<story><title>The Case Against Patents (2013)</title><url>https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.27.1.3</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jpadkins</author><text>the costs of your system are probably way more than the value created for society via patents.</text></item><item><author>wtdo</author><text>Not that this would be an efficient use of anyone&amp;#x27;s time but...&lt;p&gt;Assuming the purpose of patents is 1) to eliminate trade secrets, 2) that patents must be novel, and 3) that patents must be non-obvious to someone skilled in the art, then perhaps a solution would be: take a handful of people skilled in the art, tell half of them to implement the patent and tell the other half only the end goal and see if any of them come up with the same process.&lt;p&gt;The first group would help to see if the patent is written well enough.  If they can&amp;#x27;t implement it then your patent is automatically rejected.&lt;p&gt;If anyone from the second group comes up with the same process, then that&amp;#x27;s an automatic patent rejection.  Even if they don&amp;#x27;t, it&amp;#x27;s still helpful information for the patent examiner.  For example, if they can solve the problem, just not in the same way as the patent application proposes, perhaps the patent examiner will see that the patent isn&amp;#x27;t necessary.  Go ahead and have your trade secret, the public can obviously solve that problem with or without that knowledge.</text></item><item><author>jordigh</author><text>I never thought that the case for patents was to increase productivity. I always thought that their purpose was to eliminate trade secrets: people are going to invent stuff whether you want to or not, but without patents, they&amp;#x27;ll take the secrets to the grave.&lt;p&gt;My favourite patent of all time is Michael Jackson&amp;#x27;s smooth criminal patent:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;mashable.com&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;28&amp;#x2F;michael-jackson-shoe-patent&amp;#x2F;#AdzmmRRZPmqY&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;mashable.com&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;28&amp;#x2F;michael-jackson-shoe-patent&amp;#x2F;...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is the patent system working as intended. A magician revealing his tricks. Tell us how you did it, and in exchange we promise to not compete with you for a while.&lt;p&gt;The patent system could work if patent clerks had the time to be a lot more discerning and reject any patent that is obvious or already known. But it takes a lot of work to do that and the deluge of patents makes it impossible to give each application sufficient consideration.&lt;p&gt;I think the general idea of patents is good, but perhaps it&amp;#x27;s impossible to execute it correctly.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Edit&lt;/i&gt;: Should have read the damn article. They address concern further below and also argue that patents are not revealing any secrets because pattent attorneys are not qualified to judge the merit of patents and because the way patents are written makes it almost impossible to reproduce their results, and sometimes patents are granted for utter nonsense, such as moving &amp;quot;through the fifth dimension&amp;quot;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wtdo</author><text>I agree.  I probably should have stressed that more in the initial disclaimer.  It is possible (though, again, unlikely) that it might not be as bad as it initially sounds simply due to fewer bad patents being submitted if the submitter knows the patent application would go through such an extensive process.  There&amp;#x27;d be a lot fewer vague patent applications and a lot fewer applications for stuff that&amp;#x27;s obvious.&lt;p&gt;I generally feel that the cost of patents isn&amp;#x27;t worth the value they&amp;#x27;ve created.  Once one factors in the costs of lawsuits over stupid&amp;#x2F;obvious patents, patent trolls, the cost of patent attorneys, the increased cost of goods due to patents, etc, etc, the value of patents generally shrinks considerably.  Being sure only good patents get through could go some way to increasing the value of patents to society, and thus might be worth the extra cost.&lt;p&gt;Then again, I&amp;#x27;d rather patents just be dumped unceremoniously.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Case Against Patents (2013)</title><url>https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.27.1.3</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jpadkins</author><text>the costs of your system are probably way more than the value created for society via patents.</text></item><item><author>wtdo</author><text>Not that this would be an efficient use of anyone&amp;#x27;s time but...