Another Call For Abolishing Patents, This One From the St. Louis Fed 315
New submitter WOOFYGOOFY writes "The most recent call for curtailing patents comes not just from an unexpected source, the St. Louis Fed, but also in its most basic form: total abolition of all patents. Via the Atlantic Monthly: a new working paper (PDF) from two members of the St. Louis Federal Reserve, Michele Boldrin and David Levine, in which they argue that while a weak patent system may mildly increase innovation with limited side-effects, such a system can never be contained and will inevitably lead to a stifling patent system such as that presently found in the U.S. They argue: '...strong patent systems retard innovation with many negative side-effects. ... the political demand for stronger patent protection comes from old and stagnant industries and firms, not from new and innovative ones. Hence the best solution is to abolish patents entirely through strong constitutional measures and to find other legislative instruments, less open to lobbying and rent-seeking.' They acknowledge that some industries could suffer under a such a system. They single out pharma, and suggest other legislative measures be found to foster innovation whenever there is clear evidence that laissez-faire under-supplies it."
If abolishing patents won't happen... (Score:5, Interesting)
For some industries, 17 years is a very long time. If the duration were lowered for software to something like five years that'd make more sense to me.
For physical device patents, patent holders who fail to produce goods (and I don't mean to license the patent to another manufacturer without self-producing) a lack of production should spell the end. If they won't produce it then someone else could have the right to do so.
Re:pharma? (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, and I'd agree with them.
Economics is a value-free science: just because it identifies winners and losers, it doesn't mean there is any sort of value judgement on if the respective parties deserve the winnings and losings.
e.g. you can argue that maybe drug prohibition or minimum wage is a good thing, but don't try and deny that prohibition creates black markets, and that minimum creates unemployment among unskilled workers.
I guess he read my sig (Score:5, Interesting)
Why just patents? Copyright must go too.
Re:Drug Patents (Score:2, Interesting)
I would agree that the patent system in the US is severely handicapped. But abolishing it entirely would severely handicap drug development.
Are new drugs actually better for you...or better for making money for big pharma. Discuss.
Re:Drug Patents (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Drug Patents (Score:5, Interesting)
That would be true if they were spending their own money on the research. They aren't though. They are spending public funds from the NIH then patenting the results and making obscene profits on it. Want to fix it? Simple. Make NIH funding contingent on royalty free results. After all, it is our money making these companies rich.
Re:there's a reason for patents (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It would take a Constitutional amendment (Score:4, Interesting)
It isn't against the Constitution to get rid of patents altogether. The constitutional amendment isn't because the constitution forces us to have patents, its because the only way to abolish patents is to take away congresses authority to create them. Congress will never willingly dismantle the patent system. Too many private parties are paying them not to.
Re:If abolishing patents won't happen... (Score:4, Interesting)
So, if Joe Engineer develops the next new thing in his garage, he has to physically make each item by hand or directly hire staff and tool a factory from scratch to organically grow a manufacturing business that may not have anything new to manufacture after the patent expires but may take the life of the patent before finally supplying the initial demand? Why can't Joe Engineer develop his widget and license manufacturing to a company that is already established and capable. For Joe there is less upfront risk, faster time to market, and he won't be left "holding the bag" once the patent expires.
Now, if Joe scribbles a block diagram on a napkin I could see the value of requiring Joe to initiate production (directly or through licensed manufacturers) before his patent can be enforced. Joe shouldn't have the luxury of sitting back and waiting for 6 or 7 years to pounce on a successful company that just so happened to utilize the method depicted in his block diagram, most likely not even considering the "invention" worthy of a patent due to obviousness.
Re:Drug Patents (Score:3, Interesting)
It varies; they aren't all identical. The newer asthma preventative I started taking several years ago made me free of attacks & frequent bronchitis/pneumonia for the first time; the anti-depressant I'm on is thus far the one kind that increases energy rather than worsening lethargy (which is vital given my other health issues), and the pain patch I'm on lets me have continuous relief instead of the horrible roller-coaster ride that oral painkillers gave.
The problem is when the pharmaceutical companies knowingly misrepresent the safety, efficacy, and potential uses of a drug. The existence of new medications, if they're sufficiently different from what came before, can give new options to patients that didn't respond well or had a bad reaction to the existing drugs.
Re:If abolishing patents won't happen... (Score:5, Interesting)
In many cases patents are the alternative to trade secrets. Many companies still choose to rely on trade secrets when the technology was discovered somewhat accidentally
Indeed. This is the difference between patents on manufacturing technology and patents on consumer technology.
The patents on manufacturing technology were the original intent of patents. The idea being that a company could trade knowledge of their manufacturing techniques for a limited exclusive on their use, so that all industries could later take advantage of greater efficiencies.
With patents on consumer technology the trade-off justification does not apply, because the public already has access to the device and can thus reverse engineer it. This form of patent is simply a government enforced monopoly that otherwise would not exist.
The really crazy part is that after this first bastardization of patents to apply to consumer technology, that then they (recently started to) allow insignificant changes in materials to usher in a new patent, such as software patents being renewed for "..on a mobile device." While the first bastardization is almost debatable, this second bastardization is so way over the top that its very hard to debate its justification with a straight face.
Re:If abolishing patents won't happen... (Score:5, Interesting)
Blah blah blah. Stupid.
Joe Engineer doesn't need a patent to contract out the manufacture of his New Shiny. He has contract law, which is considerably stronger, considerably better understood, and considerably fairer than patents. He can approach a manufacturer, give them the highest of high level descriptions to ask if they can manufacture the device and are interested in doing so, and if they say yes, he can (and nearly always does already, unless he's stupid), sign contracts with the manufacturer. Things like Nondisclosure Agreements and Noncompete contracts and exclusive manufacturing rights contracts. Then and only then does he reveal his blueprints and bills of materials and assembly procedures. Nowhere in any of that is a patent required to protect Joe's interests.
If they say no, and then rush off to try to duplicate what he just described, he has lost nothing, because ideas are worthless, and all he described was an idea. Converting an idea into a product requires the aforementioned blueprints and BOMs and procedures, and while a very large manufacturer might be able to rush something through to produce their own versions of all of those things quicker than Joe did it alone, it's physically impossible for them to do it before Joe does, because Joe has already done it.
This is where many of us have a severe problem with the current patent system as it is practiced. Patents don't have those things necessary to actually manufacture the implementation. They have an obfuscated worthless pile of crap words created by a lawyer for the sole purpose of encompassing as much of the idea as possible, while using weasel wording that manages to squeak by the alleged requirement in the law that patents can only patent implementations and not ideas. Decades of weasel wording has stretched that requirement so far out of shape that it's unrecognizable in any case.
Also, this is Slashdot. Any number of us are IN manufacturing, and understand it quite well. Shut up.