When good carebears go bad.

[Petyr Baelich]

A chat I had with someone who does exactly the same things as me, but for "altruistic" reasons. Posted by request of Oleksandr. Enjoy! *Bah! half the convo is missing.... what follows is a discussion of patents, only. Not very interesting at all

[23:22:55] Malcolm Lester > controversial*
[23:23:57] George Babbitt > I don't understand the question, exactly
[23:24:23] George Babbitt > how is it random? the inventor applies for a patent to protect his intellectual property from looters
[23:24:50] Malcolm Lester > well
[23:24:58] George Babbitt > in order for someone to make a similar product they must go through the same process as the original inventor
[23:25:01] Malcolm Lester > software is a bit of a special case
[23:25:45] George Babbitt > difficult to prove your product is unique?
[23:26:26] Malcolm Lester > see it is very easy to describe something that's covered by general-purpose practice that would count as "prior art" normally, in such a convulated way so that the patent office doesn't notice
[23:26:43] Malcolm Lester > their job becomes too hard to be reasonable
[23:27:13] Malcolm Lester > patents are supposed to be a trade where you are given rights, in exchange for knowledge you provide to the public domain
[23:27:24] George Babbitt > disagree strongly
[23:27:54] George Babbitt > patents exist to protect intellectual property from people who did not create the unique or original idea
[23:27:57] Malcolm Lester > about that last part? ok then where is the interest in granting you these rights
[23:28:15] George Babbitt > the interest is in dealing rationally and justly with the world!
[23:28:32] George Babbitt > otherwise the only method of dealing with one another is through force
[23:29:25] George Babbitt > the knowledge you provide to the public domain is an irrelevant byproduct of your self-interested act of creating something new or better
[23:30:19] Malcolm Lester > well. actually its an entire discussion in its own right - how law systems came about, I think they are geared towards serving the public interest first, and justice (by whatever moral standard) second
[23:30:46] Malcolm Lester > simply because of how it works in the real world - democracy and all that
[23:30:58] George Babbitt > yeah, I think that's bull
[23:31:56] Malcolm Lester > when, the patent system came about, it was weighed whether the economical cost of conferring people these rights outweighs the benefit of technological advancement
[23:32:35] Malcolm Lester > this is a trade-off, not a decision having to do anything with morals
[23:32:43] George Babbitt > if anyone can steal your ideas and use them with impunity, then there is no technological advancement because smart people will not bother to invent things
[23:33:52] George Babbitt > the fact that Joe Sixpack gets to keep his beer cold because someone invented a refrigerator is great, but it's unimportant when compared with the fact that someone invented a refrigerator. The inventor is important, Joe isn't.,
[23:34:05] Malcolm Lester > why not? it may take alot of time before people can successfully implement "stolen" ideas, also the academy is full of smart people inventing things for very little financial incentive
[23:34:23] George Babbitt > then those people are horribly immoral
[23:34:29] Malcolm Lester > but say if we're only talking about the industry now
[23:35:36] Malcolm Lester > imagine if two or more companies develop pretty large projects that are all based in part on some common idea that is then patented by one of them, even though the development was independent
[23:35:48] Malcolm Lester > this happens quite often in software
[23:36:23] Malcolm Lester > now with patent rights in place, one of them can block out the others entirely from competing. not just having them pay, but completely shutting them off
[23:36:38] George Babbitt > not if their product is better
[23:37:16] Malcolm Lester > well they can force them to stop using this particular technology (implement it in a different way, or completely take it out of the product)
[23:37:29] Malcolm Lester > ragardless of quality
[23:37:39] Malcolm Lester > and that's ok
[23:37:44] George Babbitt > not really.... you can design a better mousetrap and patent it
[23:38:00] George Babbitt > you can even use a spring in it that's used in another mousetrap
[23:38:13] George Babbitt > it just can't be the same mousetrap with different colors
[23:39:50] Malcolm Lester > well yea, sometimes you can pull something like that off... but here's an example: force feedback joysticks are out of the market because a company holding several key patents used its rights to block all competitors. t doesn't market the product either
[23:40:59] George Babbitt > I don't see how that's possible, you just need to invent a new way to make the thing vibrate
[23:41:43] Malcolm Lester > me neither - tbh I haven't looked up the details on that one - read it in some slashdot story long ago
[23:42:40] Malcolm Lester > there was a very long read from john carmack (a software publisher) complaining about patents in software. It looks like a legitimate debate
[23:43:08] Malcolm Lester > I agree that in most areas patents are overwhelmingly helpful, such as pharma
[23:44:03] George Babbitt > yeah, I know Carmack from DOOM fame, but I still don't see how you could block a product like that, someone would just come along and make something that does the same thing differently and you'd just lose the market completely
[23:44:15] George Babbitt > and if you're not selling the product anyway, there's no point to blocking it
[23:44:20] George Babbitt > it's just not logical
[23:44:42] Malcolm Lester > do you know the story about the GIF format?
[23:44:50] George Babbitt > no
[23:44:55] Malcolm Lester > the underlying compression algorithm was patented
