presumably found an arrangement regarding the IP with MIT). This is the backstory of basically every startup founded out of a university lab.

[TaylorAlexander]

> Why would you want to innovate when the bigger competitor can just copy you without paying you anything?

Because they can't begin to copy you until you've released your product to market, so you have profit potential for being the first mover.

This happens all the time as only a small percentage of the innovation that occurs actually gets patented.

In some cases it would be possible for a big company to take your innovation out from under you but if they can do a better job then we're all better off for that. If as an inventor you've only got one idea, you're screwed. You need to be able to innovate repeatedly.

But the concise way of responding to this is: markets already reward innovation. We do not need state controls on information to "stimulate innovation". The incentive exists as a natural effect of markets.

[est31]

Sure there is a tiny reward in that you offer something earlier than your competitors, but it might not be enough to offset the investments into the research that made it possible in the first place. Yes, a lot of innovation is not patented, but that's usually the stuff that requires little investments.

Also don't forget the disclosure part of patents. If you want something be protected by patents, you need to publish a description of how you do it. You can't just keep the engineers isolated on an island or whatever. A no patent world would make manufacturers build in even more measures to prevent reverse engineering, engineers sharing secrets, etc.

[TaylorAlexander]

First, I would think that research would be more distributed - more smaller investments rather than centralized large developments. Second, I am not just advocating for abolishing intellectual property restrictions but also for promoting a culture of sharing. If we actually care about advancing human society, we should be willing to look at how to truly maximize innovation. It seems to be quite plausible that if we abandon IP restrictions as a notion and embrace sharing while also permitting reverse engineering of those who don't share, we would see a much higher rate of innovation. That has HUGE implications for society and I can't accept the idea that patents are good simply because most people believe it.

[z3t4]

There are so many people out there with crazy ideas, but they don't want to invest in it because they know they will be eaten by a bigger fish. Their only hope is to stay under the radar long enough so that they will have enough money to retire once their idea gets copied.

[TaylorAlexander]

There are also a lot of people who would really like to improve upon existing products but are prevented from doing so due to patents. So patents promote some kinds of innovation while severely restricting other kinds. It may well be true that there is more potential innovation being blocked due to IP restrictions than there is being promoted by IP rights. People seem to take it as a given that the latter outweighs the former, but rarely have I encountered evidence for this claim. The implications of getting this wrong are staggering, and I worry that people rarely critique this idea.

[z3t4]

Maybe make it so that the patent royalties are paid by the consumer as patent tax. Then that tax is distributed among all patents in use by that product.