Patents are (at their core) a good thing. It protects little Jimmy Inventor from putting hours and his blood, sweat and tears into coming up with a novel invention, only for some big corpo to see it, steal the idea and bully Jimmy out of the market.
Jimmy has legal recourse to sue the big corpo if he has a patent, whereas without one he has nothing.
Just because the system’s been gamed (especially in the US) doesn’t mean it’s impossible to reform, and is currently still better than nothing.
Patents are not, at their core, a good thing. They are nice for an idealized and transient scenario, but the reality of capitalism is that the vast, vast majority of investment, production, etc. are done by a handful of large companies, and that includes R&D. Patents are, in reality, overwhelmingly one of the many tools large corporations have to shut out upstarts. In short, it entrenches the power of monopolies, trusts, and similar large businesses.
And that’s without even starting on how the law can be abused and, with the way our legal systems work, it is fundamentally more abusable for the side that has more money and can afford top corporate lawyers to concoct convenient arguments, leaving little Jimmy in the dust.
I agree. The system is screwed up, but that doesn’t mean the intention was bad.
Having no patent rights just means that whoever has more money will win. Big corps have the resources in both money and infrastructure to bring anything anybody else invents to market faster.
So today, big corps win. If we do away with the system, then big corps win. The only solution is reform. Or consumer knowledge and the ability to resist buying something in protest (which has failed time and time again which is evident by the big corps existence).
Patents are (at their core) a good thing. It protects little Jimmy Inventor from putting hours and his blood, sweat and tears into coming up with a novel invention, only for some big corpo to see it, steal the idea and bully Jimmy out of the market.
Jimmy has legal recourse to sue the big corpo if he has a patent, whereas without one he has nothing.
Just because the system’s been gamed (especially in the US) doesn’t mean it’s impossible to reform, and is currently still better than nothing.
Patents are not, at their core, a good thing. They are nice for an idealized and transient scenario, but the reality of capitalism is that the vast, vast majority of investment, production, etc. are done by a handful of large companies, and that includes R&D. Patents are, in reality, overwhelmingly one of the many tools large corporations have to shut out upstarts. In short, it entrenches the power of monopolies, trusts, and similar large businesses.
And that’s without even starting on how the law can be abused and, with the way our legal systems work, it is fundamentally more abusable for the side that has more money and can afford top corporate lawyers to concoct convenient arguments, leaving little Jimmy in the dust.
In the US, every employment contract has a line where any “invention” of an employee belongs to the company, so
I agree. The system is screwed up, but that doesn’t mean the intention was bad. Having no patent rights just means that whoever has more money will win. Big corps have the resources in both money and infrastructure to bring anything anybody else invents to market faster.
So today, big corps win. If we do away with the system, then big corps win. The only solution is reform. Or consumer knowledge and the ability to resist buying something in protest (which has failed time and time again which is evident by the big corps existence).
Patents as well as intellectual property laws, are entirely unnatural and only exist to prop up Capital.
Its against human nature to prevent cultural iteration.
Patents should be banned ❤️