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| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, June 10 2012 @ 09:16 PM EDT |
And since this is a software patent, explain why patent
protection is necessary given that the software is covered
by copyright.
In software, you actually *can't* easily copy the sort of
idea embodied by the swipe patent. You have to write *bug-
free* code to do it. (Or you could copy the inventor's
code, assuming he actually wrote some. Copyright prevents
that. And patents are supposed to be reduced to practice to
be valid, so a patent ought not to issue until the code is
written. So why have a patent?)
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, June 11 2012 @ 03:01 AM EDT |
a) is a complete strawman. Nobody said "without patents nothing would get
invented" except the people who like to set it up and knock it down. The aim,
according to the constitution is to "promote" invention, and they do this by
granting a temporary monopoly in exchange for disclosure of how it's
done.
Even then, this strawman is easily responded to. Look into
research by Ron J
Mann that shows that the chances of receiving VC investment
for startups (as
well as successful exits!) are strongly correlated with the
fact that they have
filed at least one patent. See, in the end it's money that
pays for the engineers
that do the actual innovation, and if investors don't
hand that money out, the
chances of innovation drop precipitously. Economists
may not like the idea of
monopoly rents, but investors, the guys with the money
that drives
everything, sure do like it in case their investments don't pan
out.
As for b) - First please show a way to estimate the value to
society imparted
by this patent. Secondly please show a way to estimate the
cost to society
from any so-called monopoly rents as the result of this
patent.
Or any patent really. This problem has been looked at for years
by (non-
armchair) economists, and if they don't have a good handle on it, what
chance do we have? (They don't BTW; unlike most people here, I've
researched
this and there is no definitive proof either way, and any work that
tries to
prove it one way or the other has been rebutted to shreds by
opponents. Don't
trot out any of the stuff put out by Boldrin/Levine, Bessen,
Meurer, etc.
unless you also mention the numerous articles rebutting them.)[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: mrisch on Monday, June 11 2012 @ 01:49 PM EDT |
This is obviously an impossible standard to meet. Every
invention will be discovered eventually. The key is
incentivizing earlier innovation, and research that might not
have occurred without the patent grant. Maybe the swype patent
doesn't meet that either, but your standard will never be met,
which is why you've never seen one.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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