I was discussing with an industry researcher friend who claimed that patents are a good and just thing because they incentivize research, as otherwise no one would bother investing and homologating products against all the necessary rules to prove they are not harmful to health, etc.
As a libertarian, I have the intuition that patents are not as much of a panacea and necessary thing as they seem, but I haven't been able to articulate why.
What are the best arguments against patents?
480 sats \ 2 replies \ @Undisciplined 20 Feb
The book Against Intellectual Monopolies demonstrates that patents, and other IP, do not live up to any of the claims about how valuable they are to society.
In short, empirical studies routinely fail to find any evidence that patents benefit research.
I recommend looking into the work of Stephen Kinsella, if you're interested in this topic. He's a practicing patent attorney and has hundreds of talks, interviews, and essays outlining the position you're looking for.
reply
484 sats \ 1 reply \ @oliverweiss 20 Feb
Idk, I don’t want to advocate for pharma companies, but the fact is that they (some) do spend a ton of money on R&D. Assuming, newly made drugs are not patent protected and every other company can benefit from producing drugs right after the drugs are discovered, I can’t really imagine who would do that. Another thing is whether the drugs, once in the market, need to be expensive as hell. And I guess, this is true for many other industries.
reply
21 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 20 Feb
There's a lot going on there, but part of the expense is that they have to rush to develop the drug first, otherwise they get nothing for their investment.
Economically speaking, the patent system creates an all-pay auction. I recall from some of my undergrad coursework that this type of auction often generates enormous losses when put in practice.
reply
0 sats \ 0 replies \ @cascdr 21 Feb
I got my first patent about two years ago. I barely consider it an accomplishment in any way. I've innovated and invented way better shit that can never be patented due to economic feasibility, opsec or some combination thereof.
Broadly speaking, most corporations that sponsor the patentable work stipulate that you assign all rights to them. Furthermore, a patent at the end of the day is really just an expensive permission slip to enter an even more expensive litigation that may or may not pan out. The reality is that thanks to the wonders of the state, the enforceability of most patents is suspect at best. The government officials rubber stamping it just want to meet their quota.
One of my favorite components of the patent economy is that a lot of competitors will stockpile the patents and use them in horse trading. In other word: oh yea you wanna sue me over Patent A that you hold? Well I'll sue you over Patent B that I hold. Or we can just make a deal and stay out of court.
Personally, I don't hate the idea of intellectual property. Yea there needs to be an incentive to innovate and reap the benefits of solving hard problems. But there's just gotta be massive reforms because the patent system in the US is a train wreck. Can't speak for other countries but I'd guess they're as bad or worse.
TLDR: patents in theory favor the inventor (little guy) but in practice are fiat as fuck and just favor huge corporations.
As an aside: As if this corporate rent seeking weren't bad enough I know for a fact I'm the one of the only ones that actually designed/knows how the invention works on the patent. There were a couple guys left off out of the 5 names shown. They slapped a bunch of middle managers on there, (some before me) that either barely knows how it works, don't know how it works or don't know how anything works.
reply