From: hal@finney.org
Date: Wed Dec 22 1999 - 11:26:10 MST
Charlie Stross writes:
> 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.
Robert J. Bradbury writes:
> I do think about this Lee. And I may just have a way to the light
> at the end of the tunnel. You have to speed up the rate of innovation
> to the point where the "value" of the protection you get in a patent
> or a copyright is depreciated so fast that it is pointless to pay
> for the lawyers to seek or enforce the protection that you get with
> a patent or copyright.
> [...]
> So 3com may be filing patent applications because that is the way
> the game is played, but I suspect they know that their business
> is moving so fast that most of the patents will be obsolete long
> before their term of enforcement expires.
These reflect two different views of the significance of the patent term
as the rate of innovation increases. Charlie suggests that the 20 year
patent is a tremendous burden, because the patent lasts through many
"generations" of innovation, unlike in older technologies where the
patent may have lasted through only a single generation.
Robert suggests that the long patent term becomes less of an issue as
innovation increases, because the technologies protected by the patent
become obsolete long before the patent expires.
I believe that the patent term is set to provide some reasonable payback
to the inventor based on how long it takes to get the patent idea into
production, get past the early start-up and loss-leader stages, and settle
into the longer-term "cash cow" mode where the initial investment costs
are recovered and profits are finally possible.
It's not clear whether the increased rate of progress in some fields has
actually sped up this financial timeline. In fact we seem to see today
that the new economy companies are taking losses for many years before
the hoped-for turn to profitability. It looks to me like 20 years is
still a reasonable time to protect an idea if the goal is to allow it
to move into the profitable mode and provide a significant return on
the investment required to put it into production.
Hal
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