Comments on: It’s Official: Patents Stifle Innovation

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 14:38:08 +0000

A lot of so-called research is done through development (trial and error, intuition, and aggregation of public domain stuff we all learn from).

Read http://slated.org/the_right_to_own_knowledge

By: aeshna23

aeshna23 — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 14:31:06 +0000

What Dale says doesn’t reflect history. What has happened is that countries become wealthy and then powerful interests convince the government that patents are useful. It’s quite doubtful that Europe would gotten prosperous if it had respected patents before a high standard of living.

Also, patents are becoming extreme now in that basic silly things are being patented. That the Tom-Tom case would have been laughed out of the court in the 19th century is a symptom of how legal fundamentalism about patents has increased. This makes claims about the historical benefits of dubious relevance now.

It strikes me that the current fascist patent regime versus no patents is a false dilemma. We could look when patents make sense and when they don’t. Pharmaceutical patents make the most sense among patents, because the cost of the research so exceeds the cost of the manufacturing. Thus, it could be argued that pharmaceutical patents increase research. However, there’s really no economic argument for software patents, as the “research” expense for the software patent is the research checking out that no one else has patented the idea.

By: Dale B. Halling

Dale B. Halling — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 14:36:29 +0000

The so called “scientific study” does not seem to comport with the empirical evidence. Those countries with the strongest patent system have had the most innovation and technology diffusion. Those countries without patent systems or weak patent system have had little or no technology innovation and little technology diffusions. Unless, this “scientific study” can explain this, it is clearly flawed.

The lack of innovation in this decade is due in part to the US weakening its patent system. http://hallingblog.com/2009/05/26/innovation-regulatory-road-kill/