Patents = Wealth
How Strong Patents Make Wealthy Nations is an excellent paper that provides overwhelming evidence that patents create economic wealth.
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If I invent some major time saver in my machine shop without the ability to protect it, I will not disseminate it, period. Why would anyone give up their competitive advantage without incentive to do so? I have "tricks of the trade" of my own. I have survived while most of my competitors have evaporated. Nothing in this world is perfect, but I see no better alternative. The products of my mind are mine; end of story.
I only wish I had an invention that would appeal to the mass market. You can bet the first call I would make, would be to a patent attorney.
Respectfully,
O.A.
Guess who?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKjPI...
People continue to invent things regardless of the sometimes difficulty and cost of getting a patent and depend on the patent pending provision to keep others out of exploiting the invention for a period of time. A patent requires the public disclosure of all details about the invention and can not be as strong as trade secrets to keep another from copying the invention exactly especially if the invention involves some publicly unknown processes.
If wealth of an individual is related to the amount of property that can be created and or gained by the individual, then patents, which tend to keep prices high, will possibly decrease the possible wealth due to the lack of competition in producing the patented invention.
As for copyrights, best to not publicly publish the invented prose since anyone who reads it will have reproduced it as a copy withing his brain. That is what a copyright gives a person by prohibiting a copying of a work without permission: just the prohibition of that mental copy never to be related to others without getting permission from the owner of the copyright. History shows that most works are done regardless as to whether a government will protect the work or not, just as the those on this blog show that there is more to creativity than a possible monetary return. All of this stuff here is protected regardless as to whether a copyright is indicated. Most people will only get upset if they are misquoted or not given credit for the quote.
Copyrights have completely gotten out of hand with their extension long past the lifetime of the author and long past any reasonable (a weasel word) payment for time and pain involved.
Yes, it is only good in the country granted and that is absurd.
THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE FOR THIS "People continue to invent things regardless of the sometimes difficulty and cost of getting a patent and depend on the patent pending provision to keep others out of exploiting the invention for a period of time."
Did you ever see objects with patent pending on them for years with no patent having been granted. Most inventions by individuals, not paid for by a company, are due to seeing a problem and doing something about it. I sometimes invent mathematical objects just for the fun of it. Some individuals who work for businesses create inventions because it is part of their job descriptions and not because they expect a patent and to get wealthy from the effort. Academics do it all the time in order to get credited in published papers. Very little of the invention without the wealth incentive is done for altruistic reasons, but for the pleasure of solving a problem and possibly to get a job done with the invention.
I would say that those who invent little obvious things like an extra slit in cardboard and then patent it so that anyone who wants to sell something with that so called invention has to pay a royalty for each sale enforced by the heavy hand of government, are pretty much moochers.
Do you write books just because you think you might get rich from their sales? Only a few authors can do that and the rest do not have a chance of getting back a profitable return on their time. Some like the pulp writers just wrote and collected a few cents a word and never became wealthy. Writing should be to pleasure the writer and secondly for any pleasure of the reader or the changing of opinions or furtherance of knowledge, etc. Writing can clarify ones own ideas and perhaps point to new directions in ones thought. I would guess that most writing is done without ever having a copyright being registered in the name of the writer, but rather in the name of the one who hired the writer.
If you can't read please stay off the post.
As for that stay off the post crap, you are showing the true believer stuff that shows up now and then, or maybe you are just saying that you would not have me reply to any of your future posts? Which is it? I hope you do not have the authority to have posters removed from this blog. If galtsgulchonline.com is you blog let me know and I will kindly retreat to other matters.
If you can't read please stay off the post.
Yes. Ideas certainly are cheap, but those may not be great ones.
" you need property rights to justify spending the money to commercialize"
And it now occurs to me that researching new inventions and commercializing them are part of the same ecosystem. When a business puts effort into inventing something, it calculates in the chance that someone else may commercialize it and license the technology from you. When you license someone else's technology, you feel like you're doing the real work, but you wouldn't be doing it without the invention and the the inventor wouldn't have invented it without the chance you'd license it.
I had not heard about this case. Was seeing royalties on the patents just a bad business decision, not the faults of patents as a concept? Couldn't they have enforced the patents they could, accepted not being able to enforce the patents on Curtis' work, and focused on developing new technology that they could patent and enforce? (I don't know the answer. This is the first I'd heard of it. It would be interesting to read a book on it.)
Curtis and wrights should have gotten together and made something really good. Curtis' innovations are the ones we still use today, which were allowed really only after wright's patents ran out.
My point really was that the patent system actually worked to prevent innovation in the end, while draining the wrights of their money and curtis of his time.
I understand your point about inventors not wanting to invest money if others can just copy what they do. Just not so sure patents are the way to deal with that problem. Seems like there are unintended consequences with the patent system that stifle innovation more than protect it.
Well there is always luck I suppose, but if you are investing money or time, research is surer than crossing fingers.
Now, can better technology and inventions come without protecting the property of achievement that goes into the effort? The answer is a clear yes, but there again, the evidence is that financial incentive is better than the other methods (medals, torture, acclaim, appeals to the common good, love of invention, ..). For example Soviet science made a number of significant advances. There is scope here for a paper comparing breakthroughs and inventions in different legal regimes.
(The words strong and strength are used, I think the meaning is clear enough for the purpose)