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| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, September 30 2012 @ 10:58 AM EDT |
Does make me wonder if patents are thought to be such a great idea by these
lawyers, why isn't it applied to their own field?[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, September 30 2012 @ 11:03 AM EDT |
That's the problem in a nutshell, isn't it?
That paper by Boldwin and Levine
(http://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/2012/2012-035.pdf) is spot on. As a software
engineer I detest workarounds and temporary 'fixes' that don't remove the root
cause. Patents are a problem disguised as a solution. If we had had any sense in
our leadership we'd have taken a good hard look at them and then abolished it as
a failed experiment well over a century ago.
Meanwhile, the top brass in the US has become complacent, corrupt, and instead
of fixing the problems they have resorted to ostrich tactics.
History is repeating itself. The Roman Empire fell down for much the same
reasons. Have we learned from this? Apparently not.
I can only hope we won't have a big war when the house of cards finally comes
tumbling down.
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| Authored by: PolR on Sunday, September 30 2012 @ 12:51 PM EDT |
> Since the actual manufacture of many "U.S." goods is
> offshore and that is where most of the sources of
> competition also comes from, the Legal industry
> and IP protection are the last strings that can keep the
> US economy appearing to be alive and growing.
. . .
> If you kill off the patent game plan the whole house of
> cards will come down very quickly.
How do we know this is true? Are we sure this isn't a bogeyman pro-patent folks
are bandying to keep them around?
Think about it. Foreign companies have engineers and lawyers. They can play the
patent games. US companies may have an head start in terms of numbers of
patents. How long will this last?
Also, how patent revenue trickle down to US consumers if all manufacturing and
engineering is moved abroad? Who will be the US employees who earn wages and
spend them as consumers?
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, September 30 2012 @ 03:33 PM EDT |
Not "AND the lawyers".
The lawyers already are included in the old and stagnant.
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, September 30 2012 @ 04:49 PM EDT |
I mentioned this as a newspick a week or so ago, as I seen a link to the paper
at LXer.com. It is a good read. Among other things, they mention that lawyers
have a lot to gain.
I hope that at some point this paper gets properly published, instead of just
being a draft or working document.
But the paper is a good read.
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, September 30 2012 @ 05:42 PM EDT |
Really? Don't you know that Apple's iPad SOCs are made by
Samsung in a fab in Texas? Not all manufacturing is staying
overseas. We still make cars here. Some makes since to keep
here, thanks to relying on robots for much of the work. There
is also the cost of shipping, and that will keep getting more
expensive over time.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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- Oh, the Shame - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, September 30 2012 @ 07:57 PM EDT
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| Authored by: knarf on Sunday, September 30 2012 @ 06:15 PM EDT |
The highest commander of the armed forces in the US is a civilian. This was done
for a reason, of course. Since large and powerful institutions tend to become
self-serving in their reason for existence it becomes necessary to keep those
institutions in check by subjugating them to the will of an outsider.
The same can, unfortunately, not be said about the institutions which have grown
around the principle of state-enforced justice. Lawyers get to decide over which
laws get enacted, lawyers get to write those laws, lawyers get to vote on
expansion of the powers of the law. The conflict of interest is as clear as
daylight, and the disastrous consequences of this conflict become more and more
visible. From the 'war on drugs' to the 'war on innovation' (as I humbly suggest
the patent system should be renamed to) their actions have ravaged society and
cost untold billions of dollars. To whose benefit? Not to the benefit of
society, that is clear. If you follow the money it quickly becomes clear who
benefited though.
To put a stop to this madness will not be easy. Shakespeare proclaimed he had a
solution but that comes down to throwing out the baby with the bathwater - as
long as there is state-enforced justice there is a need for competent
representation for those accused of violating the rules. Who gets to decide over
those rules, though? The answer to that question is - or should be -
'politicians'. Who, in the US, for a large part happen to be lawyers. Which
leads to a system where laws are written by lawyers, rewritten by lawyers, bent,
broken and reformed by lawyers... ad infinitum. For the general populace these
laws are far to complicated to understand, so they have to refer to lawyers to
interpret them.
What does that remind you of? Think of the church in the middle ages. The holy
scriptures were written in Latin, a language not understood by the general
populace. To understand what ${god} wanted of them they had to refer to the
priests who had studied such things and could read the special language. This
gave those priests an enormous amount of power over society - comparable to the
power now wielded by lawyer-politicians.
Eventually the bible got translated in vernacular, allowing the general populace
access to its contents without needing to consult a priest. This process took a
long time, and it took the invention of the printing press and the resulting
decrease in reproduction costs to finally do away with the overbearing power of
the church and clergy.
Can laws be written in 'plain language', or does it take a domain-specific
dialect ('legalese') to gain enough specificity? Has any research (by
non-lawyers) been done on this subject, and if so what were the conclusions? If
it is possible to build a functioning systems of laws using language which can
be understood by non-legal specialists, it would become possible for a non-legal
specialist to decide over the implementation of those laws. Maybe laws could be
open to public vote or referendum - but that would not always work ('vote
"yes/no" on this law on income tax'). While it is clear the situation
has run out of hand, it is not directly clear how this can be remedied. That is
should be remedied is clear to me, and I guess to the general readership of this
board as well.
---
[ "Omnis enim res, quae dando non deficit, dum habetur
et non datur, nondum habetur, quomodo habenda est." ]
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| Authored by: Boundless on Sunday, September 30 2012 @ 06:22 PM EDT |
If you recast the original intent of the USPTO as "full employment for
lawyers and full court calendars", then the system has been a spectacular
success. And therein lies a problem.
Lawmakers are rarely mindful of unintended consequences (as we see in the
current mess). But, a critical mass of lawmakers are lawyers. When they vote,
they are apt to be mindful of putting their colleagues out of work.
How long can it fester? Well, consider the US Postal Service, about to default
again this weekend. It's a quasi-independent business which has no assured
federal funding, but does have assured oversight (meddling and unfunded
mandates) from Congress. USPS is not at liberty to make changes necessary to
become profitable. Congress needs to cut it lose, or fund it on an on-going
basis, and does neither, perpetually. (They also need to repeal the Express
Statutes, but that's another matter. Even that legal monopoly fails to keep USPS
afloat.)[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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