&lt;p&gt;Assuming the purpose of patents is 1) to eliminate trade secrets, 2) that patents must be novel, and 3) that patents must be non-obvious to someone skilled in the art, then perhaps a solution would be: take a handful of people skilled in the art, tell half of them to implement the patent and tell the other half only the end goal and see if any of them come up with the same process.&lt;p&gt;The first group would help to see if the patent is written well enough.  If they can&amp;#x27;t implement it then your patent is automatically rejected.&lt;p&gt;If anyone from the second group comes up with the same process, then that&amp;#x27;s an automatic patent rejection.  Even if they don&amp;#x27;t, it&amp;#x27;s still helpful information for the patent examiner.  For example, if they can solve the problem, just not in the same way as the patent application proposes, perhaps the patent examiner will see that the patent isn&amp;#x27;t necessary.  Go ahead and have your trade secret, the public can obviously solve that problem with or without that knowledge.</text></item><item><author>jordigh</author><text>I never thought that the case for patents was to increase productivity. I always thought that their purpose was to eliminate trade secrets: people are going to invent stuff whether you want to or not, but without patents, they&amp;#x27;ll take the secrets to the grave.&lt;p&gt;My favourite patent of all time is Michael Jackson&amp;#x27;s smooth criminal patent:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;mashable.com&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;28&amp;#x2F;michael-jackson-shoe-patent&amp;#x2F;#AdzmmRRZPmqY&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;mashable.com&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;28&amp;#x2F;michael-jackson-shoe-patent&amp;#x2F;...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is the patent system working as intended. A magician revealing his tricks. Tell us how you did it, and in exchange we promise to not compete with you for a while.&lt;p&gt;The patent system could work if patent clerks had the time to be a lot more discerning and reject any patent that is obvious or already known. But it takes a lot of work to do that and the deluge of patents makes it impossible to give each application sufficient consideration.&lt;p&gt;I think the general idea of patents is good, but perhaps it&amp;#x27;s impossible to execute it correctly.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Edit&lt;/i&gt;: Should have read the damn article. They address concern further below and also argue that patents are not revealing any secrets because pattent attorneys are not qualified to judge the merit of patents and because the way patents are written makes it almost impossible to reproduce their results, and sometimes patents are granted for utter nonsense, such as moving &amp;quot;through the fifth dimension&amp;quot;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rayiner</author><text>That may be true, but I suspect you&amp;#x27;re underestimating the value created by patents. Three examples:&lt;p&gt;1) Patents enable &amp;quot;benevolent monopolies.&amp;quot; Companies that can afford to splurge on fundamental research because they have a revenue source protected by some sort of barrier to entry or network effect. Xerox PARC, for example, created many of the technologies fundamental to modern computing. PARC was bankrolled by Xerox&amp;#x27;s near-monopoly on copiers, which was enabled by Xerox&amp;#x27;s patents. PARC&amp;#x27;s decline closely tracks what happened after the 1975 consent decree in which Xerox was forced to license its patents to Japanese competitors.&lt;p&gt;2) Patents enable business models that separate design from production. ARM and MIPS, for example, design chips incorporated into designs from myriad manufacturers. How much value has been enabled by proliferation of these IP cores? You may point to things like RISC V, but that only proves the point. RISC V followed 15 years after the first ARM licenses, and has a fraction of the capital backing it. It&amp;#x27;s a lot harder to raise capital to build designs with the idea that you&amp;#x27;re going to give away the work product for free.&lt;p&gt;3) Patents enable technology sharing. Dozens of different companies have technology that is included in DVD, Blu-Ray, 2G&amp;#x2F;3G&amp;#x2F;4G, Wi-Fi, etc. Companies contribute the results of very expensive R&amp;amp;D efforts to these openly-published standards because they can ensure they get a cut of the value created by that technology. If they could not, there would be strong incentives to keep that technology secret instead. You might point to the success of web standards in the absence of patent protections. I&amp;#x27;d posit that the web is the exception not the rule, and it&amp;#x27;s an exception that exists because of how easily the web can be monetized with advertising. That monetization strategy is not widely applicable.</text></comment>