This meme shows a complete misunderstanding of patent law. A patent is a social contract that allows for a limited amount of protection for an invention being copied (usually 20 years) in exchange for it becoming public domain after that. This enables people to make a living inventing things. Are games played with the system, sure, does it work perfectly- no, but it’s better than the alternatives. (Source, am inventor)
This comment shows a complete misunderstanding of patent practice. Patents exist not for inventors, but for companies. Destin, from Smarter Every Day, has a recent video trying to make a grill scrubber in which he talks with many people about how Amazon for example constantly avoids patent claims from small inventors.
Humanity progressed from hunter-gatherers to the industrial revolution without the need for a judge to determine whether I can arrange atoms in a given way or not without giving a canon to someone else who decided to arrange atoms like that before me.
Without corporations there isn’t a need for intellectual property. Public research, i.e. most research, is conducted without intellectual property, and most scientists dedicate their live to science not because they think they can get rich by selling one product, but because they get a decent wage and position for doing so, intellectual stimulus, and social recognition. Research and invention don’t necessitate intellectual property, only private companies do.
Oh boy here we go. What is a corporation? What does it mean for corporations to not exist? How exactly does that even work in practice?
Yes creative scientist invent things spontaneously without expectation of reward. But no scientist will contribute as much as a well funded and motivated team with a clear goal. And I’m sure all the scientists love it when you tell them they won’t be credited for their work and literally anyone will be able to take their idea and do whatever they want with it, that’ll do so much to help foster humanity’s innate desire to learn and be creative.
And it’s about coercing people who won’t act in good faith with the system into doing so. Most people would keep a secret to make money especially if their livelihood depended on it. Why force creatives to choose between sharing their works and profiting from them?
Private companies don’t need intellectual property. A corporation will steal your creation and outcompete you in profiting from it if given the opportunity. Intellectual property laws are what stop them from doing so. Again, the system has been eroded and misused by companies but at its core it protects workers and their labour.
I’m sure all the scientists love it when you tell them they won’t be credited for their work and literally anyone will be able to take their idea and do whatever they want with it, that’ll do so much to help foster humanity’s innate desire to learn and be creative
Literally yes. Why do you think every fucking scientist loves sci-hub and is against Elsevier, and even submits their papers to arxiv for anyone to read for free? You clearly have no experience in the field and are talking out of your arse
What does it mean for corporations to not exist?
Through the existence of exclusively public institutions, whether cooperative or government-owned, which don’t work in direct competition but either in cooperation or in emulated competition (I.e. a contest instead of a struggle to drive each other off business).
And it’s about coercing people who won’t act in good faith with the system into doing so
This literally doesn’t happen in public research.
Most people would keep a secret to make money especially if their livelihood depended on it
In public research it works backwards. The more you publish (i.e. make available to the public), the more you earn. You really don’t seem to understand the concept of public research.
A corporation will steal your creation and outcompete you in profiting from it if given the opportunity.
Great, so make knowledge accessible to everyone and abolish private corporations.
Yeah some of what I’ve said doesn’t portray my arguments well. In trying to explain that IP law is a process that protects creatives and without it creative endeavours would be eroded. This is not a point of debate. Virtually every country has an IP law. IP law doesn’t make it so people won’t share their ideas, it makes it so people who do are rewarded.
IP law is a process that protects creatives and without it creative endeavours would be eroded. This is not a point of debate
How is it not a point of debate? I’m giving you arguments as to why it’s a very good point of debate and you don’t seem to be able to respond to them.
Virtually every country has an IP law
Virtually every country also has homeless people and I disagree with that, that’s just an argument from majority, kinda useless to me.
IP law doesn’t make it so people won’t share their ideas, it makes it so people who do are rewarded
I already explained how there are already existing mechanisms without IP pushing for the rewarding of intellectual production, such as the “publish-or-perish” system in public research. You may very well have arguments against it, but the fact of the matter is that you don’t need IP as a mechanism to reward people who engage innovation/creative/research processes. Public openings at institutions (whether a national orchestra, a research institute or a cinema academy with subsidised production), contests and grants… IP is not the only method for material rewarding of intellectual creation, which is what you’re trying to argue.
