Comment by acalderaro | Hacker News Reader

Comment by acalderaro | Hacker News Reader

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The biggest concern I see with eliminating IP is that it effectively eliminates an incentive for innovation. That doesn't mean innovation halts completely, but if the system of compensation does not change, it can be reasonably expected that rates of innovation adjust according to the incentives available for innovators.

What I would prefer is a discounted lump sum paid out to IP owners, at the time of patent filing/copyright. For instance, instead of having to legally defend a medical patent for 20 years and overcharge hospitals/distributors during that time, receive a discounted cash flow equal to the approximate amount of value that would be forgone by pricing the innovation at competitive prices.

Of course this system isn't foolproof, and would be subject to tremendous "gaming" from patent holders and regulators, but innovators could reap the rewards of their innovative research without having to deal with pricing their products out of reach for some individuals who can't afford the price.

Again, it isn't foolproof. But there exists a "most efficient" means of balancing the risk/reward of innovation that lies somewhere between "IP rights should be forever" and "No IP at all."

I hear this constantly but it doesn't ring true to me.

Look at the 3D printer inventors from the 1980's who rested on their laurels selling $30,000 3D printers until their patents expired and the open source community started producing them for under $1000. Ten years after the patents expired, you can get a 3D printer for $199 that genuinely rivals the quality of a $30,000 printer just 10 years ago.

There are all manner of incentives for innovation and profit is only one. But locking down ideas in this way prevents others from improving on ideas, and incentivizes one-time innovators to focus on legal battles rather than continued development.

But would the innovation that led to the creation of 3D printers have taken place if patent law didn't exist? And since the open source movement is based entirely on those patents (as I understand), would cheap 3D printers exist if the 1980s tech was never developed?

I think these are the questions you should be thinking about when arguing against IP protection laws.

Edit: One thing you failed to mention is that the technology available after the patents expired was orders of magnitude more advanced than what was available in the 1980s. For this reason, it's simply a no-brainer that the cost went from $30k down to $1k.

Then there's the whole "maker" movement that happened to coincide with the development of 3D printers which meant that 3D printers had a decently sized potential market. Go back 5-10 years and people didn't even know what the hell a 3D printer was! So it's only natural that the original inventors didn't invest more in optimizing the design and making it cheaper.

Well you don't even need to look just at commercially available products - just look at the FOSS landscape for what gets produced when there is no financial incentive or IP law to protect the material - certainly we would be in a much different place technology wise if we didn't have FOSS as the backbone for a grand majority of technology that exist on the market today, and all of that FOSS was created without the financial incentive or the IP law to protect it.

The existing IP structure can be a useful tool and motivator for people, but it also adds in an extra requirement to all software it touches, whether the designers and coders are conscious of it or not - suddenly, there is a requirement that it make profit on top of what it actually is supposed to do. There's nothing wrong with making money - I'm not here to make a Stallmanistic rant about F/OSS. But this type of structure isn't necessary for great leaps in technology. In the past it was useful because that's how access to the development funds were locked up - you had to play under someone else's banner and their rules to bring you idea to the forefront. Software was different because you didn't need a factory to produce it, and while you still need the factory, you don't need any one particular factory anymore to do the production.

Innovation can and does happen just fine without patent laws or financial incentive.

It's a great point. I'll add that even big companies and government that push for patents use tons of FOSS software because it's better for them. Says a lot, eh? ;)

As long as they are not violating the licenses I see no problem with that.

It depends on your moral system. Lets say it's Mirosoft pushing a server OS, Windows, saying it's better than UNIX's in every way. Definately worth the money. Then we find their Hotmail service runs on FreeBSD for better reliability & performance. I'd say what they tell customers about Windows Server was fraudulent in that situation and they need to get off FreeBSD if they really believe what they preach.

Something along these lines for companies pushing proprietary software and patent suits as good for innovation/productivity while using non-patented FOSS for own innovative or productive projects. It's dishonest. Although, I recall the Hotmail incident actually happening and they had to switch over lol. Same when people found out Microsoft ran on one AS/400.

I'm not talking about software specifically. In general, I support IP protection for industries where significant up-front investment is required for an innovation to come to fruition.

I am referring to commercial 3D printers which were $30k in 2010, compared to off the shelf printers sold today for $200. The cost of a microprocessor board of sufficient capability hasn't particularly changed between now and then.

Definitely. Someone else here pointed out all the greatest innovations in CompSci came during 1960-1980's when patent suits were much lower. Mostly government or corporate R&D just pushing the envelope. There's ways to do good hardware-level security I can't touch because the patent creates too much leverage on me. And many vague patents by "Non-Practicing Entities" who didn't build crap cover the same area. I could be hit with who knows how many suits. And looking at them triples the damages so I don't. Only reason I know about those is I accidentally found them googling CompSci papers.

You can bet companied and Universities will still invent stuff if there aren't patents. The companies will do it or acquire it for competitive advantage. The Universities for prestige, investments from companies, creating talented workforce, and so on. Im for software patents, esp on INFOSEC, to be banned entirely as I see no negative impact on high-impact projects.

There are two research incentives. The incentive of potential profit, and the incentive of wanting an end product.

People would have wanted, and invested in, the development of 3D printers for just the personal desire part. This is how the most valuable R&D works right now - the vast majority of cancer and major life debilitating disease research is being done not by big pharma (who are instead just researching more dick enlargement pills and modified recipes of the same drugs on the market today they can re-patent for 20 years and bribe off doctors to prescribe exclusively by name because they are the most reliable payoffs for their investments) but by university and state level research institution and non-profits dedicated to their research.

The unsettling truth is that truly revolutionary research does not often come out of profit driven R&D labs. Those organizations are arranged to minimize the risk of research, which also dramatically cuts its potential yields by only targeting predictable results that can quickly be turned into government-granted monopoly profits. Its exploitation of a flawed system that takes talent that could be going towards truly innovative R&D that would almost certainly offset at least what would be lost in cutting these (predominantly) leeches out of the industry.

Believe it or not, the ideal you are talking about doesn't really exist anymore unfortunately. Even university research nowadays is primarily funded by external sources (government and industry). The more affluent universities have internal funding setup which is typically quite competitive and needs some sort of deliverable anyways. Case in point: the most desirable skill in a university professor is figuring out how to convince others to fund your work, while also giving them something in return. The exception of course is government. NSF and similar government programs are the only funding sources for pure basic research as far as I know.

The current wave of 3D printers are not based entirely on those patents. They use the same basic principle of extruding plastic filament in layers, but as I understand it the details of how to do this effectively were re-engineered by the RepRap project through years of careful experiments. One of the major tricks used to save material cost and printing time - adjustable density infill - is, as far as I know, entirely unique to the RepRap project and the wave of printers building on its work. I think the use of PLA for 3D printing might be solely their doing too.

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