> advancing early discoveries could move at an exponentially faster pace.
Faster pace towards what though? Someone swooping in, doing the last 1% of the work, and making all the profit. E.g. it's sad how much more money Apple has made on Siri than SRI did. Patents do a pretty awful job of making sure researchers and inventors get compensated. But they're one of the few things to tip the balance in favor of researchers and inventors.
But they're one of the few things to tip the balance in favor of researchers and inventors.
My guess coming into this thread was that the business people and lawyers would be more pro-patent than the researchers and inventors. Of course one can be both, and I don't know the backgrounds of many participants, but it's interesting that in this thread both you and JackC have strong backgrounds in law. Have you found many researchers or inventors without comparable legal expertise who perceive the balance to be tipped in their favor? And moreover, that think this advantage is maintained rather than threatened by patents?
I got my degree in aerospace engineering, and worked at two R&D companies. I spent those years surrounded by engineering PhDs. Everyone supported the patent system, even though it was a huge hassle, because it gave them leverage against the Big Co's with outsourced manufacturing muscle.
I don't think the scales are tipped in favor of the inventors. I just think it's important to have something to even out the imbalance between commercialization and invention. I look at software, where there isn't a tradition of patenting things, and see the guys who built the technology that makes the world go around (UNIX, C, TCP/IP) leading comfortable professional lives while the WhatsApp creators exit for $16 billion. I don't think that state of affairs is indicative of the right balance, and I think it creates bad incentives for people in the industry.
I'm not saying that the patent system is the right solution. I'm saying that there is a problem that needs to be solved.
There are a mountain of patents to block innovation in speech recognition. Dragon and many others are ready to knock down any kind of real innovative small company that has success.[0] SRI never had a chance in that market to make it alone and that was understood from the beginning.
Only Apple's and Google's cash and legal muscle makes it possible for new speech recognition tech to be commercialized in the face of patents blocking innovation. Anyone smaller and less intimidating can just be crushed by incumbents.
"researchers and inventors"
That's disingenuous. It's the researchers and inventors that want the patent system out of software, information, and communication.
> It's the researchers and inventors that want the patent system out of software, information, and communication.
That's disingenuous. While that may appear true if you live in the HN / Silicon Valley bubble, it can in no way be generalized. In the rest of the world, i.e. the vast majority of it, most researchers, inventors and engineers (including in software, information and communications) are proud of their patents.
Faster pace towards what though? Someone swooping in, doing the last 1% of the work, and making all the profit. E.g. it's sad how much more money Apple has made on Siri than SRI did. Patents do a pretty awful job of making sure researchers and inventors get compensated. But they're one of the few things to tip the balance in favor of researchers and inventors.