I understand what you are saying but i hope you never invent something that can solve a current day crisis.
We are already behind schedule to solve things like climate change. If someone invents breakthrough tech then we need that today and open so other minds can quickly iterate and improve. Not after 20 years of stalling on a bureaucratic advantage.
If it wasn’t for capitalism chaining survival to productivity there would be no reason for this system to exist and we can move on to teach that “all good ideas should be copied”
And “the same ideas can emerge in multiple different minds”
People work for material gain. By not entitling creators to the product of their labour you will discourage them from creating (and also be stealing from them). Patent law is exactly the kind of thing that protects the interests of working people but our current system is too weak to stand up to corporations.
What happens if the person who can solve climate change decides instead to trade stocks because saving the world doesn’t put food on the table?
People, in general, do not work for material gain. They work because they have to in order to live, procreate and raise their children. People want a minimum amount of prosperity and economic safety. Beyond that, they want to work in a way and a place that fulfills them. Work itself is fun when done right, and working with others is awesome. Not even the “smart ones” or whatever work mainly for material gain in general. There are an overwhelming amount of counter examples to any variation of your claim. It would be more accurate to say people work for fame and glory, or to get laid (again reproductive success).
But even if what you said was true, it does not justify a complete monopoly. You could have something like “congrats you patented a new idea - if it catches on you will get a free house as a price!”
Of course you know all this and are just arguing facetiously. If “the person who can solve climate change” does anything but trade stocks they would contradict your argument. There is no money in inventing climate solutions. But nice insult to the people who are working on things like that.
Your actual argument is that we reward gambling and non-productive activity too much. That the smartest people are not working towards the survival or wellbeing of humanity, but for… crumbs off the table of the capitalists. That our economic system is not efficient in working towards our shared human values.
I am aware that there are people like that that exists and that its quite a big number of people
But I will never understand how people like that exist. And to be very controversially honest I don’t trust the sincerity and thus ideas of people that think like this. Though i still respect such people like anyone else all the same.
Granted i am a certified autist but personal gain has almost no value to me, to the point that being paid actually demotivates me because:
I believe i deserve to have a good quality life regardless of economic value and know that statistically humanity has enough resources/food to guarantee such for everyone. It being conditional makes me feel exploited.
I always want to be the best possible version of myself and accomplish whatever i, with my human limitations, am able to, which has the most general positive effect on the total universe. Regardless of anything. I consider it personality offensive others assume i would want anything else.
I feel devaluated because society appears convinced that i would not do work if they were not threatening my survival, and because corporate hierarchy is what it is i actually have to underachieve all the time because fighting to make actual improvements would quickly threaten the control of higher ups and thus become a risk for my own means of survival.
Sure, if i could solve climate change and no one would even thank me for it leaving starving poor then i would be very sad. But self worth and identity would be Intact because i would be doing what i know is right.
While changing that in favour of stock trading maybe my life standards would be better but with the lack of any real value and living of a system designed around exploitation of existing value will make me feel worse to the point i may actually end up an existential crisis and kill myself.
To die sooner for the right reasons is a better life than to survive longer for the wrong reasons.
While i know my stance is rare i know there are plenty of people who think exactly like i do about this.
Anyway i also got a bit side tracked because this wasn’t about ip laws anymore, but my belief remains that if people can work on what they want without it affecting their personal access to luxury then there is no reason why they would not work on things that benefit all of society and thus themselves.
You don’t understand why people deserve the fruits of their labour? What are you on about bruh we’re talking about the patent office. People need to be incentivised to work because all of the work needed to create the society of excess you so want to enjoy isn’t all of the work people would do if left to their own devices.
The fruit of our labor should be a better world for everyone and future generations.
The belief that people won’t work without external pressure is contradicted by human history, cooperative work and mutual aid have existed for millennia before formal economies developed.
Its known that when people’s basic needs are met, the desire to create and contribute is a natural human drive.
Also as a bit of a sidenote to avoid confusion, i believe all people deserve and could be given more comfort and luxury then their labor currently grants them. So its not correct that i would not want people to have those things, just that it should be non conditional.
