dikini.net

Up until now I was avoiding putting my thoughts on 'paper', but here we are. My instincts simply say Restricting knowledge distribution and use is wrong. Some might say this makes me a communist devil, anarchist or whatever other epithet is currently cool in their circles. Let's avoid that for the time being. These scribbles are probably not 100% correct. But the ideas are what matters anyway. And will you find a difference from a bird's eye view?

Obviously this is a strong social issue, as in it reflects a growing concern of the society as a whole. The society as the human beings represented by a state, like UK, USA, France, Bulgaria, or groups of states like EU, UN, ... Some long time ago patents were introduced by the British Crown in order to give a temporary monopoly to inventors, so that they can protect and exploit their knowhow, while making the knowledge (their knowhow) public. This was a significant social issue. This way knowledge was immediately becoming exploitable by the society. People could benefit from the abstract knowledge or the principles behind the patentable invention. These principles were not patentable at the time, only some of their defined applications - the invention, machines, products etc... The monopoly lasted for a relatively short period of time. Longer than it would take at the time to reverse engineer an invetion and set up production of a competitive product, but not by too much. This is important, since timescales, im my opinion, are important when trying to rationalise the costs of patents to a society.

To summarise - in the early days, patents were means for the society to acquire hidden knowledge, while protecting inventors from competition for a reasonably short amount of time (from the point of view of the society). IMHO, the scales were tipped towards the social as opposed to individual needs, the way it should be for such cornerstones of social development as knowledge.

There is a related social development - the corporations. That is some economic units getting similar rights as their human counterparts. For example the right to aquire and hold property, including intellectual property (IP) - patents and copyrights. With the rise of the economic power of the corporations, value of holding IP increased. The corporations became more and more involved in politics and putting pressure on subsidised (for example donations) politians and political parties to introduce better conditions for the IP holders, i.e longer time, broader patentability scope, etc... This provides power to the IP holders against their competition. IP became not only more valuable, but started being used as a weapon of economic warfare. The knowledge was still public, but its applicability was decreasing, thus reducing the social value.

Let's not forget that the speed of innovation was increasing all the time and the time to market going down. Nowadays it is close to impossible to obscure a manufacturing process. Very quickly a product can be reverse engineered and put on the market. There are few innovative products, which can actually be protected. From this point of view the value to the society - the hidden knowledge is ever decreasing. The value for the IP stake-holders goes up. Already there is an imbalance, which I think is quite unjust. Add to the fact that the majority are not the lone inventor, but a corporate body of one kind or another.

Not too long ago the patent park changed its shape - when in the USA everything became patentable. See below for the logic of this statement. The simple fact is that you can get a patent for software in the USA.

Apart from society versus IP holder, there is a third party - namely the IP or patent lawyers. Patent law is a notoriously lucrative field to be in, I've heard. Patent law slang, the way knowledge is described in a patent, is difficult to comprehend to an average techie. Patent laweyrs do benefit from the increase of the value of IP, the broadening of its scope and the increase of length of a patents validity period.

The ingenuity of the markets created IP farm firms, that is vulture firms living on royalties from IP, not doing the hard stuff - research, inventions, et.al. , but just aquiring IP and living on royalty revenue and the occasional court setllments.

All the above makes IP a minefield, very difficult to comprehend or actually live on that market. The value of the IP to the society is decreasing.

Now let's have a look at abstract knowldege. Computer programs are algorithms, i.e abstract knowldege, described in a specialised language. The only way to describe a program is to describe in any language (for example French or English) the said algorithm. Every other description is just a translation of the abstract idea into one language or another - C, python, portuguese, latin, lua, ... If computer programs are allowed to be patentable, this will automaticaly make any abstract knowledge patentable, since most of it is translatable or will be sooner or later into a program. Computer implemented invetions is patent laweyr speak for computer programs( or a close synonym no one managed to explain what is the difference) so the same reasoning applies.

Consider this sitcommish scenario. Innovative sexual techniques are patentable, when computer programs are. You can describe them in a computer program, which in turn can be translated into (American) English, which in turn can be read and interpreted by, let's say, two way human computers(readers), which can perform the program, thus implementing the beforementioned invention. So they can be discovered and charged with breaking said patent, when they simply wanted to reproduce/have fun in a new/fancy/weird/does it really matter what way.

I formed my personal oppinion based on the above description of this issue and my personal values. In my universe, the order of importance is society, followed closely by an individual, all others trailing far behind. All decisions should be taken based on a compromise reflecting that order (in my universe). How is it in yours? You will answer that for yourself. I bet the compromise part is valid. If not it's your universe, your rules.

In my opinion the current IP practice is grossly neglecting the interests of the society - that is the majority of the individual members of that society. I think it holds for patents, copyright, trademark and the rest of the IP sub-universe. I think it should be changed. It might be even more beneficial to scrap all intellectual property, as it will simplify the matter. But waht about the authors of books, music, .... True, but how much do they get out of their babies? Could it be that they will be better off in a free from IP world? Or nearly free?