I recall reading something from Carmack along the lines of "I find it horrrifying that I can't use my own ideas if someone else had the same idea first." It was a very succinct and insightful quote on a problem with patents, but now I can't find a source for the quote. Does anyone know what I'm reffering to?
A quick shout-out to the US Patent Examiners - these individuals have technical degrees just like us, and do their best to weed out the crap patents they can. In fact, they are judged (for better or worse) by the number of patents they successfully reject.
They are also now some very overworked individuals. They have only hours to review patents in a diverse set of topics. There is only so much research they can do - a patent written by a master claims writer, no matter how frivolous, is very difficult to reject outright.
If you want to improve patents in the US, you can start by asking your congressperson to increase funding to the USPTO.
In the meantime, strike small blows here and there against bad patents by helping examine them:
"Help the USPTO find the information relevant to assessing the claims of pending patent applications. Become a community reviewer and improve the quality of patents."
I think the problem is in the details. It's far too easy to get a patent. And on trivial 'inventions'.
Yeah I agree - I want to dig deeper when people say "patents are evil".... By this they could mean the current system needs to be tweaked, right through to totally abandoning the concept.
Your question assumes that "the more inventions, the better for sociaty". While this may have been true for the last five hundred years, maybe it's time to reconsider the assumption?
This may sound foolish but please consider: What is more important? To create pills that enable old men to have sex or to solve today's energy problems? The later is not just about new technologies but to overcome the old established structures. Or consider medical treatment: Do we really new technology to heal very uncommon ills for a rich upper class when a large part of the sociaty cannot afford to have well-known basic medical treatment? The later is a social problem, not a technical one.
Another assumption of your question is that patents are the only way to secure a large investement and that there are no alternative barriers to entry for others. However, that is clearly wrong. Do you have the money to manufacture automobiles, for instance? Even if you're capable to invent a new kind of car, do you have the money to advertise it properly?
The third assumption of your question is that we may need a completely different system. However, patents seems to work somewhat fine for the material world. It just doesn't work for
software. So, maybe we should not look for an alternative but for a different, a better kind of patent system?
I'm not saying I have an answer. I just think one should be careful about either/or questions.
To create pills that enable old men to have sex or to solve today's energy problems?
This is more of a moral judgement than one around the efficacy of patents. Are you arguing that patents shouldn't be available at all, or they should only be granted to those that are a suitable fit for society?
This sounds dangerous as I can't really think of anyone suitable to make such a judgement. Even in the later case, you still need an enconomic basis for the patent - or more correctly, the R&D required to gain the patent.
Even if you're capable to invent a new kind of car, do you have the money to advertise it properly?
I don't need to invent a new kind of car - if I came up with a valve arrangement that increased efficiency by x% that would be patentable, and I would profit from it.
If this invention, say, could be retrofitted to existing vehicles and reduce emissions - then governments might mandate it's use - and I'd profit from that.
I don't think a body such as the government should be guiding research. It's a slippery slope to bureaucracy. What you can do is put in place the right framework - e.g. all cars must comply with an emission standard by X - then you create the economic basis for the right inventions to follow.
Short patent lifetimes. Long enough for you to get out and establish yourself in the market, but short enough that it wouldn't kill a competitor to wait a bit. It would also dramatically reduce the cost of licensing a patent since the waiting time for it to expire would drop so much.
Perhaps a good amount of time would be one or two years?
I'm not sure the bureaucracy of this would be any better than the current (flawed) patent system... In fact, I'd venture it would be much, much worse.
At least in the current system you're protected, and potentially rewarded - even if everyone thinks it's a bad idea (which is often the case for break-through innovations).
The current system is not well tuned to current technology. If you patent the steam regulator, the idea was that you would sell then far and wide... In the industry now it's used to lock up a technology for exclusive use.
Maybe a patent should coffer the rights to an invention - and the patent is also opened up for auction by the govt to "n" organisations (where n is somehow determined to maximise profit), with the profits going to the patent holder.
I believe JesseAldridge above was referring instead to government funding R&D and then simply giving away the technology the way the daguerreotype photographic process was given away. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daguerreotype
Instead of Daguerre obtaining a French patent, the French government provided a pension for him. In Britain, Miles Berry, acting on Daguerre's behalf, obtained a patent for the daguerreotype process on 14 August 1839. Almost simultaneously, on 19 August 1839, the French government announced the invention as a gift "Free to the World".