[23:45:20] Malcolm Lester > the format became very widely used to the point of being a standard
[23:45:59] Malcolm Lester > the company owning the patent didn't chase anyone around, until about 5 years later when the internet came about and pages were sprawling with GIF images
[23:46:44] George Babbitt > and so they told everyone to cease and desist using it?
[23:46:54] Malcolm Lester > then they suddenly remembered they had a patent on it, and told lots of site owner to pay up.
[23:47:05] Malcolm Lester > yea there was lots of headache, that's how PNG was formed
[23:47:08] George Babbitt > they're perfectly justified in doing so
[23:47:14] Malcolm Lester > you are correct
[23:48:14] Malcolm Lester > i guess it was a mistake this thing became a standard - today people are much more careful with that
[23:49:24] Malcolm Lester > but the amount of patents today is so enormous even doing a full search to see if a certain set of technologies you plan to use may infringe a patent is too expensive to be feasible
[23:49:24] George Babbitt > wasn't a mistake if it was the best algorythem at the time for rendering pictures
[23:49:58] George Babbitt > it was a mistake for the owners not to use their patent to obtain profits from their valuable invention earlier
[23:50:02] Malcolm Lester > it was, but there were several alternatives who had equivalent performance and weren't patented
[23:50:27] Malcolm Lester > in fact, that was exactly what the PNG format did, it took one of the other variants (non patented) and used that
[23:50:44] George Babbitt > those people should have patented their products, patents exist to protect inventors
[23:51:11] Malcolm Lester > see, but they didn't want to enforce patent protection while people were adapting the technology
[23:51:19] Malcolm Lester > it pays better to wait until everyone depends on it
[23:51:51] Malcolm Lester > in this example they are being paid more the more disruption they end up causing to the economy - even if it's well within their right to do so
[23:52:51] George Babbitt > yeah, but if you're a moral person you deal with people through trade
[23:53:04] George Babbitt > if someone has something I want and can't make myself, I pay him for it
[23:53:23] George Babbitt > even if he's not asking for money
[23:55:49] George Babbitt > I send money to people who make freeware software if I use their product and like it
[23:56:02] George Babbitt > I think they're foolish to make it freeware if it's good
[23:56:34] George Babbitt > shows they don't value their own intelligence
[23:56:45] Malcolm Lester > I think most freeware is the product of open source development
[23:57:28] George Babbitt > open source is good because it promotes people to make better software products so they can sell them for a profit
[23:57:35] Malcolm Lester > these are collaborative projects and almost always licensed under GPL
[23:58:17] Malcolm Lester > I don't know why but people participating in these projects tend to gravitate towards GPL/freeware licenses
[23:58:53] Malcolm Lester > even if they could sell it for a profit, though I have a theory
[23:59:57] Malcolm Lester > since it's an open source project, any developer making a contribution would (rightly) demand to get a cut of the profits, right?<br>and then, how are the percentages computed so everyone is justified? it leads to endless bickering
[00:00:00] George Babbitt > there are lots of big companies doing open source to develop ideas now too
[00:00:21] Malcolm Lester > sometimes people lose interest in the project, and then some new guys pick it up and continue
[00:00:31] George Babbitt > no, if it's open source they're basically surrendering those rights
[00:00:33] Malcolm Lester > it becomes really hard to follow who did how much of the work, and so on
[00:01:11] George Babbitt > the only reason to participate is to gain insight into solving other code problems in your other profitable products
[00:01:21] Malcolm Lester > really? why is a license such as GPL enforcable then?
[00:02:18] Malcolm Lester > i mean, if the programmers forfeit all rights when working on open source projects like you say, it doesn't make sense that they can dictate a license agreement
[00:03:29] George Babbitt > depends on how open the source is
[00:03:33] Malcolm Lester > technically they could ask you to agree to an agreement before commiting changes, where it says company such-and-such has IP rights on everything in the repository.
[00:03:37] George Babbitt > and I'm not necessarily talking about legal rights
[00:03:43] George Babbitt > I meant moral rights
[00:03:47] Malcolm Lester > oh.
[00:04:43] George Babbitt > like, if you collaborate with a few people, and don't let anyone else into the project, that's one thing
[00:04:53] George Babbitt > and the partners in that venture should work out a deal beforehand
[00:05:12] George Babbitt > but if you put something up on the internet as open source, you're basically giving up all rights to it
[00:05:25] George Babbitt > barring coercion, of course
[00:07:58] George Babbitt > been a good discussion, but I need to get something to eat
[00:08:11] George Babbitt > want to continue later?
[00:08:16] Malcolm Lester > wow, it's late
[00:08:21] Malcolm Lester > 3 am here (gmt+2)
[00:08:36] Malcolm Lester > i had better leave now
[00:09:05] Malcolm Lester > we'll talk some other time
[00:09:10] George Babbitt > ok

[Case]

I wouldn't mind if I had the option of building a better/different force feedback device. But the current state of IT patents allows folks to own the process by which a user receives physical feedback to the actions they perform on a device. Glad nobody patented the method of providing visual feedback to users of a device. As much fun as using a computer based on smell would be....

