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| Authored by: mbouckaert on Monday, June 11 2012 @ 04:13 AM EDT |
(1) VC and funding.
VC use patents because the patent system is in place. They would use another
criterion otherwise.
Knowing that a patent has been issued doesn't tell much, but is data that is
cheap to acquire. It would be more helpful if the VC could get the information
directly, like if (s)he were a PTO of sorts, and filter out the obfuscation.
Plus ...
(2) Monopoly rents
The main problem I see with patents, especially, SW patents, is that there is no
real monopoly rent. Patents are used for exclusion (mostly) or as a threat to
such (e.g., the way MS uses unspecified patents to extort payments).
... and while I'm at it ...
(3) Lack of taxonomy
makes the patent system unworkable. If the PTO would design a classification
system that could, in a matter of minutes, answer the question "Is what I
am about to write covered by a patent", with appropriate reference to
patent text, then we might have a usable system (even though I believe that SW
patents shouldn't exist, that the bar of inventiveness is too low, etc.)
Maybe in the original form it was usable until the Industrial Revolution. But
now? Not really.
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bck[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, June 11 2012 @ 12:08 PM EDT |
> Nobody said "without patents nothing would get invented"
Neither did I. You're claiming that patent system
"promotes" invention. I take that to mean that things get
invented *sooner*. What else could it mean?
But I don't think it's true that things get invented sooner
with a patent system in place - at least not with the patent
system we actually have. That's rather obvious if you look
at a random sample of patents - most of them are totally
bogus, not even inventions at all.
The theory is that patents contribute to knowledge with
contributes to progress. But the fact is that engineers
don't actually read patents, so that rationale just doesn't
work.
Theory number two is that patents bring investment which
allows innovation (not the same as invention). This is at
least rational. I note that it requires that we award
patents before the real work is complete - much closer to
the idea stage than to the working commercial product stage.
Any business person will tell you that the ideas aren't
valuable. We ought to be protecting the development work if
and when it actually works, not granting monopolies in the
hope that the grantee succeeds at development within twenty
or thirty years. But let's assume the best we can do is
grant monopolies as soon as an idea is "constructively
reduced to practice"; VCs can fund the actual development at
that stage. Does that lead to faster development than
without patents? There might be an argument that it allows
smaller companies to attract funding; otherwise development
might be more dependent on large companies with established
research departments. On the other hand, what we see in
practice is that large companies devote their "R&D" money to
filing tens of thousands of patents every year. (Guess how
many patents Microsoft filed last year. Go on, guess. Guess
again.) So why do you *assume* that the net effect is
beneficial??? [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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