Patents are not the problem, they serve as a way to share the knowledge of a creation with everyone while protecting your company for a REASONABLE TIME to compensate for the RnD costs.
The problem is the distortion of the concept to fit late stage capitalism delights.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
We had a history before patents/copyright were enforced. It was pretty brutal for anyone trying to make a living with their creations. Take a look and see if you want to return to that.
Grass@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
yeah now its brutal for anyone trying to make a living and excellent for anyone who already inherited a living and has more money than they could use in multiple lifetimes. I’d hate to go back to when it was just brutal for anyone trying to make a living.
otp@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
I think the problem would be similar. The rich and powerful would be the only ones to profit off of inventions and innovations.
We still have indie game devs today. Imagine if any company could just copy an indie game and scale it up/polish a bit and get all the sales.
riskable@programming.dev 4 weeks ago
You’re describing the entire mobile games industry. You think all those top apps in the app stores are 100% original? No. They copied other games.
Also, patents have nothing to do with that. Software is covered by copyright.
Furthermore, “back in the day” manufacturing was expensive and required huge factories to build stuff (in quantity). The barrier to entry was enormous! People were mostly uneducated and there was not much in the way of “shared engineering knowledge”. Ten thousand people could look at a car engine and have no friggin clue how it worked. That’s why patents were necessary: Disclosure
These days disclosure has become irrelevant. Any engineer can look at an invention or product and figure out both how it works and how it was made. At the very least, they can figure out a way to make it. Just look at all the Youtube channels where every day people are making complicated machines, parts, and electronics! The mysteries are gone. Disclosure is unnecessary.
Since the entire point of patents was disclosure why do we still need them?
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
What patent or copyright is preventing you from making a living?
ayyy@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
Uhhhh…. You are aware of what topic you are posting in, right?
starman2112@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
A shitty solution for a shitty situation is not a good solution
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Feel free to share your revolutionary idea that will still incentivize people to create without creating a “shitty situation”.
starman2112@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
I don’t need to come up with any revolutionary ideas, the open source folks are already creating without patenting their creations
Here’s a revolutionary idea: universal basic income. No need to prevent other people from monetizing your idea if you don’t need to monetize your idea in the first place
riskable@programming.dev 4 weeks ago
Software existed for decades without (software) patents and has innovated and evolved vastly more quickly than any other science. Then we created software patents and things actually started to slow down (because lawsuits take time and threaten to end great software before it even exists).
Software is already covered by copyright which is all that was necessary for some of the richest companies in the world to come into existence (e.g. Microsoft, Oracle). Software patents shouldn’t exist!