US Patent 6,366,272 provides a fairly obvious (read: non-inventive) method for providing "force feedback to a user operating a human/computer interface device and interacting with a computer-generated simulation".
http://www.google.com/patents?id=2YkLAA ... =6,366,272
Quote taken from the abstract of the patent.
So they don't really care if I use the same motors as cellphones, chemical reactions, or magic. Providing force feedback based on a visual simulation is spoken for. I suppose the annoying part is that I technically invented this when I was 10 yrs old and turned up my stereo speakers so that I could receive 'physical feedback' when I was hit by one of Donkey Kong's damn barrels. I don't have any evidence though.

US Patent 5,060,171 provides a painfully obvious description of "superimposing a second image, such as a hair style image, over portions of a first image".
Quote taken from the patent's abstract.
They essentially own "lay image 'a' on top of image 'b' and blend edges using common-sense algorithm 'x'".
http://www.google.com/patents?id=SrEbAA ... =5,060,171

I can't ever program a web browser that shows the user a message in the time between when they click on a link and the page is shown to them. That idea is taken. US Patent 5,572,643. But is the concept of a 'loading screen' really novel and inventive? Not in my opinion; pretty obvious in fact.


Most folks (that I've worked with) just take their chances with software patents as it stands. Last patent lawyer I spoke to wanted $23,000 to check if our 'idea' for providing a reusable e-commerce framework was already patented. He was the last patent lawyer I spoke to because he quoted the lowest price We didn't want to patent the 'idea', (because it was obvious, not inventive) we just didn't feel like getting sued.

Donald Knuth, in a letter to the Patent Office commissioner, essentially sums up the current issues with patenting software processes (specifically software, not IT concepts in general (sorry force feedback)):
"Congress wisely decided long ago that mathematical things cannot be
patented. Surely nobody could apply mathematics if it were necessary
to pay a license fee whenever the theorem of Pythagoras is
employed. The basic algorithmic ideas that people are now rushing to
patent are so fundamental, the result threatens to be like what would
happen if we allowed authors to have patents on individual words and
concepts. Novelists or journalists would be unable to write stories
unless their publishers had permission from the owners of the
words. Algorithms are exactly as basic to software as words are to
writers, because they are the fundamental building blocks needed to
make interesting products. What would happen if individual lawyers
could patent their methods of defense.."
http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/Patents/knuth-to-pto.txt

I don't disagree in the slightest with the concept of patents (not even software patents), but I certainly don't think they're being handled properly. Often, patents are granted which are obvious to hundreds of thousands of technical individuals, yet apparently novel and inventive to the blokes at the patent office. Until the entire mess gets sorted out I'll just have to hope nobody else uses software to provide automated stock indicators ... otherwise I'm screwed.

Unfortunately viewing pseudo-dynamic documents within a window is also patented, so I'll have to close the browser now.
Patent number: 5,933,841
Filing date: May 17, 1996
Issue date: Aug 3, 1999
Apparently the idea just came to this guy.....in 1996......and the patent office hadn't seen anything like it before.

[Raaz Satik]

I don't disagree in the slightest with the concept of patents (not even software patents), but I certainly don't think they're being handled properly. Often, patents are granted which are obvious to hundreds of thousands of technical individuals, yet apparently novel and inventive to the blokes at the patent office.

Thats my issue with it as well. Too many cases where the person who owns the patent because he was first to file for it and not because he invented it.

[Braimen Vakes]

I believe that this is the perfect thread in which I can introduce myself, because I know the subject matter thoroughly. My name, in this particular context, is Braimen Vakes. I am a software designer and engineer, and moreover an advocate of Open Source licensing. I produce software because doing so confers upon me certain benefits:

• Goods I cannot otherwise obtain

• Experience and proof of competency

The first item is my principal motivation in developing software. I develop tools daily, for example, that aid me in my market analysis in Sinq Laison. I do not share these tools because they supply me with a competitive advantage. I also will not license or sell the source code for these tools, because my education in software security informs me that there is no means available to prevent unscrupulous looters from pirating my wares.

In the age of instant reproduction and nearly effortless distribution of this particular product, my competitive advantage is not well served by sharing or licensing the software product.

