From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lcrocker@mercury.colossus.net)
Date: Tue Dec 28 1999 - 11:33:43 MST
> Patents don't seem to me to be inherently bad, and if they were issued as
> the law requires, I'm not at all convinced that 17 years is too long. The
> main problem is that the patent office seems unable to avoid issuing
> completely obvious patents. I remain unconvinced that the other points
> people complain about are worse than the benefits.
The question I rarely see directly addressed by patent supporters is
_whose_ benefit? I wouldn't argue that patents are a short-term (in
the sense of one human lifetime) benefit to patentholders (who are
occasionally inventors), just as farm price supports may indeed
enable supported farmers to make a living they otherwise wouldn't.
But do they benefit us as a whole, or inventors in the long term?
We generally reject subsidies on principle, but not patents. What's
the difference? People argue for subsidies because we think the
subsidized activity is a valuable one: the French want good wine, so
they subsidize vineyards. We want heartland corn farmers to stay in
business regardless of demand, so we subsidize them. We want Detroit
auto workers to have jobs, so we levy high import taxes on Japanese
cars. We want there to be lots of inventions and new research, so we
indirectly subsidize them by granting protected markets. But are
the benefits those programs unarguably give to corn farmers, auto
workers, and patentholders worth the long-terms costs? I'd like to
see this question addressed from something other than a knee-jerk
"inventions good--give money" attitude. I'd like to see addressed
the real cost of creating a culture that just assumes information
should _not_ be shared freely.
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