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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, June 18 2012 @ 05:37 PM EDT |
For private industry...a lack of first mover advantage is
problematic...creating a new product and having it copied
within a few years is a strongly revenue-negative
proposition. So, companies will be better off sitting on
their hands and spending their development dollars copying
each other. (Even with patents, most developing economies
spent a few decades just duplicating products from the US.
And, even with patents, there are large companies that
specialize in being second movers and duplicating innovative
products.)
It isn't so much that basic research can be or is supported
by industry. (Bell Labs was an exception.) However,
without patents, it would be difficult to justify applied
research - which industry does do. (For example, no one
would ever invest 5-10B in clinical trials to get 1 new drug
without getting a monopoly on its use.*)
One thing that's actually sort of nice about patents is that
they scale well with development cost/need. (With a
monopoly, anything where the value is > development cost
will be developed. Bounty systems, current industry
revenues, et cetera scale less well.)
--Erwin
*Drug discovery is difficult to make reliable and trials in
humans are expensive.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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