That may change, and it's a matter of my own judgment whether or not it does, and the quality of this judgment guides my profits. Once I decide to release my software to the public in the form of source code, I can no longer operate under the delusion that it will not be pirated, so attempting to use governmental (i.e. retributive justice by means of self-authorized force) mechanisms to impose scarcity in an environment of instantaneous reproduction and distribution is immoral and contrary to objective reality.

Fortunately, I can license the positive benefits of my software and run it as a private subscription service, without distributing the source code, and I can engineer different grades of analytical cores such that my relative competitive advantage is preserved.

Now, I might decide to release my software in whole form to the general public. Were I to do so, I would choose a business friendly Open Source license such as the Apache Software License or Academic Free License, which permit me and other organizations to make, sell, and distribute their own proprietary, secret extensions to my software. I would not choose a so-called "Free Software" license, in which I would irrevocably turn over the right to alter the license, to a third party. This decision would not be made out of deference to any socialist principles, but rather to a cold-eyed market calculus that recognizes the value people rightly place on experience. It's very difficult to establish oneself in a field where 2-5 years of job experience is the minimum requirement for getting any job. Releasing software to the public allows me to establish myself as an expert and develop social connections and status that can later confer other profitable opportunities.

It's also a well-documented fact that public scrutiny is good for software development.

Nowhere in the above do I need a patent to impose monopolistic conditions under threat of retributive justice (i.e. men with guns) and prevent my competitors from attempting to beat me at my own game. No patent in the world can do the job of a well-kept trade secret.

Not until they forced Reardon to give away the secret of his metal's composition were his operations ever threatened, and his stance was always that he would welcome a competitor who could reproduce his metal. The discipline required to make full advantage of it belonged only to the mind capable of being its true inventor. And the word invent itself means only "to find out" or "to come upon". The fact of the matter is that airplanes could have been discovered ten thousand years ago--the laws of physics were the same then as now, but people simply hadn't gotten around to it. They were too busy experimenting with "retributive justice". My mind's ability to recognize patterns and relationships and to employ these is not an exclusive thing--if I keep my software secret and another justly "comes upon" the same discovery, then I should have no pretense to morality in prohibiting them by threat of violence (i.e. government intervention) from taking full advantage of the fruits of their mental labor.

Preventing looters from outright theft is an entirely different matter, and is the subject of a "Just Theory of War".

In closing, I am against the use of patents to prevent just competition in the free market, and especially in the software market. I believe that using the threat of retributive force, on which the government claims an unjust monopoly, to make up for errors in my own design, deployment or distribution of my intellectual product when evidence abounds that others are doing so successfully, has no moral foundation. Further, I relish the knowledge that, to date, none of my trade secrets has ever been compromised. Finally, I recognize that licensing software under Open Source contracts often confers many intangible benefits to its authors, such as increased user exposure and feedback, peer review, the opportunity for market expansion due to training and value-added services, and most importantly the opportunity to establish one's self as a serious and talented software developer in a competitive environment often reluctant to take a chance on a young or inexperienced developer. These intangible benefits are so valuable to up-and-coming software authors that the volcanic rise of organizations such as the Apache Software Foundation becomes self-explanatory.

I look forward to exploring TTI and VoS more in the coming days.

Regards,
--
Braimen Vakes
CEO, Monadyne
Ludwig von Mises Scholar

[C Molten]

I think there is a good reason most of the innovation in the world occurs where people have intellectual property rights. They are no different than other private property rights.

Of course, the fact that the government bureaucracy in charge of administering these rights has trouble separating true innovation from the other nonsense is no surprise.

[musashi]

Welcome to the forums Braimen.

I found reading about the Ludwig von Mises Institute interesting, I did not know of it before your post. Is it a PhD granting institution? What are the typical enrollment numbers? It seems like the class sizes are very intimate; you probably had great access to your instructors.

In regards to your patent post, participation in the patent process is voluntary. Isn’t an alternate strategy to simply keep your intellectual property as a trade secrete for as long as possible? Granted by failing to record a patent, you always have the risk of someone else reverse engineering your idea. Since this is an undocumented situation it is hard to know just how common the strategy might be used.

[reteo]

I think I will use my initial post as well to weigh into this interesting topic.

Where software is concerned, remember that wealth is not limited to financial assets. If software is released as F/OSS, the originator retains the benefit of the use of the program, plus the free problem reports and code donations that make the overall program more useful and/or better.

If someone has a problem, they fix it. If they want to see their changes persist in all future versions of their program, they need to submit the changes to the maintainer. Everyone else involved receives the same benefits, so in this fashion, sharing software is an effective demonstration of enlightened self-interest working toward a division of labor.

Now, as for patents and intellectual property, keep this in mind: you cannot have both physical and intellectual property rights, as they will always conflict.

Why is this?

Every single man-made object in existence is the product of a person's time and effort to transform a natural (or justly-acquired intermediary) resource into a final product. It could be decorative or useful, it doesn't matter. This final product, by virtue of the time and effort put into creating it, belongs to its creator. This is the foundation upon which property rights are based.

