[imjustforyou]

Patent laws really are so strange. Two people had an idea in 1989 (over a decade before I was born) and as a result, I am not allowed to build a product using that idea and sell it, even if I independently reached the idea myself. I think in an ideal world, we would have intellectual rights and patents, but for a vastly reduced scope of time.

You come up with an amazing breakthrough that will alter the world? Congratulations, it's yours for 10 years to do what you want. After that, it's fair game. Innovate or die.

[Moto7451]

> You come up with an amazing breakthrough that will alter the world? Congratulations, it's yours for 10 years to do what you want. After that, it's fair game. Innovate or die.

That’s how patents work in the US. You get 10 years with the ability to extend 10 more. There are games to be played with some patents that extend their life (like a new use patent in pharma) but generally these parents for seemingly old things are new ideas about an old thing.

If you want a short fun read on Solar Panels [0] you’ll find a Melvin Severy referenced. That’s my ancestor. We don’t see a penny from his work because that patent is long gone and is just referenced as prior art. Feel free to use it all you’d like.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/sponsored/brief-history-solar...

[AlbertCory]

it's 20 years from the filing data. Issuing the patent takes 4-6 years, usually, so you're talking about ~14 years life.

[Geisterde]

I would argue intellectual property laws are bad at the outset, and that the concept of intellectual property is praxeologically unsound. What right does a person have to restrict the progress and free will of another (or society for that matter) simply because they came up with an idea "first"?

The very idea of intellectual property though, you own your mind, you own your thoughts, sure. You can own a document with the details of your idea, and you can physically restrict others from seeing your property. What does it mean for an idea to be property though? Why are government resources invested in protecting something that private companies and individuals have the responsibility of protecting themselves?

[sumedh]

> Why are government resources invested in protecting something that private companies and individuals have the responsibility of protecting themselves?

How can an individual protect themselves if a big company steals their ideas?

[Geisterde]

They cant under the current system, and I see no reason for that to change.

They might have marginally more protection over their ideas than a than a big company can due to leaks, but I dont fundamentally believe that ideas should be protected under the law, assuming a just legal system. I'll break this into 2 parts.

I don't think governments have a great track record of protecting interests, and a theory why. Whatever political system we have, power will centralize in an elite that uses it for their own purposes. Slavery in America was not funded on its merit, it was in fact heavily subsidized at the expense of working americans and the states were turned into fortresses to imprison the slaves. This occured under an arguement that the government should protect private interests. Whatever power you give the government, the elite will steal; an aside, even when the elites are killed in places like russia during the soviet revolution, it was at the behest of a newer and much darker elite; anyways, a corrupt intellectual property system, because government power is prone to capture.

I disagree with the concept that ideas can be owned, as opposed to merely possessed. Allow me to cast abducto absurdum on this, taken to its logical conclusion, does this idea create absurd results? If we were chronically dehydrated in africa, and I figured out how to make a pump to get water, and im willing to make more pumps for trade, would it be reasonable that the rest of the village is going to die of dehydration because you, fully capable of recreating and innovating on the design, were instead bound by intellectual property laws? If that is in fact absurd, then I would like to know what the line is and why.

[solardev]

You think that's weird, try drawing three circles that vaguely look like a mouse and building a multibillion century-long empire off it.

[pclmulqdq]

That's copyright. Copyrights are life plus 70 years. Patents cap out at 20.

The parent comment was wrong: a 1989 idea would basically not be under patent past about 2011.

[pbhjpbhj]

The international TRIPs agreement, managed by WTO, specifies a 20y term. AFAIK, 20y is standard for patents. Which means an invention (not an idea!) patented in 1989 should be free to use from 2009 onwards.

USA used to have 'submarine patents' that could appear later, but apart from that there doesn't seem to be any jurisdiction in which a 33 year old patent would still be valid.

[mitthrowaway2]

Some ideas (especially software) move quickly, and you can implement them in an afternoon. Others, like nuclear power, can take ten years just to break ground on construction. It would probably be quite discouraging to innovation in heavy industry if patent protection expired before the first mover could even launch a product.

[midtake]

Your second paragraph is how patents already work, and you can't patent an idea, only specific inventions. Sometimes patents for ideas slip through the cracks and sometimes patents get extended without a good reason, but these are not problems with the idea of a patent itself.

What you're arguing against is corruption, not patents.

[nullindividual]

As soon as you encountered FDA regulations and requirements for a device like this, you'd be asking for far more than 10 years of patent protections.

I'm no fan of patents, but medical devices/medications are extremely expensive [in the US] to develop.