From phm@a2e.de  Mon May  7 00:33:23 2001
From: phm@a2e.de (PILCH Hartmut)
Date: Mon, 7 May 2001 01:33:23 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: A BIG waste of time ... ('twas: Re: [Patents] Re: Software and
 Technical effect)
In-Reply-To: <002401c0d677$01f59d60$6501a8c0@flint1.mi.home.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0105070111320.10310-100000@mulix.oas.a2e.de>

> Like I said the first time, you need to be inventive enough to find a
> better way to do whatever is done by a patent you do not like.  That
> is the whole point of the system, to incite people to come up with
> another way to do the task.

Some problems with this
- researchers are scarce, so this kind of allocation of a nation's
  brainpower may be a waste of scarce ressources
- copyright also bars you from just copying ideas, you have to understand
  and write something new.  Such creative imitation takes quite an effort,
  usually not siginificantly less than the first creation.  The balance
  between a fairly low innovation effort and a relatively high
  imitation effort, together with the first mover advantage and other
  mechanisms of software business makes "strong protection" useless
- sequentiality of innovation makes it profitable to have more companies
  in the field, because thereby more ideas are generated and the market
  grows bigger.  it is not a null-sum game.
- most patented ideas, especially in the software field, are of such a
  trivial level that no programmer would care to read the patent
  description because finding the ideas oneself is faster.  This way
  writing software becomes a car-parking or gold-digging game.  Although
  there is an unlimited amount of gold or parking lots, the ressource is
  made scarce artificially, and a wasteful system of negotiations,
  generating high transaction costs, begins.  This then leads to a
  situation where the software business becomes risky and innovation is
  deterred

> And if you cannot do so, then you get to pay tribute for twenty years
> to whoever did.

That seems to many of us like a silly game-rule which we won't get used
to.  Why should we accept this artificial scarcity that only deters
innovation?

> And if you do not want patents on software in Europe that is fine by
> me (note that I am not pursuing software patents myself).

Strange. Maybe you should consider advocating some restraint on the patent
system. Making software patentable may bring and adverse wave of
resentment against the whole system, because what still seems to be a
tolerable macroeconomic tradeoff in much of the hardware sphere is
unbearable in the software sphere and can generate a torrent of
anti-patent sentiment that may then strike a resonating chord in the
hardware area as well. After all Machlup wrote in his report to US
congress that the patent system was historically a "victory of the lawyers
over the economists". The laywers prevailed, because they had a lot of
irrational popular sentiment (gold-digger dream, sympathy for the small
guy who enters the first league by a simple leap without appropriate
marketing efforts etc) on their side. But this sentiment may be turning
around.  It is already turning somewhat even in the hardware sphere.

> For that means that American businesses will have an advantage over
> those who do not have such patent rights , in that they will have to
> pay tribute to the American inventors who do have those patents when
> selling in the US.

Not necessarily.  They can obtain US patents.
On the other hand, they can also chose to stay out of the whole patent
mess and just concentrate on moving things ahead quickly.
A founder of a large American chip company, Teradyne, always said that
that was his policy.  Even given the enormous artifical power of patents,
he found that they were making his company bureaucratic and it was better
not to get trapped in that spiral.
But while Teradyne was not really free to live its founder's philosophy,
Europe has a chance of defending that freedom.
Let the US have the litigation, we'll be content to have the innovation.

-phm