Intellectual property, however, is the claim that an idea is property. This is patently false, because an idea is a thought. As we own our own selves, we are the owners of every single thought that exists within our brains. We can be inspired by others, but this does not change the fact that when we use an idea, it is our own thoughts that are being used. This is even the case when we are inspired by another's idea; they are not stripped of their thoughts by our using our own copies of their idea.

Therefore, to claim thoughts as property is to believe in mind-control. True, it's just used to prevent another from acting on an idea, but then this becomes a form of slavery, ensuring our own profits by threatening potential competition with violence.

Either way, the resulting objects would then be claimed to have two owners, one a physical owner, and the other an intellectual owner. These would then conflict. So... which property rights would you say are the dominant?

[musashi]

Either way, the resulting objects would then be claimed to have two owners, one a physical owner, and the other an intellectual owner. These would then conflict. So... which property rights would you say are the dominant?

The property rights – they have a permanent durability as long as the physical asset exists.

But that is not to say that IP rights and their limited life lack a reason to exist. We see infringement cases all the time. In those cases recompense is often based upon the degree of the breech through some sort of dispute process. Interesting idea, I wonder if a case has ever occurred where the judge decided that the infringing property had to be destroyed?

[reteo]

But that is not to say that IP rights and their limited life lack a reason to exist. We see infringement cases all the time. In those cases recompense is often based upon the degree of the breech through some sort of dispute process. Interesting idea, I wonder if a case has ever occurred where the judge decided that the infringing property had to be destroyed?

Actually, it IS to say that they don't exist, just on the basis of the fact that an idea is a thought. I would love to know what logic allows the belief that one person's thoughts, or their peaceful expression, can be the property of another person, except perhaps as compensation for a wrong done to the other person. I can't follow it beyond the several different appeal fallacies that are commonly used to defend it.

Keep another thing in mind; a government itself is a religious use of violence, and so is an invalid argument to determine the rationality of something. Think about it; what is government, but a reason to excuse the initiatory use of violence on the part of the group's clergy? Cops, judges, and politicians all are people, and because they are people, they do not have any greater or fewer rights than any other people. However, because they are "government people," they are excused when they tell other people what to do, and use violence on them if they don't comply, citing "The Law" as an excuse.

[musashi]

I would love to know what logic allows the belief that one person's thoughts, or their peaceful expression, can be the property of another person.

We have history to reflect upon prior to the patent system. And in general I’d think that mechanisms like the patent system bring us to a higher place.

By creating this artifact of IP the government creates a win (for the inventor) – win (for society). Without the system, secrecy become the paramount concern for the innovator. The highest achievement would be for the idea to die with the inventor. Alternately if another can copy your idea, we have a situation much like the looters of real property – a class of people not sharp enough to create, but powerful enough to steal. One big problem with the lack of a patent system is that as a society we end up continually re-inventing the wheel.

Why not offer a voluntary bargain for the innovator? Keep your idea trade secret if you like. Or choose to register it and receive a limited license for its use. And by bringing the idea into a public domain other innovators can build upon these earlier ideas.

[reteo]

We have history to reflect upon prior to the patent system. And in general I’d think that mechanisms like the patent system bring us to a higher place.

By creating this artifact of IP the government creates a win (for the inventor) – win (for society). Without the system, secrecy become the paramount concern for the innovator. The highest achievement would be for the idea to die with the inventor. Alternately if another can copy your idea, we have a situation much like the looters of real property – a class of people not sharp enough to create, but powerful enough to steal. One big problem with the lack of a patent system is that as a society we end up continually re-inventing the wheel.

First of all, why is society being used as an argument here? Society is an aggregate of individuals, and therefore cannot be identified accurately, since all individuals are different. In fact, if individuals must sacrifice their free choices, or be forced to, in order to benefit society, isn't this a case of collectivist altruism?

Second, yes a win for the inventor... after all, they are securing a monopoly, in which any competition will be crushed using force of violence instead of market forces. However, it is a lose for the second inventor who was too late to patent all their hard work. It's a lose for the inventor who has a great idea to improve upon the original design. It is also a lose for all the consumers who want to spend their hard-earned money on the best product, which may or may not be prohibited from the market, at prices they may not be entirely willing to pay if a cheaper alternative exists.

Finally, it is invalid overall, as it once again assumes that ideas are the property of the one who came up with the original, which is completely unsound when compared with the self-ownership axiom... if I own myself, then it stands to reason that my thoughts are my own, and no one else's. It also stands to reason that my actions, barring violence, fraud, or coercion against another person, are also my own and no one else's.

Why not offer a voluntary bargain for the innovator? Keep your idea trade secret if you like. Or choose to register it and receive a limited license for its use. And by bringing the idea into a public domain other innovators can build upon these earlier ideas.

