[cercatrova]

Software patents are an anathema on innovation. I'd go so far as to say all corporate patents are a hindrance to innovation. We're not in the days of singular inventors profiting off their inventions, which I'm fine with, as when corporations become patent trolls or create such broad patents like "able to play back on a device," then it gets a little ridiculous.

[TaylorAlexander]

In my opinion all intellectual property restrictions reduce the rate of innovation, with the sum total of all present day laws dramatically reducing the rate of innovate compared to what it could be. For example 3D printers were patented in 1989, then first sold for $50k in 1995, sold still under patent for $25k ten years later, then patents expired in 2008, within three years a decent printer was $1800, and ten years after patents expired they were $250 available worldwide. Today Prusa Research ships more 3D printers in three weeks than Stratasys sold for the first 20 years of their operation.

Imagine how much more productive mechanical engineers would have been if they had cheap 3D printers a decade sooner, and what the cumulative follow on effects would have been for the world. And then imagine what the economy would be like if everything moved that fast? It would change the nature of investment from less frequent massive investments to more frequent smaller investments as companies copied each other at will, but the rate of growth would be amazing! Think of how cheap we could make MRI machines and other medical imaging devices if this theory holds for that field.

Not to mention the extreme worldwide inequality perpetuated by intellectual property restrictions. How fast would the African continent develop if they were legally allowed to clone and copy the world's best manufacturing equipment and product designs.

Intellectual property is a disaster for humankind. So many people believe a fable about IP with no material basis in reality. We're told IP "encourages innovation" even when the actual material function of IP restrictions is to prohibit innovation around any patented idea.

[jabbawookiees]

On the other hand, if you're a startup founder with a brilliant new idea (say, some new way to synchronize audio across multiple speakers), why would you ever leave a cushy corporate job to build it if nothing protects you from large corporations copying everything you've made?

It seems, judging by how people have been complaining that their Google Homes have been doing worse, that maybe the system is working as intended and Google ought to pay for patent licenses to the people who first took the risk to build these multispeaker systems and proved that it was a good idea.

It's possible that the solution isn't to scrap intellectual property entirely but update the numbers to reflect the more innovative and interconnected world of 2022 instead of the 1600s when it was officially conceived.

[izacus]

> On the other hand, if you're a startup founder with a brilliant new idea (say, some new way to synchronize audio across multiple speakers), why would you ever leave a cushy corporate job to build it if nothing protects you from large corporations copying everything you've made?

The fact that your product will be on the market for years before competition arrives and you'll be a step ahead.

Instead, we're now stuck in a situation where jackboots for corporate lawyers break the neck of any startup innovator before they can even launch new products.

[TaylorAlexander]

It’s true. Many pro-patent people say “think of the little guy”, but in reality the little guy regularly gets the shaft on matters of patent monopoly.

[SequoiaHope]

I think you're missing the fact that our entire world is being slowed down by this system, and a few tweaks are not going to change that. Yes it is true that in the current system Google could ask for permission to license this one patent, but what about the broader implications of patents as I have laid out? What about the people all over the world living in worse conditions than necessary due to intellectual property restrictions? How many people could have been enjoying a worldwide free library if Project Gutenburg had been allowed to continue? How much cheaper would cars and auto repair be if manufacturers cloned and copied each other to settle on a set of standard designs, as has been done in 3D printers? How many lives would have been saved in Swaziland/Eswatini in the 1990's if the WTO had not outlawed low cost clones of effective AIDS medications? [1]

For every potential startup founder who will only work on their problem if they can get paid, there are IMO 100 people who will work on a problem because they care about solving it. I don't think we would lose much if those motivated only by profit had less incentive. And keep in mind they would still have first mover advantage. Plus huge companies often don't care about little corners of the market, and there is lots of room for companies to serve market needs the bigger companies are ignoring. But if another company wants to compete and they can actually do a better job? We are hurting society if we restrict their ability to do that.

[1] https://www.mmegi.bw/features/the-neoliberal-plague-aids-and...

[jabbawookiees]

I don't believe you're correct that intellectual property has slowed down progress.

Linux and the GNU project use copyright and they're doing well. Arguably better than the permissive BSDs for which copyright law might as well not exist. But even GNU/Linux falls far behind Windows and MacOS for regular desktop users.

Software is already the ultimate gift-able creation where you can make something for yourself and everyone else. It's cheap to make at home and it's free to distribute. Yet even here commercial products protected by IP are still far superior to things made by hobbyists just wanting to share with the world.

