11.26.09
Gemini version available ♊︎Researchers Show That Patents Can Harm Society (New Study)
Summary: Yet another piece of academic research shows the obvious — that intellectual monopolies serve in obstructing competition
TECHDIRT shares the following findings which suggest that copying (sometimes inspiration) is beneficial to society; impeding inspiration — contrariwise — would be detrimental.
And, now some researchers have started to look into it, and actually have built a model that shows society is likely better off when copying is the norm. Aaron deOliveira alerts us to the research on this, which tries to model societies with creators and innovators, and finds that society is served best when 30% of the population is involved in creating new goods, while 70% is focused on copying.
“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants” –Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
Some people who are in the field of law seem to be ridiculing the patent system using the director of the USPTO while the Rambus case — a fine demonstration of the patent system going berserk [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9] — is to be concluded very soon. One man who fought for justice in this case is Andy Updegrove, who has some things to say.
“Patents can also ruin our environment in a major way.”Our posting with video about Monsanto patents received a lot of good feedback (not in the comments), including a request for someone to transcribe for the benefit of all. One reader wrote: “I always translate your articles to Spanish and email them to teachers in my birth country Peru. We do have to protect freedom everywhere so that’s my grain of sand. [...] I wish I could have the transcript to translate it and send it to Peru. Please if do you have the transcript can you email it to me or publish it on the site so this group of Peruvian teachers can benefit from it.”
Can anyone help with this? Regardless, here is another recent video that explains how the patent system impedes innovation rather than promote any. Patents can also ruin our environment in a major way. █
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