Because it's only voluntary on the "innovator's" part; nobody else gets to choose whether or not the inventor gets to shut them down. Because the people who register the patents are preventing competition by coercion, and not through trade or consent. It happened before the patent publishing system, as well. After all, the original system was the guild system, and they would do pretty bad things to those people who practiced their specialty outside of a guild membership... often backed by the law of the region they supported (in fact, in many cases, the guilds were law-enforcement bodies in themselves).

[musashi]

First of all, why is society being used as an argument here?

The patent system involves those two parties. I was attempting to make a seeds and fruits comparison. We have two seeds: the patent seed (which we know pretty well); and the chaos seed. Two competing ideas (seeds), we look at what fruits these seeds will bear. In the case of the patent system it seems to me that both inventor and society have an incredible synergy. I always liked the story of William Henry Perkin. 18 year old kid, on spring break… doing chemical research (on his own at home) to find a cure for Malaria, made purple dye instead. The subsequent patent and sensation made him an overnight tycoon, one of the richest men in his country at the time. I knew guy (gone now) that invented fozen orange juice -rich as sin.

By comparison one characteristic of the dark ages was a tight control on information. Basic education itself was considered property to be controlled and not disseminated. We ended up with monastic institutions. Because fact and theory was in accessible, the people brokered mystery and mysticism. This seems like very fertile ground for religion to flourish upon. Are we seeing the same set of circumstances today in those societies attempting to revert to the good ole’ days of Muhammad (PBUH)?

It's a lose for the inventor who has a great idea to improve upon the original design.

Errr… read a few patents. Almost every patent is based upon prior art. The system is built upon the next inventor improving upon the last.

It is also a lose for all the consumers who want to spend their hard-earned money on the best product, which may or may not be prohibited from the market, at prices they may not be entirely willing to pay if a cheaper alternative exists.

It wasn’t the purple dye that made Perkin rich, consumer demand did. People loved that color so much they traded all that money just to have it. Again we can look at economic scope pre & post patent system and the patent system era wins this one by a landslide.

If I own myself, then it stands to reason that my thoughts are my own, and no one else's.

True as long as those thought stay in your head. But express the ideas in any way, and they are now in a public domain. Without some system (be it a patent system or guild system or something else) we are left with chaos.

Nobody else gets to choose whether or not the inventor gets to shut them down.

Second place is first looser. How is this limited time span monopoly created by a patent system different that the original grant process on real property? Title for real property is also a construct created by government fiat.

[reteo]

The patent system involves those two parties. I was attempting to make a seeds and fruits comparison. We have two seeds: the patent seed (which we know pretty well); and the chaos seed. Two competing ideas (seeds), we look at what fruits these seeds will bear. In the case of the patent system it seems to me that both inventor and society have an incredible synergy. I always liked the story of William Henry Perkin. 18 year old kid, on spring break… doing chemical research (on his own at home) to find a cure for Malaria, made purple dye instead. The subsequent patent and sensation made him an overnight tycoon, one of the richest men in his country at the time. I knew guy (gone now) that invented fozen orange juice -rich as sin.

By comparison one characteristic of the dark ages was a tight control on information. Basic education itself was considered property to be controlled and not disseminated. We ended up with monastic institutions. Because fact and theory was in accessible, the people brokered mystery and mysticism. This seems like very fertile ground for religion to flourish upon. Are we seeing the same set of circumstances today in those societies attempting to revert to the good ole’ days of Muhammad (PBUH)?

[edit] I think I'll retract this part of the response until I consider it a bit more. [/edit]

Errr… read a few patents. Almost every patent is based upon prior art. The system is built upon the next inventor improving upon the last.

Every patent is based on prior art, but every patented item used in that patent means one more possible legal issues down the road.

"Oh, I see you have a patent. Well, guess what... we have this patent, this patent, this patent, this patent, and this patent, all of which are used by your patent, and if these are found not to apply, don't worry, we have thousands more. You ready to play ball yet, or should we take this to court?"

It wasn’t the purple dye that made Perkin rich, consumer demand did. People loved that color so much they traded all that money just to have it. Again we can look at economic scope pre & post patent system and the patent system era wins this one by a landslide.

No, it was the fact that nobody was allowed to compete with Perkin that made him rich. He had a product everyone wanted, but since there was no competition for 10 years, he could set his own price, sit back, and just stop improving his work (he didn't, but still, he could have). Eventually, You notice that he was starting to lose out to the German chemical industry, which was taking out patents before he was, eventually encouraging him to close up shop. He came out ahead, perhaps, but you can't compete with larger interests in possession of lawyers.

True as long as those thought stay in your head. But express the ideas in any way, and they are now in a public domain. Without some system (be it a patent system or guild system or something else) we are left with chaos.