It’s not exclusive. You can meet everyones needs and then say, “hey if you make some cool fucking shit we’ll give you a little extra.” Why insist on people doing good solely because they feel like it. Why not push people to be better.
We know what people do when their needs are met, they’re called retirees. They don’t provide a net gain of almost anything btw. Yes people will pick up rubbish off a beach out of the goodness of their hearts. But the amount of litter collected from philanthropy is not greater than the amount made. And it’s a rounding error when compared to the amount of rubbish managed by garbage collectors.
IP laws are good precisely because they encourage people to create and discover even if all their needs are met. They compliment the selfless and persuade the selfish.
People who are rich are still involved in society to the point i wish they would stop exploiting to chase more profit and just retire already with their near infinite wealth.
And the actual retirees your refer towards that don’t do anything are usually old people who slaved an entire career for a total less then some rich “earn” in a single day.
I do think people who build cool stuff deserve to be rewarded though, we could give them a cool artwork, trow them a party or just continue to respect and thank them for their accomplishments.
Currently the reward is “here are the means that someone else could use to not starve that you can now use to go on a holiday with.”
If it were a misunderstanding, why do we always see a spike in innovation once a patent expires? According to capitalist ideology, isn’t competition the best that could happen, instead of having an unlimited monopoly for 20 years?
I think their point was that in a way, patents are supposed to be more equitable because it allows the inventor to meet their basic needs by being the one to invent the patent.
There’s also the argument that while innovation skyrockets after a parent opens up, there would be less incentive to invent new things if Walmart could just copy it for cheaper the day after you show how you make it.
Or people would be super secretive with instructions for how to make their products that innovations could die with their creators since they have no incentive to release it.
I think we need to differentiate between the potential of something versus the reality of something. We see people being super secretive of innovations right now and because they’re patented they cannot even be reverse engineered. Innovations do die all of the time because the thing that is patented is a black box and even people who would reverse engineered it would get copyright trolled to hell.
My favourite example is spare parts for trains. Because the parts themselves are encumbered, it is illegal to repair trains yourself, thank you Siemens and Bombardier. Because if you get caught manufacturing spare parts, which are the intellectual property of someone else, you’ll get into big trouble. How exactly does this behaviour help with innovation?
Another example are video codecs. AV1 was specifically engineered to avoid any sort of patent trolling. How much better would AV1 be if all of that engineering time could have been spent on innovation instead of trying to avoid encumbrance?
Also in your example, if there was a small invention and Walmart would just copy it, would the small inventor really have the resources to pursue Walmart in court for years on end? Best example is Amazon. They steal innovations all of the time and because they’re doing it with small inventors, they face zero consequences because they do not have the resources to compete with a megacorporation.
But the biggest problem I have with patents is that it’s not even internally consistent with capitalism. Example being, capitalism says competition is an objective good, while a monopoly is an objective bad. So why grant an unlimited monopoly for something if competition is good? Because if people were competing, then everyone would try to make the best version of something.
I mean, the theory may be pretty neat from some perspective, but the reality is we get the worst of both worlds. Innovations get killed off because everything is super proprietary and reverse engineering is prohibited and megacorporations can do whatever they want because, well, it’s a free country. If you don’t like it, just sue the megacorporation for years on end and just maybe get recourse for their transgression.
Corporations will do whatever is most profitable for them. If the strategy to patent something and then copyright troll the world to hell and back is the most efficient thing, that will be done. If the strategy to make the best product possible and get the most customers possible is the most efficient thing, that will be done instead. This would be internally consistent with the ideology of capitalism. " Why should the big government intervene with the free innovation of the free market? Let the invisible hand guide the innovation and may the best innovation win."
Edit: Also about trains. Train companies with the resources repair them all of the time, luckily. Because try to piss off someone who holds the power to just annihilate hundreds of millions worth in contracts overnight if they wanted.
Patents are a good idea in every form of society. People are motivated by material rewards. By ensuring a creator is entitled to their labour and that some scum fuck corporation isn’t going to steal it, society incentivises innovation. The problem isn’t patents, it’s corporations abusing the system to serve their own interests because public institutions (such as the patent office) aren’t strong enough to push back.
