azz:
Just in case you didn't think patents were evil already...
Microsoft have patented pointer comparisons.
David:
Only in BASIC ...
Its a plot to make it impossible for OpenOffice to be compatable with Microsoft Office Macros (which are written in Visual BASIC for Applications)
azz:
No, any compiled language.
Look at Claim 1.
David: Claim 2 states that the compiler mentioned in Claim 1 must be a BASIC-derived programming language compiler.
azz:
That's not how patents work.
Each claim applies on its own.
David: eugh. yuck. Patents are /so/ badly implemented.
azz: Patents are evil.
David: Only in practice. In principle they are a Good Idea.
azz: No, in principle they're evil too.
David: The principle being that they provide a way to encourage innovation by protecting the little guy. This is good. In practise they are a weapon used by the big guy, which isn't good.
azz: Regardless of who they're used by, they're designed to deprive the public of useful inventions to profit a small number of people. That's bad.
David: They were designed to deprive the public of useful inventions for a short period of time so that the inventor can benefit from inventing. They've since been hammered by megacorps funding political pupets to remove the "short" so they can maintain a strangle hold on the market for far longer then needed to recoup their investment.
azz: That doesn't invalidate my point, though.
David: True, we just disagree.
azz: There are better ways to encourage people to invent stuff -- and they didn't need any encouragement to do so before the invention of patents.
David: Before the invention of patents there weren't many huge companies out there who would steal your invention, produce it at 10% of the cost it takes you and flood the market with cheap rubbish immitations.
azz: Neither were there after the invention of patents for a good 200 years.
David: So maybe patents were a bad idea 100 years ago. Now on the other hand ...
azz:
And what makes you think you've got the natural right to be the only person who makes use of an idea? That's what this is really about, after all.
Don't we have a moral obligation to benefit others?
There is no way in which the public benefits from patents; they harm lots of people to make money.
In some areas, they kill people to make money.
David:
If its a good idea, which lots of other people aren't going to think of independently, then - for a short time - having the right to be the only one to profit from it is fair.
That assumes that patents don't encourage innovation
That's a strawman argument.
azz:
You cannot tell whether people will think of an idea independently. That's another way in which the basic assumptions behind patents are grossly flawed.
I don't consider "patents kill people" to be a strawman argument -- look at AIDS drugs and Africa, for instance.
And, as I said, there are other ways to encourage innovation that don't result in depriving the public of useful inventions.
Also, patents don't encourage innovation. They encourage people to work around other peoples' patents rather than inventing new stuff. That's not innovation, that's a complete waste of time and effort.
(And I strongly disagree with your "is fair" assertion, but that should be obvious already...)
David: IIRC the drugs companies claim that while the variable cost of producing the drug is very low, the fixed costs are very high. What would motovate them to spend millions on developing a drug for a competitor to wander on down, spend a lot less reverse engineering their drug and then producing it with lower costs?
azz:
Well, the primary motivation is that it will save lives. Motivation should not be about profit. Drugs research is clearly something that should be government-funded.
And, hey, they could consider cooperating with the other companies that produce it. Radical concept there.
The reason they don't cooperate is because it's more profitable not to. Remove patents, and that goes away.
David: Which could also lead the to the businesses going away and new people not entering that field of research. Which would result in less development of drugs in the long run. While it would be nice if everybody was highly altruistic, humanity as a whole isn't.
azz:
Nonsense. The market for drugs remains the same, and since patents affect all fields of research in pretty much the same way, it's not going to cause people to move away from the field they're interested in.
And perhaps we should stop making it profitable not to be altruistic.
(I have no problems with a law that requires people to publish their inventions, by the way, which was the other original purpose of patents; I just object to not being able to use them.)
David: If the profits for all innovating falls, then it see it as quite possible that a significant number of people whom would otherwise have gone into some form of research instead go into other areas of the market and do something that doesn't involve innovation.
azz:
Uh, removing patents does not make research non-profitable; it just means that you need to cooperate in order to make a profit by doing research. Researchers still get paid; they just get paid for doing things are are actually useful, rather than for inventing things that are profitable through the patent system.
(And, to be honest, the world could stand to lose a few profit-chasing researchers; I was talking to a chemistry lecturer the other day, and he was saying that one of the drugs companies that UKC Chemistry are working with made it very clear that they weren't interested in one-off cures where a long-term treatment was viable, because the latter was more profitable...)
David:
Cooperate like OPAC? (OK OK, point taken)
That sound more like a problem with profit-chasing managers then researchers. :(
azz: It's a problem with having a system that rewards people for behaving like that. :(
David: Which leads to the problem of how you persuade people to inovate and cooperate :(
azz: Removing the motivation to not cooperate seems like a pretty good start.
David: Yes - but what goes in its place?
azz:
I'm not convinced that we need anything in its place.
My assertion is mainly that the existing system is too morally bankrupt to keep around, and the problems are inherent in the idea of patents, so no amount of minor tweaking is going to solve them.
azz: This is where I'm off to this weekend.