This isn't either/or, your thoughts are your thoughts, regardless of whether you express them or not. You do not lose them upon expression, therefore, they do not leave your control. What other people have are not your ideas, but their own ideas that were inspired by your expression. In any event, your ideas are still safely tucked away in your brain, accessible the next time you need to reference them.

All the same, why not allow the market to be a system? There are ways this could work, especially if one decouples research, production, and marketing. In fact, here's one possibility:

Inventors focus on inventing and improving their goods. Much of the problem lies in that inventors, once they have their patents, are no longer inventors, they become marketers, salesmen, producers, and distributors. Why not just create a R&D company whose sole purpose is to research inventions to sell to manufacturers and distributors? They can set the price for their inventions to get maximum profit, and move on to other inventions, or perhaps focus on improving their products for sale later on, either to their previous buyer, or to one of the competitors who managed to reverse-engineer the product. Name recognition can easily pass for quality control, and after the first invention or two, it's likely the inventor will have a solid clientbase to sell any new inventions to.

As long as it's free of coercion, the market can provide solutions to anything, as profit-seeking individuals will look for ways for inventions to be produced safely and profitably. You don't need the hired guns of the state to ensure that innovation progresses. And also-rans won't need to sacrifice their plans to benefit society.

Second place is first looser. How is this limited time span monopoly created by a patent system different that the original grant process on real property? Title for real property is also a construct created by government fiat.

No, second place is second place. The first loser is the first person who gives up, because losers are the ones who don't accomplish their goals.

As for the emphasis on limited time... if I walked up to you, pointed a gun at you, and threatened you if you didn't comply with my demands, just for a limited time, would that be alright?

Property is the reward for one's skill, time, and effort at transforming a natural resource into something useful. In the case of real property, a person can own the improvements, but not the land itself. Therefore, I don't believe in land patents or title, either.

[musashi]

True as long as those thought stay in your head. But express the ideas in any way, and they are now in a public domain. Without some system (be it a patent system or guild system or something else) we are left with chaos.

This isn't either/or, your thoughts are your thoughts, regardless of whether you express them or not. You do not lose them upon expression, therefore, they do not leave your control. What other people have are not your ideas, but their own ideas that were inspired by your expression. In any event, your ideas are still safely tucked away in your brain, accessible the next time you need to reference them.

Agreed your ideas remain yours after they’ve been shared with outside world. But can you expect the rest of the outside world to not have any ideas of their own? And if your ideas are not clearly and completely defined externally, how can you claim that these are explicitly your own? I am still mad at Al Gore for claiming to have invented the Internet, when I know I did (at least I did in my own mind just as Al did in his ).

All the same, why not allow the market to be a system? There are ways this could work, especially if one decouples research, production, and marketing. In fact, here's one possibility:

Inventors focus on inventing and improving their goods. Much of the problem lies in that inventors, once they have their patents, are no longer inventors, they become marketers, salesmen, producers, and distributors. Why not just create a R&D company whose sole purpose is to research inventions to sell to manufacturers and distributors? They can set the price for their inventions to get maximum profit, and move on to other inventions, or perhaps focus on improving their products for sale later on, either to their previous buyer, or to one of the competitors who managed to reverse-engineer the product. Name recognition can easily pass for quality control, and after the first invention or two, it's likely the inventor will have a solid clientbase to sell any new inventions to.

I think market based solutions are very elegant. How would your idea cope with competition between two R&D companies? And resolve conflict between multiple competing claims for the same IP?

BTW we do have R&D companies in the current market place. Research In Motion comes to mind.

[reteo]

Agreed your ideas remain yours after they’ve been shared with outside world. But can you expect the rest of the outside world to not have any ideas of their own?

It doesn't matter what I expect. The point is that an idea is a thought in a mind. When it is expressed, it is not an idea externally, but an expression. When someone else observes the expression, it forms an idea in their mind. When the ideas are identical, then this is the process of teaching and learning. When the new idea is a modified version of the original, then this is the process of expression and inspiration.

In either case, the original thought is still in the original owner's mind, while the owner cannot justly own the thought or the expression of the inspired/learner, since the only way to do so would be to initiate aggression on the learner.

And if your ideas are not clearly and completely defined externally, how can you claim that these are explicitly your own? I am still mad at Al Gore for claiming to have invented the Internet, when I know I did (at least I did in my own mind just as Al did in his ).

Well, how many people are still mocking Al over that quote? I can claim to be the one who came up with the idea originally, but only until someone came up with prior art to prove otherwise, at which point, any further attempt to make the claim will result in ridicule.

In either event, it doesn't matter if I can claim it. Once an idea is expressed, it's no longer under my control, and I have no right to use force or fraud to keep it under my control.

