what is your opinion on the marriage of software and patenting

New game. Could mean they want to test these mechanics. That doesn't prove anything.

Valve wants to expand to asian markets. This could be like CS

 

Yeaaaah totally, truth be told, china has lot of these ripoffs this is in no way a unique ripoff,
why in the world would valve develop new game merchanics just for the chinese market where these new game merchanics will be faster stolen and marketed then you can scream intelectual property?

 

I really don't know a whole lot about the legality of patents but I don't like what I read.

Patents are essentially a good idea and I'm sure that sometimes they do what they were intended. But there is so much motive to exploit them and such weak checks and balances against it that really they suck. They don't seem to be worth anything without the financial clout to bring them to bear.

I'm scared by some of the bio/chem patents. I don't care if mybook sues facespace. Big pharma already looks pretty irresponsible. I'm not sure I trust big money corporations with the future of meds, sustainable crops, etc. Maybe we would be better off with slower scientific progress in some other model.

 

slower scientific process is waht got us in this mess in the first place

the only real scam "big pharma" does is slow scientific progress until they stop making enough money, then they take a patent out of a drawer with a new lifesaving drug and get called life savers

patents really are bad these days, the benefit (knowing how its made, so others can improve on it) is irrelevant these days, the only real benefit now is quality control and brand protection

both can be guaranteed in other ways

 

Yet pharma needs the patents the most, research costs are the highest you can find, first of all most developments go into the bin because they don't help/have sideeffects which are unacceptable/don't get approved by food and drug agencys (FDA in US)
Yet they start up with first research for creating an substance at all, then to get it clean enought, then research for small production, then test series on different animals, then test series on ppl, while each step needs an extra approval which costs time and tons of money and each and every animals needs to get analyzed, just to end up with 1 halfway working patent in hundrets, which might not even be profitable.
If not for patents, pharma would be dead in the tracks.
Slower development? No development at all ...

 

pharma is in the top 3 of most profitable industries

sure they would make less money as others try to "compete" with them, but then again this would boost companies to ether specialise in production OR research, since 2 or 3 companies having monopolies on both is a real issue

basically you would see more small scale companies that get funded trough donators and aim to find a drug for a single problem, when they find one, they sell the recepy to the highest bidder(s) who then take it trough the legal train and start production

if the producers keep there mouth shut about the recepy, they will make more profit for there buck of buying it, if no real monopolies exist, at any time always a few companies know the recepy since technology corps tend to sell to a handfull of "donating" producers exclusively


other industries are just like this, only pharma has to be the herpderp child, because its such a touchy subject, but it isnt needed

 

No, since pharma research mean you get a single product under hundreds which works and get aproved, just to find a single product you need to invest hundreds of millions (avg cost of a new drug(not the "i add a bit of nothing" kind)is about 800 mio dollars and takes about 12 years), small companies don't have the money and big companies won't buy/donate anything from them if they just can copy others researches.
And they still can sell their old shit since noone invests in new researches anymore.
It has nothing to do in how profitable it is since there is no need for research since everyone else doesn't research either (if they would, you just could copy their product).
So gl finding donators.

Another solution would be to get a tax for research, but if you really want that belgium pays for the entire worlds pharma research gl convicing your neighbors.

 

If time and effort goes into something, i.e. a video game engine, then the original creator has a right to make money off it, assuming there weren't very similar projects running at the same time.

 

thats weird because i always assumed companies wanted market share and make more money then the competition

to make more money, you need to be better then the other guys

also the software industry "largely" works like i described the pharma industry "could" work... people copy basic code and re-use it constantly, especially all the open source crap

as long as you dont steal too much, too obvious, or from large players you are in the green

stuff like linux works, and is still developed

its not all money that makes the world go round

 

It's not stealing if you don't patent it, and changing smth slightly and market it can still count as patent breach, that's why you also patent processes,
which hardly works in the software buisness, ofc there are already engine patents or code language patents which you and the guy you're copying from use the same, but you both payed for using that part so it isn't that unpredictable for you to find a similar solution for a similar problem ...

Anyway, I doubt any industry want to have higher sales with less profit, it's rather the other way around, industry want generaly high profits and keep the sales as low as possible to achieve the same profits so they have less capital at risk (and more for stocks.lol)
You don't make more money if you just make everyones products better, you make money if you make only your own products better, which won't happen if you don't have a patent, simply because there is nothing like "basic code" in the pharma.
Ofc often there is 1 active component used over and over again in new products (which might get put into new filling material or with some vitamin crap or a different dosis, in fewer occasions the active component might get changed a tiny bit to solve better or w/e) but the production process stays the same as in the beginning. I would call that "cosmetics" for the same product. But imo that's no development at all, and this would mostly not happen either since it's mainly done to renew patents anyway.

 

I agree with Stephan Kinsella's opinions on intellectual property.

tl;dr
Intellectual property is not property. As such there is no justification for intellectual property rights.

 

Intellectual property is important for innovation, as people need money to live, a law which protects your ability to make money from your innovations is important, nobody would bother inventing things if they couldn't benefit from it.

Complaining about IP because people use it to do stupid shit is kinda like saying anarchy is good because of frivolous lawsuits.

 

what if there are ONLY 1 good law, and every other is frivolous

id say that calls for a system change