Patents grant inventors a limited monopoly on the manufacture, use, or sale of their inventions, but this hinders competition and innovation.
Discussion
but inventions, and sale of a competition the this grant their hinders use, on monopoly or Patents limited manufacture, innovation. inventors
Patents don't even do that unless the country respects the law, a companycabn make the claim they changed it and you have to have enough to defend it in court
How do you incentivise the input of capital to early stage ideas without a defensible moat via a patent?
Do you simply have tk be faster than your competition?
I am sure there is a good answer to this, Iβve just not explored it before
Patents in fact distort the investment and disincentives projects which cannot be patented, like foundational physics.
If access to government coersion is the only moat you have, then it's not a great business anyhow.
Against Intellectual Property is a must read on the topic:
https://mises.org/library/book/against-intellectual-property
One defense of patents is hear is that a smaller business with a new idea never has a chance to compete against a large conglomerate that can just steal their ideas and use their immense resources to scale and make it to market faster. I don't have any good answers either way, but I can understand that argument. A lot of good arguments against patents as well.
In reality patente hinder small business exponentially more! Big business has the budget to lobby and bribe to register patents, and to take smaller business to court in case of infringement.
I agree, I think patents definitely favor large corporations more than small businesses. A lot of corporations simply have defensive patents, not for the sake of actually producing a product of their own, but to prevent other companies from producing a competing product. But I certainly can see a benefit toward small start ups with a unique product idea trying to make it to market against larger companies. Perhaps make patents only last a year or two rather than the decade plus they last now?
True, but patents do help raise a lot of capital which can churn more innovations faster (also dumber, but still). It would be great if we could reduce the risk for investors without having to rely on IP.
The dumber part is important, the misallocation of resources is a serious problem!
I recommend reading Against Intellectual Property by Stephan Kinsella, a lot of these questions are discussed there.
https://mises.org/library/book/against-intellectual-property
Patent is the dibs of adult world
Interesting π€
Another rabbit hole π³οΈ
Ideas have people.
They were always there waiting to enter the minds of people.
Patents are to suggest and protect those claiming that an ideas and inventions are the deliberate action of a person and the first person claiming he was the first now "owns" the idea.
It rarely ever is the deliberate action to find something, or the first to find something, but rather stumbling onto something one was not at all looking for but which turns out to be great and useful.
Patent are a form of protectionism. Great for those with money, there to make more money, abusing the legal system to help defend this impossible ownership position...
I disagree with this viewpoint.
Initial patents are time limited protection so that inventors can develop their invention and get them to market before the big companies rip the product off.
They aren't cheap, and a permanent patent is typically beyond the affordability of most entrepreneurs working out of their garage.
Cashflow is what kills most young businesses. And sinking thousands into a patent which probably won't offer them actual protection without an expensive and lengthy court case is not a practical option.
What happens in real life is a big company monitors temporary patent applications, and if they want that product, they watch and wait until that patent expires, launch their own version with more cashflow, and sink the fledgling competitor.
Patents are a mechanism to reinforce the monopolistic position big companies have over their chosen markets. At least in the West.
Quite a bit of innovation goes into subverting patents by copying the function of a patented product and implementing it in a slightly different way.