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Don't misunderstand me. I don't see any problem in profiting from my labor.
I do take issue with the fact that we stifle human innovation as a consequence, at least to degrees.
I just wish there was a better way to have our cake and eat it too.
Real programmers use butterflies
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Note that a patent requires a publication of your work. You tell the world of your great idea. They may learn from it, make prototypes based on it, and develop it further. It doesn't stiffle development at all - quite to the contrary.
Everyone may play around with your ideas, learn from them, develop them. The only limitation of a patent is that if they want to exploit it commercially, they have to ask you for permission. You have the freedom to refuse, or to say "OK, as long as you pay me a 10 cents license fee for each unit you make". You can control the use of your great idea for at most 20 years (then it becomes free to use for everyone), provided you pay the yearly fee to uphold your patent. If you do not, the patent may be freed at an earlier time.
OK, sometimes we may see a delay. In my student days, we read research articles (and newspaper 'science' stories) about this new magnetic disk technology, vertical magnetizing, that might increase disk capacities by a large factor. We saw nothing of that over the following years. But then, quite suddenly, lots of disks came out with capacities measured in gigabytes rather than megabytes. I counted backwards ... Those papers and news stories of vertical magnetizing had appeared something like 19 years ago. The patents were probably in place at that time. So for twenty years, disk manufacturers had been polishing and perfecting that vertical technology, and filled their stores with large-capacity disks, ready to be shipped on the very day that the patents expired.
I don't know who held the patents, but I suspect it was IBM, much because their high capacity DeskStar disk series of the time soon earned the name 'Death Star': The technology was not yet mature. I may be wrong. When other manufacturers released their disks, they turned out to be mature and reliable.
Another thing that is often not understood: Patents is a national matter. No "international" patent exists. Even if you pay your yearly fee to uphold your US patent, anyone may do business on your ideas as long as they do it outside the US. If you do not pay patent fees to China, any Chinese manufacturer who reads your patent may exploit it, as long as they do not market their products on the US market. That is not copyright infringement! If you want Chinese manufacturers to stay off your invention, you must pay Chinese fees! They may market their products in the huge Asian market, and even the European market, if you didn't bother to apply for patent protection in Europe.
Assuming that you do have a patent - you have a sole right to commercially exploit this great idea of yours. If you have no opportunity to realize this exploitation, you haven't got the funds to set up a factory to make the products, or to do the marketing: What is wrong with you going to some company that is capable of manufacturing / marketing it, telling them: "If you pay me so and so much, I will give you the sole right to profit off my great idea!"? You could of course sell them non-exclusive licenses to manufacture and create products, but if you tell them: I sell the patent to you, giving up all my rights!, then you have explicitly put yourself together will all those others who read the patent text: They/you know how to do it, but have no legal right to exploit it commercially.
Your choice! What really would be stiffeling to innovation is if you either decided not to reveal to anyone what you have created, not applying for a patent but keeping it secret. Or, you apply for (and are granted) a patent so that everyone can see what you have created, but even though you have no opportunity yourself to exploit the idea as a commercial / industrial product, you absolutely refuse to sell any sort of license to anyone who might have realized it.
The Open Source community has worked hard to establish the understanding that "If we can't get hold of it absolutely for free, and use it in absolutely any way we like, then we consider it not at all available, and as an undisputable example of IP rights curbing innovation".
Like, in the link provided in the initial post of the "display port vs. HDMI interface" thread, one of the reader comments say
Dont forget that Display Port is an open standard. Eveytime you buy hdmi you are paying extra for licensing fees. There’s no real reason to use HDMI. It’s being forced on consumers and it costs extra.
Which is commented on by another reader:
The HDMI royalty is paltry - between $0.04 - $0.15 per unit (not per port) + a fixed amount per manufacturer per year (which spread across the total manufacturing output is going to end up close to $0 on a per unit basis). It’s not going to affect the price in any meaningful way.
License fees are not devastating to progress and innovation!
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I'm not speaking about what I intend to do. I'm waxing expansive and talking about human activity as a whole and the impact of the IP concept on it.
