Hacker News Reader

Comment by pbhjpbhj | Hacker News Reader

>Ideas are cheap, execution is where companies need to compete. //

A patent [the law intends] is granted for an invention, specifically not an idea. There needs to be a workable embodiment, sufficiently disclosed that a skilled reader can make the invention.

Making an idea a workable invention requires expending effort, that is why we need a patent system.

The alternative is industrial secrets, which IMO will greatly inhibit progress. Not because we can't reverse engineer but because of the costs of time and resources.

There is also an issue of sufficiency of patent disclosures reducing over time, patent offices need to be hot on that.

View on HN

How do industrial secrets, which can safely be reverse-engineered, inhibit progress more than patents, which often intentionally omit important details and can be used to actively prevent reverse-engineering by competitors?

Patents encourage monopolisation by harming smaller companies more than large conglomerates. Small companies either take their chances and risk being sued out of existence or actively avoid patent infringement, wasting resources and limiting innovation.

If anything, patents discourage knowledge sharing because showing your work opens you up to liability for violating patents you may have been unaware of. The only form of "knowledge sharing" patents seem to encourage is filing patents, which only becomes "knowledge sharing" when they expire many years later.

EDIT: The most frequently cited counter-example is historical: guilds keeping trade secrets to prevent outsiders from just copying them. But this is meant to associate all the negative associations we have with that time and its level of technology with the absence of patents without doing the actual work of establishing anything resembling a causal relationship.

>patents, which often intentionally omit important details

These are invalid. That might not help against a troll of course.

>The only form of "knowledge sharing" patents seem to encourage is filing patents, which only becomes "knowledge sharing" when they expire many years later. //

I'd have to check for USA, but in Europe you can use a patent for research, that's the whole point really of having them. You can even make the invention for yourself, you can't sell it though without a license. When you make an improvement and the original inventor won't license then in UK they can be forced to license it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com