A Great Idea

The great thing about the internet is that people with no credibility can write about whatever they want as if they were experts. This is my attempt to fill the tubes with more garbage about something I am very passionate about.

I had this great idea. Like most ideas someone has probably thought of it before and patented it. The fact that my thoughts aren’t at all influenced by the person who thought up the idea before me means nothing, If I was to implement my idea I would have to cough up money to someone I am sure.

That’s how innovation works now.

This post isn’t about my great idea. Instead it’s about how I think the patent system is a failure. First however I want to decide what the purpose of the patent system is?

Some people would like to think it’s a system to make innovation fair, to deliver fair rewards to inventors. Indeed it does do this but that isn’t the motive behind the system. The patent system is a system of economic incentives. It is designed to offer an incentive to encourage innovation. The perceived fairness is a side effect.

Innovating is what’s important and what the system is trying to encourage. Wether the inventor gets her fair reward doesn’t really matter. When an invention can change the world it’s the invention that matters. The inventor becoming a millionaire is fair but is insignificant in the scheme of things. Fairness is a funny concept. There are people who earn a lot less then me doing a lot harder work. That’s not fair. However if wages weren’t controlled by supply and demand there might not be enough people doing my job.

If you accept that the patent system is designed to give an incentive to innovate and fairness is a nice side effect then the point I will try to make is that the patent system fails to encourage innovation. I believe that it in fact stifles innovation.

Imagine if the wheel was protected by a patent. Advocates of the patent system think that would be great, it would mean the guy who thought up the great idea or the company who invested time and money into R&D would make a great amount of money out of their idea. Money they deserve! Everyone wins right? We get wheels the inventor gets a reward. The incentive for financial gain pushes more money into R&D.

In reality the majority of people would end up driving around in cars with hexagon shaped wheels while the rich buy expensive cars from the company that holds the rights to the circular wheel. Other companies that think up great uses for a circular wheel don’t pursue them because the licensor intentionally sets the price out of reach to maintain their monopoly.

Until the patent expires that is.

This isn’t far fetched. Look at the patent for bag less vacuum cleaners. Fantastic idea. No need to waste paper, it’s cleaner and makes the vacuum cleaner perform better. Not really such a breakthrough though. It’s a pretty simple idea built off the free ideas of the past, filters, centrifugal force and the original vacuum cleaner. We should all have better vacuum cleaners and the inventor should make some money right? Dysons patent on bag less vacuum cleaners recently expired. What happened? Everyone can now afford to go out and buy an awesome vacuum cleaner. Before that you could only buy them from a small number of suppliers and they were too expensive to go mainstream.

Brilliant ideas are rarely the result of heaps of money poured into R&D. They are usually a simple bright connection built on using ideas of the past. Pharmaceuticals are an exception. Patents are required in that industry as developing new drugs costs a lot of money and once they are developed there is no protection except patents to recoup the funds. I will leave them aside however as it is sickening that the developing world can’t afford to buy drugs that cost almost nothing at all to produce.

The patent system stops new ideas from flourishing because it puts economic disincentives on basing new ideas on the corner stones of old ones. Building on old ideas is how innovation works.

It is always a simple bright idea that makes technology leap forward. I believe patents will push some money towards R&D but I think that is far out weighed by the bright ideas it stifles. Being first to market with a new product is enough of an incentive for companies to invest in R&D without the patent system.

Patents on computer software are very destructive to the open source software community. This community is based around innovating from the work of others. When you create new open source software you give everyone the right to build and innovate off your open source code ( The instructions that make a computer program ). Even though almost all contributors are volunteers this great system of innovation means the open source community can produce software that is on par with commercial software. Most web sites you visit on the run on open source software. WordPress is open source software. Although none of the software is based on commercial software it often un intentionally copies their seemingly obvious ideas.

In the big corporate world that’s ok because an invalid patent that is obvious or based on prior art can be challenged in court. Volunteers however can’t afford such luxuries. Instead they are forced to stop innovating or drive around in cars with hexagon wheels. Their bright ideas are squashed out buy the patent system.

Feel free to cut my logic to pieces it is after all mainly based on the ideas of other crackpots on the internet that also have no credibility.