Real programmers use butterflies
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Even if you are talking about The Great Abstract Concept of The Human Activity of Creating Intellectual Property, it has to be brought down to earth, made concrete, exemplified, to illustrate the consequences of those abstracted ideas.
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I'd say at least to me it's pretty obvious in the aggregate that if humans could share information more freely, we would probably benefit in terms of collective understanding so long as we could do so without diminishing incentive.
I'm not about to write a thesis or defend a dissertation, however. This is the lounge after all, not uni.
And to compare the state of things now with how they *might be* is effectively post hoc ergo propter hoc, so I won't directly make that argument with specifics.
Real programmers use butterflies
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trønderen wrote: Your choice! What really would be stiffeling to innovation is if you either decided not to reveal to anyone what you have created, not applying for a patent but keeping it secret. Or, you apply for (and are granted) a patent so that everyone can see what you have created, but even though you have no opportunity yourself to exploit the idea as a commercial / industrial product, you absolutely refuse to sell any sort of license to anyone who might have realized it.
I believe you missed one.
The time period in the US does not start until the patent is issued. But the protection extends before that.
And a company can extend the application period for quite a long time, by making modifications to the original application.
So the process is as follows.
1. Submit the application in 2021.
2. The process takes at a minimum of 6 months and that would be really short. Close to two years is more likely.
3. Company modifies the application in 2022
4. Company modifies the application in 2023
5. Application patent is finally approved in 2024.
6. 2024 is the first time the patent is publicly visible.
7. Company starts suing anyone before that for any products that use that tech.
8. Patent expires in 2048.
Now those people can try to break the patent by showing that what was patented was actually known before the company originally submitted the proposal. But that takes time and money.
And it is possible to get patent extensions. Vigra has such an extension because they found that it could be used to treat a childhood disease (heart disease probably.)
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I guess that being a patent lawyer is a matter so complex that even if you are an American one and never look outside your national borders, you may have a hard time keeping up with changing details and changing interpretations of the laws.
Europeans watching movies ridiculing US courts often have a good laugh. Of course we understand that it can't be true. That's not the way it is in real life. Then when you look at certain specific cases that make you think "But the distance between fantasy and reality isn't that big" ...
The schedule you describe may be fully realistic - in the US. But patent laws are, I dare to repeat, a strictly national issue. As seem from Europe, US patent (and copyright) management has tended to be easily associable with the wild west.
If your invention/product is going to be marketed in the US, you will have to pay attention to the way patents are handled in the US. If you see the US as an insignificant market, or one where you do not expect any significant competitors, or anyone worth the effort to fight against, you may choose to ignore the US market. (Say you make a translation machine for translating between Korean and Thai: If you have patents in all Asian countries, the number of units you expect to sell in the US is so small that even if someone reads your European/Asian (but no US) patents and decide to 'steal' it to make products for the US market, you may loose a share of that market - but it was insignificant anyway.
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honey the codewitch wrote: I can't even imagine how much further along STEM would be if we didn't put up artificial barriers around innovation.
That is common suggestion from people that run into patents.
It is a very broad conceptual argument that has no evidence to support it.
It is somewhat akin to conspiracy theories that cars would be much more efficient except for automobile industry patents that keep people for using some mysterious 'new' technology. Such arguments completely ignore (as mentioned elsewhere) that patents only limit use within a single country. If one could get 1000 miles on a one gallon of gas then many other countries outside the US would already be doing that.
There might be some limited short term impact on one individual segment of industry but if it is important there will probably be large scale research efforts to find different ways to approach the problem. And those very efforts will provide innovation that likely would not exist if the limitation by the patent did not exist.
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Quote: Seat cushions, table cloth, and napkins under sofa in kitchen
And I remember now ... last year it took me hours to find where the heck I put them the previous Christmas so I set up a reminder to save me time this year.
Thanks, one-year-younger-OriginalGriff! You're a mate. I'd buy you a drink, except ... you're gone now. 
Do you do things like that, or is it just me, and weird?
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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My thing is I'll put it somewhere safe and forget where somewhere safe is
"Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!" - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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No, it's just you and yes, you are weird. 