I’m not super familiar with patents themselves, but I used to work in genetics back when human genes were able to be patented, and Myriad Genetics used their patent of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes to lock genetic testing for these common factors in breast cancer predisposition behind a massive paywall. Even after gene patents were no longer allowed, they refused to share their previous test results with researchers trying to develop a more comprehensive, accurate, and cost-effective test, slowing down medical research.
Research eventually progressed without Myriad Genetics’ help, and within a few years after the genes stopped being patented, genetic testing for the BRCA genes and many more was down to an affordable price, even for people without insurance coverage. We now learn more and more about these genes quicker than ever, and can offer tests that cover many genes at once for a low price and with high accuracy, due to the sharing of test results between labs that never would have happened while genes were patented.
This may be an outlier in patent usage - though I doubt it - but it still shows that big companies can use patent laws more to bully fair competition than to offer a better product. Patents are a good idea for helping small businesses and individuals protect their right to make a new product without a big company swooping in, but there are still massive issues with the process that need to be fixed to keep those same big companies from using the process in reverse to keep small businesses from growing into the competition necessary for a healthy economy.
Technically IP law covers patents, trademarks, copyright, and designs (sometimes also called design patents). Patent protection is 20 years (plus a little bit extra under certain conditions. Trademarks is indefinite in theory. Copyright (in many jurisdictions) is 70 yrs after death or 50 yrs for certain works (e.g., music recordings). Designs, I’m not really sure.
As low as that, eh? I got my first mobile (Nokia 3310) in 2003, and I felt like I was the last of my peers to get one (my classmates had mobiles around 1999, I remember Snake being big during my GCSE years). I expect at that time they were just more common among millennials than the older generations? I’m sure I was the only one in my year group from Year 11 to the end of Year 13 to not have a mobile.
Would it not be cooler just to be able to live with having to toil and labor for the crumbs of your capitalist owner and you know invent things because you liked to? (Source, you are brainwashed)
This meme shows a complete misunderstanding of patent law. A patent is a social contract that allows for a limited amount of protection for an invention being copied (usually 20 years) in exchange for it becoming public domain after that. This enables people to make a living inventing things. Are games played with the system, sure, does it work perfectly- no, but it’s better than the alternatives. (Source, am inventor)
This comment shows a complete misunderstanding of patent practice. Patents exist not for inventors, but for companies. Destin, from Smarter Every Day, has a recent video trying to make a grill scrubber in which he talks with many people about how Amazon for example constantly avoids patent claims from small inventors.
Humanity progressed from hunter-gatherers to the industrial revolution without the need for a judge to determine whether I can arrange atoms in a given way or not without giving a canon to someone else who decided to arrange atoms like that before me.
The problem is with corporations pushing up against weak public institutions and finding no resistance not those public institutions dummy.
Without corporations there isn’t a need for intellectual property. Public research, i.e. most research, is conducted without intellectual property, and most scientists dedicate their live to science not because they think they can get rich by selling one product, but because they get a decent wage and position for doing so, intellectual stimulus, and social recognition. Research and invention don’t necessitate intellectual property, only private companies do.
Oh boy here we go. What is a corporation? What does it mean for corporations to not exist? How exactly does that even work in practice?
Yes creative scientist invent things spontaneously without expectation of reward. But no scientist will contribute as much as a well funded and motivated team with a clear goal. And I’m sure all the scientists love it when you tell them they won’t be credited for their work and literally anyone will be able to take their idea and do whatever they want with it, that’ll do so much to help foster humanity’s innate desire to learn and be creative.
And it’s about coercing people who won’t act in good faith with the system into doing so. Most people would keep a secret to make money especially if their livelihood depended on it. Why force creatives to choose between sharing their works and profiting from them?
Private companies don’t need intellectual property. A corporation will steal your creation and outcompete you in profiting from it if given the opportunity. Intellectual property laws are what stop them from doing so. Again, the system has been eroded and misused by companies but at its core it protects workers and their labour.
Literally yes. Why do you think every fucking scientist loves sci-hub and is against Elsevier, and even submits their papers to arxiv for anyone to read for free? You clearly have no experience in the field and are talking out of your arse
Through the existence of exclusively public institutions, whether cooperative or government-owned, which don’t work in direct competition but either in cooperation or in emulated competition (I.e. a contest instead of a struggle to drive each other off business).
