I think it should be obvious by now for anyone that we are well past the point where the system is fixable, the only solution is to abolish it or it will again become captured by trolls, oligopolies and lawyers and used to crush anyone doing anything innovative and useful.
Nice sentiment. I share it. It's also a waste of breath.
> trolls, oligopolies and lawyers
Every member of that group is well funded, highly connected, and very aggressive.
They are ready to devote untold resources to crush your sentiment and should that fail, to redirect your reform efforts into a more palatable outcome.
Every piece of legislation is a compromise between competing interests and their competing interest guarantees that the system will never be abolished.
A far more successful strategy would be to chip away at the fringes. Add restrictions and more bureaucracy until the system becomes cumbersome for even the most resourceful player to use. Bit by bit, piece by piece. Add complexity until it collapses on its own.
Apple -a beloved public fetish - and its patent wins have paved the way for the attack of the patent empires and rogue states, in broader public opinion. Forget abolishing patents, I would expect more litigations and monetization attempts from software patent holders and a more proprietary, closed world for a decade or so; till the heritage of the "new Apple" erodes.
++@betterth Because Apple is more positively perceived by media, lawmakers and general public in comparison to unnamed companies which are quickly named as "trolls", Apple's patent wins created more sympathy towards patents. By "paved the way" I just mean that, in public opinion, patents are justified, because people think "Apple deserves to sue others, so patents must be good".
BS. Patent trolls have been around for a very long time, and companies like IBM represent the lionshare of patent applications.
Apple themselves files one of the lowest numbers of offensive patent lawsuits -- it's just a confirmation bias mixed with the massive publicity that Apple gets.
Just because you hear about EVERY one of Apple's lawsuits doesn't mean that Apple is "paving the way"!
I hate the knee-jerk "blame Apple" nonsense that is so pervasive! What is Apple doing that is so groundbreaking to patents?
I argue that the weaponization of patents, something APPLE TAKES NO PART IN, is a far worse problem. Google buying up Motorola for their patent portfolio and loaning them out to partners like dirty nukes... and APPLE is the leader of patent nonsense?
I hate the knee-jerk "blame Apple" nonsense that is so pervasive! What is Apple doing that is so groundbreaking to patents?
You know, I've looked all through the Constitution, and while there's some stuff about promoting the progress of science and the useful arts, I don't see anything about starting thermonuclear wars against competitors. Can you help me out?
A far more successful strategy would be to chip away at the fringes
Why would that be so? Wouldn't all the groups continually fix what you chip away and then some?
Bit by bit, piece by piece. Add complexity until it collapses on its own.
Do you have a more detailed description of how to break the patent system by adding more regulations to it, such that the special interests do not, or can not remove them to continue the system?
> Wouldn't all the groups continually fix what you chip away and then some?
Ah. Divide and conquer. Lawyers love rules/regulations/complexity because it usually means more $$$ for compliance efforts. You exploit a conflict of interest between the patent holder and their legal representation.
They will be fighting each other, while you weigh in for the most onerous changes.
> Do you have a more detailed description of how to break the patent system by adding more regulations to it
The problem with the patent system is that it works. You apply for a patent, you get a patent, you bash somebody's head in with the patent.
What you need is to insert many, many pain points along the way. Enough pain points and complexity that the system as whole, no longer functions.
The path to that is to find allies for each particular pain point. There will always be some group that will benefit through additional regulation. If that weren't the case, there would never be any regulations. All regulations are meant to make somebody's life better.
For example, the regulation for seatbelts in cars made seatbelt manufacturers happy. Etc, etc. Somebody always gets a cut, somebody always benefits.
So you systematically support and push regulation and promote the benefactors of said regulation. Your only challenge would be to come up with some beneficial reasoning for said regulation, to cover up the naked interest of the particular benefiting party.
I agree, historically, big 180 shifts in legislation didn't happen because one interest group had a more.compelling argument. Change happens when the economics shift, such that there is now a stronger economic and political (or sometimes military) power in favor of change.
Forexample, slavery didn't end because one side convinced the other. Slavery ended because capitalism changed the economic power balance such that there was more money siding with the end of slavery.
The same will happen to IP. Patents will only end when there's a clear stronger economic power more interested in the end of patents.
re: the abolition of slavery and your economic argument - do you believe this to be the case in all instances where slavery was abolished? or just in the US? Spain abolished slavery circa 1550. Great Britain abolished slave trade circa 1810. Did the US just lag these economies (and GB lag Spain) a lot at this point?
Things are already complex enough to the point where even a very good lawyer barely grasps how things work. The latest example is the Redhat scenario. They hit Redhat, Redhat swings pack with a GPL violation. I guarantee you that the GPL never came up in conversation when they were considering suing Redhat.
We just need to make things even more complex until lawyers absolutely cannot predict the outcome of litigation. At that point enforcing patents can become a dangerous proposition.
Complexity is an advantage for the existing elite. The more complex you make patent law, the harder it will be to defend against if you're a small fish with limited resources.
IMO complexity through abstraction enables most of the evil in the world.
> Complexity is an advantage for the existing elite.
This is true, but until a point. Eventually if a system becomes complex enough, it must collapse. The elite are still human and they still have limitations. Even now, no lawyer is capable of committing the entire body of law responsible for the patent system to memory, nevermind actually grasping all of it.
> The more complex you make patent law, the harder it will be to defend against
The more complex the system, the more contradictions it contains. The more contradictions for you to exploit.
On the contrary, if we had an extremely simplistic system, the small fish would just be told NO with no recourse. Today, they can find reason after reason to counter-sue, appeal, file forms, etc.
Mind you, I'm only a fan of bureaucracy when I'm trying to destroy a particular system.
All through history patents have always hindered innovation and progress, and there is plenty of research to back this up:
http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/against.h...
I think it should be obvious by now for anyone that we are well past the point where the system is fixable, the only solution is to abolish it or it will again become captured by trolls, oligopolies and lawyers and used to crush anyone doing anything innovative and useful.