Patents considered evil

http://www.ipocracy.org/article:1

by jcbrand • 14 years ago

95 28 14 years ago

jordigh• 14 years ago

It's interesting to note that one of the first points this article makes is that the term "intellectual property" spreads confusion and makes it sound like patents are something like copyrights or something like ship hull design rights.

We've heard this before from His GNUliness:

    http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#IntellectualProperty

dionidium• 14 years ago

Yes, we've heard it before and it's still silly. The term serves only to distinguish intangibles from physical objects. It does not imply that all of those intangibles are equivalent any more than "physical property" implies that boats are the same thing as staplers. This is a non-issue. It's a useful term.

bct• 14 years ago

It's useful in some contexts but overly broad in others. The differences between a boat and a stapler are readily apparent; the differences between a copyright and a patent, much less so. Imprecise language takes advantage of that.

lukifer• 14 years ago

Language shapes thought; people have a different opinion on the estate tax when you call it a "death tax". IP may be a useful shorthand, but it carries with it a different set of implicit assumptions than "creator's monopoly".

ktizo• 14 years ago

Well, a lot of people get very confused with this stuff, especially between design copyright vs patents. And it isn't as though Stallman is exactly original in this complaint, so it makes little sense to look on him as being the main proponent of this view. For instance, Thomas Jefferson made many remarks along similar lines.

001sky3• 14 years ago

The term "intellectual property" was coined to replace "exclusive privilege", which became politically incorrect during the French revolution

sabat• 14 years ago

Interesting to note! Although I find "intellectual property" to be an oxymoron.

lttlrck2• 14 years ago

how so?

jcbrand• 14 years ago

There's also a discussion about this on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/z2lp2/patents_con...

josaka• 14 years ago

"It typically costs from 25,000 Euro (in the cheapest courts in Europe) to $250,000 (in the UK or USA) to defend or enforce a patent in court." Try $3 million per side through trial in US court. http://www.patentinsurance.com/iprisk/aipla-survey/

guelo• 14 years ago

Anyone in the startup world can tell you an idea is not worth that much, what matters is execution. Patents are supposed to reward the lazy dreamers over the hard working entrepreneurs, though in reality they reward the giant corp with the best legal strategy.

georgemcbay• 14 years ago

Patents (at least as understood by the US founding fathers who put them in the Constitution, YMMV in other countries) are supposed to be a means by which we all benefit from knowledge that would otherwise be kept a trade secret by their inventors. The nearly two decade long protection is the price we pay for that knowledge.

Of course, looking at it this way, it is absolutely insane that things like "bounce scrolling" are patent protected. Even in situations where some piece of software functionality is 100% new (which basically never happens anyway), if I can watch a video on YouTube of someone interacting with the product and then write a 20 line function that simulates the behavior I saw without ever having seen the original code, nor even having touched the original product myself and that 20 line function can be a patent violation, the patent system is already 100% completely fucked up relative to what it was designed to do originally.

woodchuck64• 14 years ago

Love this quote:

"We do not generally ask the State to intervene to ensure that artists will paint, musicians play, chefs prepare meals, fashion designers create the new seasons. The vast bulk of our economy innovates well without 20-year monopolies. By contrast, the areas that are heavily patented, such as telecoms and pharmaceutics, resist change, are run by cartels, and extort consumers with grossly inflated prices."

gpcz• 14 years ago

The web site hosting the Harper's article "Secrets by the Thousands" linked in "Patents considered evil" posts questionable ideas if you look at their root site. Also, linked from their version of "Secrets" is another article titled "The Great Patents Heist" that comes from The Barnes Review, a Holocaust-denying publication. While "Secrets" is behind a pay wall on the Harper's website (http://www.harpers.org/archive/1946/10/0032777), I'd suggest using a direct link to Harper's (or get permission from Harper's to post "Secrets" yourself) rather than use that site as a citation.

Patents considered evil

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