This literally doesn’t happen in public research.
In public research it works backwards. The more you publish (i.e. make available to the public), the more you earn. You really don’t seem to understand the concept of public research.
Great, so make knowledge accessible to everyone and abolish private corporations.
Yeah some of what I’ve said doesn’t portray my arguments well. In trying to explain that IP law is a process that protects creatives and without it creative endeavours would be eroded. This is not a point of debate. Virtually every country has an IP law. IP law doesn’t make it so people won’t share their ideas, it makes it so people who do are rewarded.
How is it not a point of debate? I’m giving you arguments as to why it’s a very good point of debate and you don’t seem to be able to respond to them.
Virtually every country also has homeless people and I disagree with that, that’s just an argument from majority, kinda useless to me.
I already explained how there are already existing mechanisms without IP pushing for the rewarding of intellectual production, such as the “publish-or-perish” system in public research. You may very well have arguments against it, but the fact of the matter is that you don’t need IP as a mechanism to reward people who engage innovation/creative/research processes. Public openings at institutions (whether a national orchestra, a research institute or a cinema academy with subsidised production), contests and grants… IP is not the only method for material rewarding of intellectual creation, which is what you’re trying to argue.
Because everyone does it for that exact reason
Patents are available to all. It protects the individual as well as the corporation.
I understand what you are saying but i hope you never invent something that can solve a current day crisis.
We are already behind schedule to solve things like climate change. If someone invents breakthrough tech then we need that today and open so other minds can quickly iterate and improve. Not after 20 years of stalling on a bureaucratic advantage.
If it wasn’t for capitalism chaining survival to productivity there would be no reason for this system to exist and we can move on to teach that “all good ideas should be copied” And “the same ideas can emerge in multiple different minds”
People work for material gain. By not entitling creators to the product of their labour you will discourage them from creating (and also be stealing from them). Patent law is exactly the kind of thing that protects the interests of working people but our current system is too weak to stand up to corporations.
What happens if the person who can solve climate change decides instead to trade stocks because saving the world doesn’t put food on the table?
IP laws are not your enemy, corporations are.
People, in general, do not work for material gain. They work because they have to in order to live, procreate and raise their children. People want a minimum amount of prosperity and economic safety. Beyond that, they want to work in a way and a place that fulfills them. Work itself is fun when done right, and working with others is awesome. Not even the “smart ones” or whatever work mainly for material gain in general. There are an overwhelming amount of counter examples to any variation of your claim. It would be more accurate to say people work for fame and glory, or to get laid (again reproductive success).
But even if what you said was true, it does not justify a complete monopoly. You could have something like “congrats you patented a new idea - if it catches on you will get a free house as a price!”
Of course you know all this and are just arguing facetiously. If “the person who can solve climate change” does anything but trade stocks they would contradict your argument. There is no money in inventing climate solutions. But nice insult to the people who are working on things like that.
Your actual argument is that we reward gambling and non-productive activity too much. That the smartest people are not working towards the survival or wellbeing of humanity, but for… crumbs off the table of the capitalists. That our economic system is not efficient in working towards our shared human values.
All of the jobs needed in society are not all of the jobs people would do if left to their own pursuits. Incentives are required.
The people who create products don’t own the IP, the company that employs them does.
Again, not a problem with IP law, a problem with corporate structure.
It is a problem with the law, corporations should not be allowed to own IP only the creator of the IP
I am aware that there are people like that that exists and that its quite a big number of people
But I will never understand how people like that exist. And to be very controversially honest I don’t trust the sincerity and thus ideas of people that think like this. Though i still respect such people like anyone else all the same.
Granted i am a certified autist but personal gain has almost no value to me, to the point that being paid actually demotivates me because:
I believe i deserve to have a good quality life regardless of economic value and know that statistically humanity has enough resources/food to guarantee such for everyone. It being conditional makes me feel exploited.
I always want to be the best possible version of myself and accomplish whatever i, with my human limitations, am able to, which has the most general positive effect on the total universe. Regardless of anything. I consider it personality offensive others assume i would want anything else.
