From srctran@world.std.com  Wed Dec 20 15:07:43 2000
Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2000 10:07:43 -0500 (EST)
From: Gregory Aharonian srctran@world.std.com
Subject: [Patents] monopoly/publicity contradiction?

Ramon writes:
>For me, a patent should be granted only when the research needed for the
>invention is expensive, so that said research would not be possible
>without the incentive of monopoly.

Yes, but I ask Ramon, my monopoly is worthless if I cannot commercially
exploit my invention.  And commercially exploiting my invention often
can be very expensive (setting up a company, advertising, marketing,
technical support).  So I think it is only fair to extend your rule to
include "... if the marketing of the invention is expensive".

Otherwise, if I inexpensively came up with an invention socially useful
but of little realizable profit to me, I would not bother to disclose it
publicly, but rather turn my inventive energies to something else.

Additionally, you must hate small and independent inventors, who usually
are not rich enough to afford expensive research.  Are you arguing that
inventing should only be for rich companies and individuals?

There is a grandmother artist here in America, who over a few years as
part of her artistic studies, and at little cost, developed a potential
safe substitute for asbestos, a health hazard building material.  Are
you saying that all because she didn't spend much money researching her
invention, she doesn't deserve a patent?

Now if you restrict your argument to software, and argue that it doesn't
cost much to write good software, I have two problems with that.  First,
I spend twenty years of my life becoming a good programmer to be able to
"easily and inexpensively" write software.  Is not my twenty years an
expensive investment of my time?  Second, there is a lot of good software
that is quite expensive to develop, especially if you want software that
is robust, bug-free, easy to use and not bloated.  So your expensive test
cannot be applied generally to software, or to that matter, anything else.

That aside, expensive research as a test restricts the patent system to
rich people and companies.  I can't believe you mean that.

Greg Aharonian




