James Watt: Monopolist

I just started this book on friday!

I found the story and the points made very interesting, but in telling it the excerpt seemed overly-redundant: it repeated similar ideas several times in slightly different ways. I feel like I could have had a similar experience in an article of half the length or less. Sorry, but I don't think I could read an entire book written in this manner.

It's a broader philosophical issue in the history of ideas, also: when should an inventor get credit for inventing something, and how much credit, and how do we know? Some inventions were truly amazing insights, where if the inventor hadn't come up with them, the world would probably have been without that invention for decades, if it ever got it. But many inventors essentially anticipate history by only a few months or even weeks: they get to an idea that, given progress on subsidiary technologies, was getting to the point where it was obvious to anyone in the field, but they get there just ever-so-slightly earlier than everyone else, so win the race, but don't really change history much as a result.

>Very relevant is the phenomenon of simultaneous invention (which if correct throws serious doubt on the usefulness of patents)

Does it? The basic argument remains the same, the need to make it worth the initial effort of research and development. Just because more than one inventor decided that the expenditure of time and effort was worth the return from the patent doesn't change the argument that no one would have bothered/financed it to begin with if not for the patents.

But patents themselves may be the best way to level the playing field for newcomerts. The Mises article makes the case for patents being "unnecessary evils, the relics of an earlier time", but they don't make the case for the flip side.

Take the story of Robert Kearns, inventor of the intermittent windshield wiper (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54564-2005Feb...). Granted, it took a while for him to get a just resolution, but think about what would've happened if patents had been considered an "unnecessary evil" and he had been unable to get one. Not only would he have not gotten any reward for his creativity, but he likely wouldn't have even met with the automakers. And why would he bother tinkering for years to make these wipers when the automakers could just dismantle one, and use their greater resources to copy it?

There are a lot of problems with the current patent system, but it should still exist in some form.