I feel devaluated because society appears convinced that i would not do work if they were not threatening my survival, and because corporate hierarchy is what it is i actually have to underachieve all the time because fighting to make actual improvements would quickly threaten the control of higher ups and thus become a risk for my own means of survival.
Sure, if i could solve climate change and no one would even thank me for it leaving starving poor then i would be very sad. But self worth and identity would be Intact because i would be doing what i know is right.
While changing that in favour of stock trading maybe my life standards would be better but with the lack of any real value and living of a system designed around exploitation of existing value will make me feel worse to the point i may actually end up an existential crisis and kill myself.
To die sooner for the right reasons is a better life than to survive longer for the wrong reasons.
While i know my stance is rare i know there are plenty of people who think exactly like i do about this.
Anyway i also got a bit side tracked because this wasn’t about ip laws anymore, but my belief remains that if people can work on what they want without it affecting their personal access to luxury then there is no reason why they would not work on things that benefit all of society and thus themselves.
You don’t understand why people deserve the fruits of their labour? What are you on about bruh we’re talking about the patent office. People need to be incentivised to work because all of the work needed to create the society of excess you so want to enjoy isn’t all of the work people would do if left to their own devices.
The fruit of our labor should be a better world for everyone and future generations.
The belief that people won’t work without external pressure is contradicted by human history, cooperative work and mutual aid have existed for millennia before formal economies developed.
Its known that when people’s basic needs are met, the desire to create and contribute is a natural human drive.
Also as a bit of a sidenote to avoid confusion, i believe all people deserve and could be given more comfort and luxury then their labor currently grants them. So its not correct that i would not want people to have those things, just that it should be non conditional.
It’s not exclusive. You can meet everyones needs and then say, “hey if you make some cool fucking shit we’ll give you a little extra.” Why insist on people doing good solely because they feel like it. Why not push people to be better.
We know what people do when their needs are met, they’re called retirees. They don’t provide a net gain of almost anything btw. Yes people will pick up rubbish off a beach out of the goodness of their hearts. But the amount of litter collected from philanthropy is not greater than the amount made. And it’s a rounding error when compared to the amount of rubbish managed by garbage collectors.
IP laws are good precisely because they encourage people to create and discover even if all their needs are met. They compliment the selfless and persuade the selfish.
I am not sure this logic holds well.
People who are rich are still involved in society to the point i wish they would stop exploiting to chase more profit and just retire already with their near infinite wealth.
And the actual retirees your refer towards that don’t do anything are usually old people who slaved an entire career for a total less then some rich “earn” in a single day.
I do think people who build cool stuff deserve to be rewarded though, we could give them a cool artwork, trow them a party or just continue to respect and thank them for their accomplishments.
Currently the reward is “here are the means that someone else could use to not starve that you can now use to go on a holiday with.”
Society doesn’t run on good vibes my guy
Also. You don’t think the logic holds up well? That is literally how it works and how most countries do it.
In that case literally every court also shows a complete misunderstabding of patent law
So…
If it were a misunderstanding, why do we always see a spike in innovation once a patent expires? According to capitalist ideology, isn’t competition the best that could happen, instead of having an unlimited monopoly for 20 years?
I think their point was that in a way, patents are supposed to be more equitable because it allows the inventor to meet their basic needs by being the one to invent the patent.
There’s also the argument that while innovation skyrockets after a parent opens up, there would be less incentive to invent new things if Walmart could just copy it for cheaper the day after you show how you make it.
Or people would be super secretive with instructions for how to make their products that innovations could die with their creators since they have no incentive to release it.
I think we need to differentiate between the potential of something versus the reality of something. We see people being super secretive of innovations right now and because they’re patented they cannot even be reverse engineered. Innovations do die all of the time because the thing that is patented is a black box and even people who would reverse engineered it would get copyright trolled to hell.
My favourite example is spare parts for trains. Because the parts themselves are encumbered, it is illegal to repair trains yourself, thank you Siemens and Bombardier. Because if you get caught manufacturing spare parts, which are the intellectual property of someone else, you’ll get into big trouble. How exactly does this behaviour help with innovation?
Another example are video codecs. AV1 was specifically engineered to avoid any sort of patent trolling. How much better would AV1 be if all of that engineering time could have been spent on innovation instead of trying to avoid encumbrance?
