When Even Hilarious Web Comic Artists Are Mocking The Insanity Of The Patent System...
from the commentary-of-the-day dept
... isn't it about time that we recognize the patent system is really, really broken? Courtesy of the always awesome Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (and my friend Tom who sent this over), I present to you, yet another example of "the patent system" being a punchline:
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To this idea I say...
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Re: To this idea I say...
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introducing...
THE NEW AVENGERS!
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Re: Re: Re: Re: To this idea I say...
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Don't forget!
http://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20120920after.gif
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more dissembling by Masnick
In Federalist No. 43, James Madison wrote regarding constitutional rights of inventors, "The utility of the clause will scarcely be questioned. The copyright of authors has been solemnly adjudged, in Great Britain, to be a right of common law. The right to useful inventions seems with equal reason to belong to the inventors. The public good fully coincides in both cases with the claims of the individuals."
Have you ever filed, or prosecuted a patent application? Have you ever invented anything, or had to fight off large infringers who ripped you off and thumbed their noses at you saying "so sue us"? All you and teh comic know about patents is you don't have any.
Masnick and his monkeys have an unreported conflict of interest-
https://www.insightcommunity.com/cases.php?n=10&pg=1
They sell blog filler and "insights" to major corporations including MS, HP, IBM etc. who just happen to be some of the world’s most frequent patent suit defendants. Obviously, he has failed to report his conflicts as any reputable reporter would. But then Masnick and his monkeys are not reporters. They are patent system saboteurs receiving funding from huge corporate infringers. They cannot be trusted and have no credibility.
http://truereform.piausa.org/default.html#pt.
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Re: more dissembling by Masnick
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Funny thing...
Is that it's a CONTRACT with the people.
We act in good faith with said contract...
Until it gets abused.
Then, all bets are off.
Guess what?
When Congress kept extending copyright and allowed patents to become abused like they have...
They broke the contract, because of that, people don't follow it anymore.
And now, companies wonder why no one respects them when they wave around their contract.
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Re: more dissembling by Masnick
Yes on both counts. So?
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Re: more dissembling by Masnick
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Re: more dissembling by Masnick
It's the act of "securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right" that needs to "promote the progress of science and useful arts", not the invention. In other words, the act of patenting the invention itself needs to justify itself by promoting innovation.
I have to seriously question the motives of anyone defending the status quo of the patent system as it is on the basis that it is plainly dysfunctional. In your second link, the discussion about patent trolls is deceptively focused on whether or not the person who owns the patent is the original inventor - but that's not the problem with patent trolls. The problem is a combination of overly broad patents that should have never been granted in the first place, patents for which prior art exists which should have never been granted in the first place, patents for things that are obvious ("...on the internet") that should have never been granted in the first place, a court system that favors entities with enough capital to survive lengthy and costly litigation, and the entities that take advantage of all of these things together to extort actual innovators and bully them out of the marketplace entirely.
Let me ask you, have you ever been on the wrong side of a patent dispute, having to defend an invention of your own from a patent that should have never been granted in the first place by a person whose only contribution has been to take advantage of a broken system and punish people for actually creating something, a person who has no intention of producing any product and certainly did not invent anything themselves?
Clearly, I don't need any of the writers of TechDirt to tell me that the patent system is broken. Even if you were to discredit them completely, and I don't see that you have, the patent system would still be broken. And, of course, it's easy to attack people while enjoying the anonymity they provided for you to do so. I don't suppose you're eager to reveal your own identity or personal conflicts of interest and reveal where exactly your stake in this debate lies?
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Re: Re: more dissembling by Masnick
nearly 8 million patents, and a few exceptional cases hit the headlines.
Would you care to address the other 99% of patents which seem fine?
By your definition of failure, most doctors should stop performing operations and you most certainly shouldn't drive or take a plane. Heaven forbid you use an appliance or risk crossing a street!
It's only a failure for those who try desperately hard to concentrate on a narrow group of cases, or a narrow period of time as whole new markets are opened up and spaced staked out.
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Re: Re: Re: more dissembling by Masnick
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Really not eager.
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Re: Re: Re: more dissembling by Masnick
We've played this game before. I can come up with more examples of bad patents than you can of good patents.
In all the years of playing this game on Techdirt and requesting that IP extremists provide examples of good patents, I can only come up with a hand full of good patents. I can come up with a plethora of bad patents.
and please don't confuse a 'good invention' with a 'good patent'.
Where is the patent that tells me how to build my car, cell phone, computer mouse, etc... Where is a patent that tells me anything useful at all? and provide evidence that those inventions would not progress (as quickly) without patents.
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Re: more dissembling by Masnick
A pantent on an innovation even when patenting it would only harm further innovation is a bad patent.
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Re: Re: more dissembling by Masnick
So to get it out of my system: PATENTS PATENTS PATENTS PATENTS PATENTS PATENTS PATENTS PATENTS PATENTS PATENTS PATENTS
*Takes breath*
PATENTS PATENTS PATENTS.....
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Re: more dissembling by Masnick
So how does locking up ideas (that someone else came up with just as easily) promote the progress in any way?
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Re: more dissembling by Masnick
The fact that the Constitution authorizes Congress to grant these horrible monopoly privileges does not mean Congress must do so, nor that it is justified. The Constitution has in the past and does not authorize (or permit) lots of unjust laws and policies, like chattel slavery, tariffs, a central bank, drug laws, war, income tax, prohibition, etc.
See also this post about Jefferson's proposal to limit IP power: http://libertarianstandard.com/2011/12/01/thomas-jeffersons-proposal-to-limit-the-length-of-patent-a nd-copyright-in-the-bill-of-rights/
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Re: more dissembling by Masnick
As already mentioned, the patent needs to be useful and promote the sciences, not the invention. To confuse the two is retarded at best and most likely a dishonest attempt to obfuscate the issue.
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Eli Whitney invents way to make muskets by machine, ignores patents - Eli Whitney makes lots of money.
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Response to: Anonymous Coward on Sep 22nd, 2012 @ 9:09am
Source: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eli_Whitney#section_2 and class lecture
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In wonderland...
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master — that's all.'
...
'When I make a word do a lot of work like that,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'I always pay it extra.'
'Oh!' said Alice. She was too much puzzled to make any other remark.
'Ah, you should see 'em come round me of a Saturday night,' Humpty Dumpty went on, wagging his head gravely from side to side, 'for to get their wages, you know.'
(Alice didn't venture to ask what he paid them with; and so you see I can't tell you.)
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Re:
No need to. Average_joe has already apparently defined what my position is, and no matter how many times I tell him he's wrong, he insists that the obvious answer is I'm dishonest, not that he's wrong.
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