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by ndriscoll
2 days ago
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> Companies can’t be expected to publish their confidential and proprietary information about their feature development, Of course they can. Simply eliminate trade secret protections and NDAs, which have literally zero purpose for society and in fact undermine patents' incentive to publish. Give a one year grace period to apply for a patent. Patent protection should be designed to be only as long as needed to try to maximize the development/spread of technology, e.g. maybe 2-3 years for rapidly developing areas like ML. We should all be expected to contribute whatever knowledge we find to the commons. It makes us all richer. |
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Additionally, the reason ML is rapidly developing and that companies are spending billions to do so is that they are in competition with one another. If trade secrets were impossible, they would have no economic motive. Any advantage gained, at a cost of millions or billions, would not improve their competitive stance in the market at all, since their competitors would also immediately have the same product. No company can get away with, at least not for very long, throwing billions at vanity projects that lack the potential to improve shareholder value.
If the process of invention were free, the point about freely / mandatorily contributing to the commons might stand, but when the process requires the actors to take on massive financial risks, you need the economic incentives to be present.
Academia is a unique place where the incentive is to share ideas—though not immediately and freely, but under carefully controlled conditions that support the career of the researcher. Once the area of study goes commercial, the game changes.