Also in your example, if there was a small invention and Walmart would just copy it, would the small inventor really have the resources to pursue Walmart in court for years on end? Best example is Amazon. They steal innovations all of the time and because they’re doing it with small inventors, they face zero consequences because they do not have the resources to compete with a megacorporation.
But the biggest problem I have with patents is that it’s not even internally consistent with capitalism. Example being, capitalism says competition is an objective good, while a monopoly is an objective bad. So why grant an unlimited monopoly for something if competition is good? Because if people were competing, then everyone would try to make the best version of something.
I mean, the theory may be pretty neat from some perspective, but the reality is we get the worst of both worlds. Innovations get killed off because everything is super proprietary and reverse engineering is prohibited and megacorporations can do whatever they want because, well, it’s a free country. If you don’t like it, just sue the megacorporation for years on end and just maybe get recourse for their transgression.
Corporations will do whatever is most profitable for them. If the strategy to patent something and then copyright troll the world to hell and back is the most efficient thing, that will be done. If the strategy to make the best product possible and get the most customers possible is the most efficient thing, that will be done instead. This would be internally consistent with the ideology of capitalism. " Why should the big government intervene with the free innovation of the free market? Let the invisible hand guide the innovation and may the best innovation win."
Edit: Also about trains. Train companies with the resources repair them all of the time, luckily. Because try to piss off someone who holds the power to just annihilate hundreds of millions worth in contracts overnight if they wanted.
Patents are a good idea in every form of society. People are motivated by material rewards. By ensuring a creator is entitled to their labour and that some scum fuck corporation isn’t going to steal it, society incentivises innovation. The problem isn’t patents, it’s corporations abusing the system to serve their own interests because public institutions (such as the patent office) aren’t strong enough to push back.
I’m not super familiar with patents themselves, but I used to work in genetics back when human genes were able to be patented, and Myriad Genetics used their patent of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes to lock genetic testing for these common factors in breast cancer predisposition behind a massive paywall. Even after gene patents were no longer allowed, they refused to share their previous test results with researchers trying to develop a more comprehensive, accurate, and cost-effective test, slowing down medical research.
Research eventually progressed without Myriad Genetics’ help, and within a few years after the genes stopped being patented, genetic testing for the BRCA genes and many more was down to an affordable price, even for people without insurance coverage. We now learn more and more about these genes quicker than ever, and can offer tests that cover many genes at once for a low price and with high accuracy, due to the sharing of test results between labs that never would have happened while genes were patented.
This may be an outlier in patent usage - though I doubt it - but it still shows that big companies can use patent laws more to bully fair competition than to offer a better product. Patents are a good idea for helping small businesses and individuals protect their right to make a new product without a big company swooping in, but there are still massive issues with the process that need to be fixed to keep those same big companies from using the process in reverse to keep small businesses from growing into the competition necessary for a healthy economy.
Then patent law is better than intellectual property law, I think it’s 50 years after the creator dies and there are loopholes for companies
Technically IP law covers patents, trademarks, copyright, and designs (sometimes also called design patents). Patent protection is 20 years (plus a little bit extra under certain conditions. Trademarks is indefinite in theory. Copyright (in many jurisdictions) is 70 yrs after death or 50 yrs for certain works (e.g., music recordings). Designs, I’m not really sure.
All other things aside, 20 years is a long fucking time. 20 years ago we barely had cell phones. The iPhone was 2007 I think.
We barely had mobile phones 20 years ago? You sure about that?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Vk4KK-gh0FM
I think i meant smart phone. Apparently cell phone adoption was in the 60%+ range in 2005
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/
As low as that, eh? I got my first mobile (Nokia 3310) in 2003, and I felt like I was the last of my peers to get one (my classmates had mobiles around 1999, I remember Snake being big during my GCSE years). I expect at that time they were just more common among millennials than the older generations? I’m sure I was the only one in my year group from Year 11 to the end of Year 13 to not have a mobile.
Would it not be cooler just to be able to live with having to toil and labor for the crumbs of your capitalist owner and you know invent things because you liked to? (Source, you are brainwashed)