M. Fioretti wrote:
That's not the point I was making. I never said "new = bad" and I
don't know how you got that impression.
From your sentence above: "The thing about using patents to "protect"
invention is actually a very recent aberration in a few fields".
Trust me, I didn't mean to imply "new = bad" and I still don't know how
that came accross. The fact that an aberration came out recently does
not mean that all that is recent is an aberration.
Heavy capital investment isn't new, but it has been for a long time
reserved, for any reasons, only to religious or politic, anyway
monolithic and centralized, administrations
I'm pretty sure that rich people who are not political or religious
institutions have been around for a long time. In any event, political
and religious groups are not what I have in mind. I'm talking about
private individuals who are rich, and spend money on "science" (before
the name as such appeared) and don't see a need to exclude others from
using the knowledge they discover.
Or, maybe, "both systems were closed by lots of patents, and the one
that made the smartest use of them (certainly not for the common good
and universal love) managed to keep control to make more money".
Fair enough. But the smart use of them involved making it easier for
others to use them.
Look, you've made a lot of good points and I don't want to deny them.
But at least I hope I've successfully questioned the "common wisdom"
that patents for /inventions/ are necessarily good and will encourage
progress. At the very least, you've limited your claim to inventions
that require heavy capital investment. Likewise, I'm sure there is at
least are at least some scenarios where patents might actually encourage
invention. My goal was mostly to shake the belief that patents, when
applied correctly (no software, no genetics, etc) must be good for
invention.
Cheers,
Daniel.
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