Ideas are nothing, execution is everything: a perspective on patents
What is the fundamental reasoning for the patents? It's not that they benefit the individual who invents something. Patents are granted because it's thought that by benefiting the inventor they will invent more stuff and the whole society benefits. It's basically a utilitarian argument: inventions are great, so we should incentivize people to do more of them.
But that is mostly bullshit.
People come up with ideas all the time. There is no scarcity of ideas. Everybody is full of them. Having an extra incentive to come up with even more ideas is useless for the whole society.
What is more important? The execution of ideas.
If you have an idea but you don't build anything based on it, it's meaningless. From the perspective of the whole society, granting patents for inventions that are never build is waste of resources.
Granting patents for inventions that are badly build is detrimental. Why somebody who can't make a great product should be given a monopoly right to build something if they can't do it? If there are others who can execute the idea better, why they should be prevented from doing it?
Granting patents for inventions that are developed to great products is also waste of resources. If the inventors can make great products, they don't need any extra protection from competition.
If we remove patents, who will get rewarded? Those who actually execute the ideas and make great products and services that customers want to buy voluntarily. When the markets are offering products that people want to buy, we usually have very prosperous society.
Currently, patents are blocking the markets by preventing individuals and firms to building products that people want to have and use. The loss of welfare is huge. And what do we get in exchange? Maybe a few more ideas – but ideas are already so abundant that they will be totally worthless.
I'm against patents generally speaking, however I wanna do the devil's advocate.
There are products easy to replicate (simple or cost effective recipe / procedure / reverse engineering) but they can cost a lot in R&D. Without patents, who wanna spend millions in R&D without guarantees of making money on these products?
This makes me think maybe the problem it's patents legislations, more than patents.
That is a special case. Majority of inventions aren't anything like that. I'm guessing most of inventions in that category are drugs. Development of them would be mostly done by open source collaboration, patient groups either developing those themselves or paying for other people to do them.
Yes I was thinking about drugs. Could be solved by increasing number of investors as you say, but it's not that easy.
I think it would be a lot easier. Currently, drug companies are mostly interested in profits. That isn't always the same thing as patient getting healthier. Patents are used to prevent competition and better drugs, so the patients have to use expensive and not optimal drugs.
If the drug development were done by patient demand, they could try several different types of drugs at the same time, even when still in the development phase. The feedback would be much faster.
Because the drug development is expensive, other opportunities would be explored more seriously, too, like diet. If patients have to pay everything themselves, they want the most cost effective treatment. It's not necessarily a drug, but the current system pretty much forces everybody to use drugs because patents make them so profitable.
I would agree with you completely about it being a problem with legislation over the restriction of patents. I support voluntary restrictions, but our current system is completely anathema to innovative and open cooperation and competition.
Open source communities and concepts solve this everyday. With today's technologies in collaboration and crowd sourcing/ funding, we can do it all, if we want.
It would be nice to see inventors take the more open source approach to inventing things. The more people that have a chance to look at and improve a product the better for everyone.
Great post!
Agreed, this would prevent greed and reduce mental illness in my eyes. When someone invents something their pay should not be measured in money, it should be measured in how much they help anothers life. I like to think of it like this, if a farmer grows an apple and someone eats that apple and enjoys it with a smile on their face the farmer is paid with that positivity towards their mental health, not their wallet. Give tangible = receive intangible, that is the way the human system truly works. Right now we are simply being robbed of our mental health benefits from the religious sacrament of money which siphons off our happiness payment towards a god that we do not know or recognize, it is deceit and robbery with most not even realizing they are being robbed.
Excellent post, greeting
Yep, an idea by definition can't be stolen if the "inventor" still owns the idea after being copied. Copy and paste ≠ theft.
Agreed! Ideas are nothing more than just "ideas" until they are executed into something real... and patents are mostly just a way to get in the way of that execution.
Now, I can appreciate patents from the perspective of someone who invests 20 years of their life and $100mn in research and development and actually creating something. Having someone come in and basically bypass all the effort and just take the profit with no work? That's also not equitable.
... "but that is mostly bullshit" ...
OmG.
I busted up.
Thank you for this article. Seriously.
I really liked it and I love the way you write.
Thanks!