PATENTS

[dreamdancer 0]

a different viewpoint...

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The patent privilege has been used on a massive scale to promote concentration of capital, erect entry barriers, and maintain a monopoly of advanced technology in the hands of western corporations. It is hard even to imagine how much more decentralized the economy would be without it. Right-libertarian Murray Rothbard considered patents a fundamental violation of free market principles.

Patents make an astronomical price difference. Until the early 1970s, for example, Italy did not recognize drug patents. As a result, Roche Products charged the British national health a price over 40 times greater for patented components of Librium and Valium than charged by competitors in Italy [Raghavan, Recolonization p. 124].

Patents suppress innovation as much as they encourage it. Chakravarthi Raghavan pointed out that research scientists who actually do the work of inventing are required to sign over patent rights as a condition of employment, while patents and industrial security programs prevent sharing of information, and suppress competition in further improvement of patented inventions. [op. cit. p. 118] Rothbard likewise argued that patents eliminate "the competitive spur for further research" because incremental innovation based on others' patents is prohibited, and because the holder can "rest on his laurels for the entire period of the patent," with no fear of a competitor improving his invention." And they hamper technical progress because "mechanical inventions are discoveries of natural law rather than individual creations, and hence similar independent inventions occur all the time. The simultaneity of inventions is a familiar historical fact."

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[Belgian_Draft 0]

Patent laws are a balance between protecting the inventors right to profit from his/her invention before others and allowing others to improve upon the technology. Both are worthwhile aspects.

HAMMER:
Originally employed as a weapon of war, the hammer nowadays is used as a
kind of divining rod to locate the most expensive parts adjacent the
object we are trying to hit.

[futuredivot 0]

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research scientists who actually do the work of inventing are required to sign over patent rights as a condition of employment,

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and just think of the astounding discoveries they could make in a basement using 2 test tubes and old mop without the investments made by those companies.

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[dreamdancer 0]

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Patent laws are a balance between protecting the inventors right to profit from his/her invention before others and allowing others to improve upon the technology. Both are worthwhile aspects.

would the economy be more or less efficient if there were no patents?

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[lawrocket 3]

It's interesting that a person who frequently cuts and pastes copyrighted material would actually do so with an article on intellectual property.

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[Belgian_Draft 0]

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Patent laws are a balance between protecting the inventors right to profit from his/her invention before others and allowing others to improve upon the technology. Both are worthwhile aspects.

would the economy be more or less efficient if there were no patents?

Eliminating patents would open such a big can of worms I don't think anyone could say with much certainty how the economy would respond though the financial status of inventors would almost certainly be worse.

HAMMER:
Originally employed as a weapon of war, the hammer nowadays is used as a
kind of divining rod to locate the most expensive parts adjacent the
object we are trying to hit.

[kallend 2,146]

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research scientists who actually do the work of inventing are required to sign over patent rights as a condition of employment,

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and just think of the astounding discoveries they could make in a basement using 2 test tubes and old mop without the investments made by those companies.

X-rays, the electron and it's mass and charge, and the atomic nucleus were all discovered using equipment that almost anyone could have assembled for a few $$$ if they had the knowledge. Penicillin just needed a petri dish and a cheap microscope. A couple of kids in a garage invented the Apple II.

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[billvon 3,107]

>would the economy be more or less efficient if there were no patents?

More efficient, less innovation. A real world example would be cheaper disposable cellphones that had less battery life, poorer coverage and lower voice quality. Or cheaper drugs with fewer new cures.

[philh 0]

Why would anyone bother to spend time, money and effort creating something new if they couldn't profit from it? Sure there might be some charitable activity and some government investment. but the private sector would stop being a source of innovation.
Getting rid of patents not only strangles innovation as comapnies wont invest in new technologies , but it also encourages secrecy of information. There's no problem putting your technology out in the public if people have to pay youto use it. But if they dont you keep it secret and then its harder for people to build on it.