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Ahhh! That's a relief - normality is soooo overrated! 
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Being weird is underrated.
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My wife sets reminders for all sorts of things. So I don't have to!
And yes - as others have said - you are weird! 
Merry Christmas!
If you can't laugh at yourself - ask me and I will do it for you.
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You have a sofa in the kitchen?!
Happiness will never come to those who fail to appreciate what they already have. -Anon
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Guests should be comfortable, and chefs should not be alone ...
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Well, that's how it should be,
See I still live at home with my mom(don't judge me, I'm still in high school!!!) and I am the only one that cooks, although Griff you are still right.
We have an open Kitchen-Living room space. So the chef(moi) is not alone...
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Ours isn't open plan, but it is a couple of hundred years old, built for miners of local materials - "River Stone" which is like compressed diamond and as much fun to drill into. The kitchen (and bathroom, these houses had neither when built) is in a "modern" extension and that has a sofa for comfort.
You don't want to be alone in a kitchen slaving over a hot stove when your friends are drinking in another room! 
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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I use my windows calendar for that sort of thing.
ed
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Not angry as they sound, just a recreation. (10)
[clue] last of the year. [/clue]
[comment] It's getting late here, and I have a big day tomorrow, so hopefully a clue will get this off my hands expeditiously. [/comment]
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
modified 24-Dec-21 6:33am.
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Crosswords ?
"Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!" - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Yep! YAUMW (Monday week).
Seasons Greetings to all,
Peter
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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Have a Good one Peter
"Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!" - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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And now for something completely different.
When I went over the high wall in 2017 I entertained the idea of monsters.
Monster is a role. Everyone spends a little time in it at least, some more than others. It's easier to be a people than be a monster, so most of us spend the majority of our time being a people. 
A monster is a particularly difficult, stubborn, even recalcitrant role. People don't warm up to monsters very well, because monsters are problematic. But *sometimes* monsters have gifts for us, and we have to look harder at the monster to see. But monsters can be dangerous too.
The way I'm using it, it's morally neutral - monsters aren't *necessarily* "good" nor "bad" by definition (but can be either). A monster is simply difficult and we don't tend to play nice with them until/if we recognize their worth. That's why I chose "monster" despite the moral neutrality I intend to convey - it's a deliberate dysphemism to highlight the fact that we typically find monsters messy and often ugly, regardless of their human potential.
Monsters are important, because they are change agents. They are where human innovation comes from, FOR BETTER OR **WORSE** (WWII era European fascism was itself a kind of "innovation" - horribly so). But also Turing was acting in that role on more than one front, and was imprisoned for it. Arguably that shakeup of Europe ended the practice of empire building, and maybe it was a fait accompli or at least *something* had to bring that about, whether it be fascism and a world war or some other catastrophic human event. Either way, monsters played a central role, be they Churchill, Truman, Hirohito, Stalin or Hitler.
People in the role of monster (whether real or not - take the stories as they are as not everything has to be history), include Tesla, Buddha, Edison**, Jesus Christ, and Moses but also Mao, Pol Pot, and Constantine because they either facilitated a massive social reset, altered the human course of history, or otherwise played a role in shaping our human condition.
At least those are the famous ones.
But difficult humans often touch our own lives in some substantial way as well. Our individual lives in some ways, are a microcosm of our collective experience.
One of the reasons I find all the above useful is it gives me a way to look at history, not as a battle between the forces of civilization and chaos, but rather through the currents of change.
Another reason is sometimes it helps me have patience with people I find difficult. Perhaps I haven't uncovered their value to me in that moment.
I'm not saying it will be useful to anyone else, or that you even have to agree.
This for me isn't so much about the "right" or "wrong" way to look at things, but rather, is it a "useful" way to look at things.
For me at least, sometimes it is.
** I'd argue Edison's innovation was more social and therefore "successful", and Tesla's more scientific, but they both changed our world, so they both get lumped together despite the differences.
Real programmers use butterflies
modified 24-Dec-21 3:41am.
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Looks at the time... Someone ate two of the "Only eat one - trust me" brownies for the Christmas party, didn't they? 
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