From: Charlie Stross (charlie@antipope.org)
Date: Wed Dec 22 1999 - 03:28:37 MST
On Tue, Dec 21, 1999 at 06:08:09PM -0800, Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
>
> That is the entire *point* of inventions.
>
> I have two possible paths before me:
> 1) I can go work as a contract programmer for some XYZ company
> programming whatever they would like to have programmed.
> 2) I can *invent* things that may contribute to the productivity
> of society, patent those inventions and have companies & organizations
> coming to me to license those inventions.
>
> If you elimiminate patent/copyright/trademark law, you eliminate
> the motivation for (2). At that point I'm going to go and be a
> stupid contract programmer because there is nothing to prevent
> anyone from stealing anything I invent.
I have a fundamental problem with this argument, because as far as I
can tell both sides are wrong (and I'm not sure what the right answer
is, either).
On the one hand; it appears obvious that we need to encourage
inventions. Inventions ultimately enhance everyone's quality of life.
Figuring out a way to give inventors a financial advantage over imitators
encourages invention; if they have no edge, and are also handicapped by
having to fork out R&D costs that imitators are exempt from, invention
is discouraged.
But ...
Different industries progress at different speeds. A 20-year patent
life seems short in aerospace or architecture, but corresponds to about
five or six generations -- an aerospace century and a half -- in the
computer industry.
And it gets worse. Things are patented that are _not_ inventions. The
USPTO is a particularly egregious offender that admits inventions
that are simply not patentable elsewhere in the world. RSA patent
some pure mathematics. Various companies patent genes from natural
organisms -- arguably "found" items. Amazon.com patent the idea of using
cookies to simplify a web shopping-cart user interface (hardly an
innovative idea! unlike the idea of cookies in the first place, which
predates the web by a considerable number of years).
And we end up with monstrosities like Oakley (the Californian sunglasses
manufacturer profiled in WIRED in December), who filed 441 patents in
one decade and use them agressively to attack any interlopers in their
turf, and whose avowed goal is to grow to $1Bn a year turnover on brand
identity alone. (Sunglasses. Not exactly the cutting edge of technology,
one would think. Nor are they a field where having a dominant and
agressive multinational trying to drive prices up into the 300-500 dollar
range benefits society as a whole, given that I can buy a cheap disposable
pair for one dollar and a solidly made pair for fifty bucks.)
Basically, we have intellectual property laws for good reasons -- to
encourage inventors and authors to do things that are of benefit to
society. (Remember, intellectual property is a relatively recent
invention in historical terms; and these are the terms in which the law
covering it was originally drafted.) But the context in which these laws
are applied has changed radically in the past twenty years, without any
corresponding change in the laws. The vast majority of patents today seem
to be filed by large corporations for use as weapons to keep interlopers
out of a field they want to monopolise, or to extort taxes. (Witness
attempts to patent large chunks of the human genome, for example.)
Patents and copyright were originally designed as defenses. The problem
is that they've been extended and misapplied until they also constitute
very handy weapons.
And I don't know about you, but my idea of _good_ capitalism is a deal
where both sides walk away knowing they've benefited -- a positive sum
game. There's nothing very extropian against playing the market as a
zero-sum or negative-sum game for your own benefit.
-- Charlie
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