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Comment by nsxwolf | Hacker News Reader

Not even on tangible, physical inventions? How can the little guy ever make money on an idea if he or she can be instantly wiped out by someone with more money?

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I don't know. But how did Facebook, Twitter, and Github grow without applying for patents for years. Twitter only started filing patents recently. Facebook started filing after it already won in the market against MySpace and Friendster.

Why didn't Google just copy Facebook and Twitter? Those would be easy apps to copy in the state they were when they first got famous.

It doesn't happen because its harder for people to copy ideas than you think it is. If you write software for a living and work in a big organization you will understand that they don't have a magic wand that they can just wave to make new products appear.

> But how did Facebook, Twitter, and Github grow without applying for patents for years

Network effects and jealously guarding their data. These days the technology is not nearly as important as the data.

> How can the little guy ever make money on an idea if he or she can be instantly wiped out by someone with more money?

But that is exactly the way it happens now: the little guy can consider himself lucky if he is not the one to get sued both by big companies AND trolls.

In the software world the problem is just utterly insane, but this is a general feature of the patent system.

The vision, tools, and processes that lead to great inventions are where the real value lies. These intangibles can't be easily copied. They aren't ever in the public eye, and without really being a part of that process you can't learn much about it.

Learn how to do this instead of learning how to just invent a Thingamajig.

Then you can consistently make Thingamajigs that are first-to-market products with great branding that people will choose over your competitors products.

Patents aren't needed. Copyright protection is.

People should be allowed to have their own namespace in the public market and it is beneficial to have a system of government to enforce this. We don't need to protect anything else.

Patents don't help the little guy as big company's can ignore them for years.

Say you're a little guy with a patent. How much time, effort, and money will it take to sue a large corporation with deep pockets and several law firms on retainer?

That's the NPE/patent troll sales pitch, just sell them your patent and they'll worry about that.

So not a single even vaguely pro-patent position from anyone?

The USPTO has processed 16,020,302 applications in its history. Obviously many of these are from big business, but many are from individuals. Why haven't the individuals figured out by now that they are worthless? Why do they keep falling for it?

Sometimes a system is completely morally bankrupt, but still profitable for the players thereof. Many players will, in that circumstance, continue to play, even if everyone agrees that it would be better to have a different system.

Few (or zero) people believe that patents are universally valueless to the patent-holder.

What is widely believed, especially in the field of software, is that society would be better off without software patents. In particular, that "Progress in Science and the useful Arts", at minimum in the area of software, would proceed faster without patents. Whether or not it would be more just is less widely agreed upon.

Of course, many stakeholders profit from the existing regime. Some of those say "patents are good", some say "patents are bad, but while they exist, will shall use them".

Well put.

I don't know, working perhaps?

Or do you prefer that the little guys spend millions of dollars against the big guys in court?. Who of course have thousands of essential patents each that the little guys infringe.

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