All the same, why not allow the market to be a system? There are ways this could work, especially if one decouples research, production, and marketing. In fact, here's one possibility:

Inventors focus on inventing and improving their goods. Much of the problem lies in that inventors, once they have their patents, are no longer inventors, they become marketers, salesmen, producers, and distributors. Why not just create a R&D company whose sole purpose is to research inventions to sell to manufacturers and distributors? They can set the price for their inventions to get maximum profit, and move on to other inventions, or perhaps focus on improving their products for sale later on, either to their previous buyer, or to one of the competitors who managed to reverse-engineer the product. Name recognition can easily pass for quality control, and after the first invention or two, it's likely the inventor will have a solid clientbase to sell any new inventions to.

I think market based solutions are very elegant. How would your idea cope with competition between two R&D companies?

It would cope the same way any other company copes with having competition: they market themselves to be better than the competition in some way in order to get a larger share of the market.

They would both advertise their past inventions that are now being sold by the companies that bought them, and the ideas that they are currently working on. Competing manufacturers would then seek to gain contracts with the R&D companies for the schematics to create the new products once a breakthrough happens. As a matter of fact, game design houses do this now; they develop the games, and then contract with a distributor to provide them to the public, since the distribution houses have the tools to mass-produce the software that the development group had the tools to invent. And, in the final product, you will generally see two splash screens before the program starts... one for the developer, and one for the distributor/publisher.

Eventually, breakthrough regularity, invention quality, improvement frequency, and other such metrics can be used to determine the quality of one R&D company over the other, which will be used in their marketing.

And resolve conflict between multiple competing claims for the same IP?

Well, the idea is that the inventions themselves are trade secrets, right up until an interested buyer contracts with the company for one of their inventions. The design is then the purchaser's secret to maintain. If two R&D companies come up with the same invention, then that just means that there's competition in the (insert widget name here) market. In fact, perhaps there can also be R&D companies whose whole purpose for existing would be to reverse-engineer products in order to provide competitors a chance to compete. In all situations, the original inventors will be paid for their work and the manufacturers are competing based on not only the invention's merits, but their own production and value-added services.

In any event, through this system, there can be more innovation and more competition if we do not use aggression to provide protection for inventors' profits. And because the invention is sold to a manufacturer, the inventor can name a price, and therefore profit from their invention, and since manufacturers already have systems in place to fabricate parts, it's less costly for the initial product than it would be if an inventor had to spend time tooling, marketing, shelving, and selling their invention while, at the same time, learning how to perform the above tasks.

Keep in mind that competing on the same product is possible; look at the competition between McDonald's and Burger King, as well as the Coca-Cola/Pepsi competition.

BTW we do have R&D companies in the current market place. Research In Motion comes to mind.

We also have arbitration companies in the current market place. I have ideas for allowing those to replace government courts. Same goes for private security services and police, and even credit reporting agencies (combined with insurance companies and graduated to "reputation vouching") vs. prison.

As a side note, I could have kept the whole idea of the non-patent, market-based invention system to myself, and it would have remained my idea. But now, you are seeing an expression of the idea, and likely someone is reading this, either having an identical idea in their mind, or possibly a better idea based off of this one. I can't control what they do with this, because regardless of who "copies" this idea, the copy is their property and right to follow up on; all I can claim responsibility for is my expression of it shown here, and the original copy still residing in my brain.

[Calderac]

Thats my issue with it as well. Too many cases where the person who owns the patent because he was first to file for it and not because he invented it.

I'm not sure if someone mentioned this as I haven't worked through the whole thread (late start), but here in the United States Patents are issued on a first to invent basis. It may be unique in this regard, but it forces companies and individuals to document their work much more thoroughly. I'm not on top of all the logistics right of the top of my head, but when a patent application is filed a "waiting period" is started. If by the end of that period, no other application has been received for that patent proving that it was invented first, the patent is then issued.

[redhotrebel]

I'm not sure if someone mentioned this as I haven't worked through the whole thread (late start), but here in the United States Patents are issued on a first to invent basis. It may be unique in this regard, but it forces companies and individuals to document their work much more thoroughly. I'm not on top of all the logistics right of the top of my head, but when a patent application is filed a "waiting period" is started. If by the end of that period, no other application has been received for that patent proving that it was invented first, the patent is then issued.

You are somewhat mistaken. Patents differ in various fields. Example: Pharmaceutical companies have an idea so they patent that possible chemical organization, from that moment they have exactly 12 years to make, test, market etc... before their patents expires. On the other hand a writer must have certain portions of text written and copy written in order to maintain their ownership of material, i.e. I cannot copy write the words, "And the aliens attacked..." it has to be in context and a certain amount written. As far as objects go (electronics, auto styles etc...) You can have nothing but an idea and hold that patent for no longer than 4 years without any actual product. This was the case with the new touch screen phones, some random guy had the idea and had it patented since 1972, he sued Apple and lost under this law. Music and articles and pictures fall under different rules etc... unfortunately there isn't just one simple answer.