[DowagerDave]

>> I’ve been constantly impressed with their ability to absorb, understand, and describe highly technical work in legalese (and yes the language is sometimes performative and can sound funny to engineers).

This is one of the saddest aspects: so much high-value effort and skill towards an end that, in the whole, I view as a massive drain and retardant on human development.

[creer]

> This is one of the saddest aspects: so much high-value effort and skill towards an end that, in the whole, I view as a massive drain and retardant on human development.

I think this speaks to the scale of the economy. There is all this waste. Soooo much waste. And patents are just one small aspect of the constant waste. And yet all these businesses and people, in aggregate "the economy", consistantly make money and progress and invent more. It's impressive.

And still, yes, so much more could be possible.

[riskable]

> invent more

The world does this despite the patent system. Not because of it. If the patent system were to disappear today all that invention would still go on. It would just put a lot of lawyers out of work and make a bunch of rich companies CEOs nervous.

Look at software: It existed for decades and decades without patents and the technological progress in that field vastly surpasses that of any other contemporary science/technology. Then we tried applying patents to software and it did nothing but create a giant mess, destroy small businesses, and make a bunch of patent attorneys (and their friends) rich. There is literally no benefit to society from software patents. It is 100% negative.

[rvnx]

We have no software patents in Europe, and this is great. Patents totally hinders innovation, except if you are a large company.

[tightbookkeeper]

- Documenting and classifying inventions is valuable - people choose to become a patent clerk/lawyer because of the stability. It enables them to take care of family, pursue hobbies, etc (see Einstein). - the alternative for some is being an engineer but for others it might be a librarian

[marcosdumay]

Patents are close to completely useless as a form of documentation. It's not valuable.

You may be thinking about old patents where people wrote real engineering information with real details on them that excluded non-working alternatives. Patents are not like that anymore.

[tightbookkeeper]

Then that sounds like a management problem, not a fundamental problem with the concept of patent lawyers and clerks which this poster claimed was a “brain drain”.

[marcosdumay]

It's absolutely a patent review problem. It's probably not caused by individual clerks, as each one of them can't cause something like this alone, but it shows on their work.

[freejazz]

Patents have an inherent tension between being as explicit as possible, and leaving enough generality so that it's not trivial to infringe. It's not supposed to be an exact recipe.

[ajb]

The latter points are valid, but for the first - software engineers are usually best advised not to spend time looking at the patent database. For a long time (is it still true?) there were triple damages for knowingly infringing a parent, and in any case the function of the patent database as a publication of ideas is extremely small in software. I have literally not heard of anyone locating something they need to implement by looking at it.

[tightbookkeeper]

Working engineers are not the only audience.

[ajb]

No, but property rights in inventions are supposedly justified by the idea that this publishing will enable implementations when the patent expires. In the software world that means engineers. I don't know what audience you have in mind?