Medicines? Most biotechnologists I know are working at university research labs aiming to churn papers or they're working at a company that exists because of patent law. I don't know anyone researching new drugs in their spare time just to gift it to the world.

So I guess as a counterpoint, I know a hundred startup founders who made something looking to make a buck. I know zero people working on expensive technical problems purely because they care about solving it.

[monocasa]

Literally every new drug approved between 2010 and 2016 came from NIH funding.

https://www.pnas.org/content/115/10/2329

The biotechnologists I know tell me "patent law is totally screwed up for biomed, but I guess because it works for traditional tech it's near impossible to remove". They're flabbergasted when I tell them tech says the inverse. Everywhere seems to have this idea that this other niche absolutely requires it.

[pmontra]

On the other hand without patents the little guys could copy existing products, make them better (big corporations are slow) and be paid for that.

[tylerhou]

I don't know about this. Without protection from copiers, there is no incentive for anyone to create a new mechanism or invention. It's true that patents can slow the growth of an invention after it is created, but you haven't accounted whether patents incentivize more inventions. That might (and probably does) outweigh the technological progress on a particular invention that a monopoly impedes.

[TaylorAlexander]

> Without protection from copiers, there is no incentive for anyone to create a new mechanism or invention.

Totally untrue and this is one of the weird myths people have been taught, despite obvious evidence to the contrary. Very likely this website is running on Linux, an OS created in part by corporate contributors but also in a huge way created by people who work while explicitly enabling free copies of their work. And of course with my 3D printer example, thousands of hackers from all over the world contributed to design improvements because they wanted to, sharing their work for free as open source. And then there's Bunnie Huang's wonderful story on the ground from a highly productive space with rampant copying:

https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=284

If you believe "there is no incentive" then none of the above would be true, but since it is true I would invite you to think critically about your starting assumptions.

[tylerhou]

No incentive might be hyperbolic, but this is an HN comment. I meant less incentive.

https://rufuspollock.com/papers/optimal_copyright_term.pdf

[SequoiaHope]

I would welcome a world where copyright restrictions ended 15 years from date of creation as this paper suggests, which would be a huge improvement from the status quo. Sadly the paper only seems to go over copyright.

But take the 3D printer example. Development by my subjective take seemed way more effective without patents. So why have them at all? More people did more work on them after the patents expired. Why have any period of limited growth if there will simply be more growth without the restrictions?

Well, I haven't proven completely that this concept is universally true, but I worry that "playing it safe" and just fighting to keep shorter restrictions is like loosening the rope around your neck when you really should remove it.

And your paper suggests they have a really nice formula ("99% confidence interval") for calculating the optimal term. But how would you calculate the optimal term for patents on AIDS medications during the height of the AIDS pandemic in Africa in the 1990's.[1] How much is each life worth? I question anyone who thinks their formula can calculate optimality on figures alone.

[1] https://www.mmegi.bw/features/the-neoliberal-plague-aids-and...

EDIT: I should underscore that there are a lot of natural reasons why someone would be in a position to invest in a particular innovation. We say we love free markets because natural incentives work best. No constraints but the laws of physics. IP restrictions are very unnatural.

[Fredej]

The argument would probably be that without patents, what reason does companies have to disclose methods of operation? Everything would become a trade-secret.

With patents the deal is as follows: Tell us how you made it and we will make sure that noone else copies it for a while. This system allows for knowledge to be shared between competing entities. One of the requirements for a patent is literally "The descriptions must be sufficient to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains to make and use the same".

For medication, the reason why it can even go off-patent is because the patent exists in the first place. Without the patent, there would be no public information about how to make the medication.

I'm not saying that this is the case for all inventions. But I do think that patents have their place. The current form might however need revisiting.

[adrian_b]

Yes, anyone who obtains a software patent is just a cheater, because they take advantage of the fact that now it is possible to obtain patents for things that could not be patented a half of century before.

If at the start of the computing industry it would have been possible to obtain the kind of software patents that are awarded now, nobody would have ever been able to write any programs without infringing patents, including those who now claim the right of forbidding to others to rediscover the same trivial methods for which they happened to file patent applications before others, mainly because nobody before them thought that such things are worthy of a patent.

If to their predecessors would have been granted the same kinds of software patents as today, none of those wanting to obtain software patents now could have been working in the computing industry, as it would have been much smaller.

Even the smallest physical design or computer program embodies numerous ideas that fortunately were discovered in a time when for anyone who discovered something new, the priority was to make it known to the public, without expecting many rewards besides the recognition of priority in advancement of science and technology.