I mean, I get the idea of patents. If there were no protection of “ideas”, some random person could have one, try to bring it to market but could just be outplayed by a big corporation with enough money to copy this idea and sell it everywhere before he can even start production. They have more resources and money, but might not have had that idea. There should be some protection. Problem is, that these are also abused by the big corporations, so… Maybe we need to fix this somehow.
There is different regulations all around the world so its probably got enough regulation. I dont think patent trolling is an actual problem im not aware of it happening at a meaningful scale.
A worse problem is AI basically destroying copyright overnight but only for some cases. This creates such a horribly asymmetric environment where big companies are blatantly ignoring copyright while other industries still have to respect it.
I mean it is technically, but software companies have the largest profit margin of any other company in history, that is the extra they make after paying all the bills including developers.
the only thing that even comes close is finance, and it is still off by orders of magnitude.
It is so skewed that it is literally breaking the entire economic model.
Ideas are cheap, and can spread instantly without costing extra.
The indie developer a person that doesn’t need a company wasn’t a thing after the industrial revolution anyone who could compete was a novelty but now you can spin up a factory that serves everyone in the world with a day’s work. people wouldn’t accept it but that’s just because competition is so strong that people are picky.
Software is a completely different thing than physical goods and it needs to be regulated as such unless you want the economy to break.
This is how it was before patent law. The sciences, arts, and commerce existed for thousands of years without these corporate laws. It is about creating artificial scarcity, which is an incredibly dumb concept in our modern world.
You need to eliminate the thought of the big guy stealing ideas from the little guy. This is propaganda used to play on our emotions. Intelectual Property benefits an extreme minority at the cost of billions of lives.
That literally has nothing to do with patents nowadays. No one is hiding anything anymore, it is about artificial scarcity to collect monopoly rents.
The fact that you deny that we have already lost billions of lives because of corporations trying to extract monopoly rents is your perogative. It is stupid and ignorant, but your choice.
The justification for patents is that after a (relatively) short period of being under patent, because patents have to disclose how inventions work, the idea isn’t secret and anyone can use it. The patent system is the whole reason why companies don’t and can’t hide their inventions anymore. If we just got rid of the patent system wholesale, they’d go back to keeping things secret. That might be a big problem, or it might mean that, because anything that’s been reverse-engineered would be fair game, more things end up available sooner, depending on whether companies can obfuscate things well enough that it takes longer for a hobbyist to figure out than the patent would have to expire.
Perhaps patients have their place but software patients make no sense. One big issue is that it is not practical to avoid writing a system that already exists because there are many, many ways to describe the same software system. It’s so difficukt to search that multiple people could have already patiented the same thing and be unaware the other exists.
It’s an outdated legalism. 250 years ago, the patent office operated as an incentive to record and register ideas to the public in exchange for exclusive commercial license.
open formats is the way to go. Patents seems more and more like a scam
AV1 is right there. One has to wonder why all the device manufacturers rushed to implement HEVC but allowed AV1 to dillydally.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/03/av1s-open-royalty-free-promise-in-question-as-dolby-sues-snapchat-over-codec/
Figures. Patents are the backbone of capitalism. Some say it invented capitalism as we know it.
I mean, I get the idea of patents. If there were no protection of “ideas”, some random person could have one, try to bring it to market but could just be outplayed by a big corporation with enough money to copy this idea and sell it everywhere before he can even start production. They have more resources and money, but might not have had that idea. There should be some protection. Problem is, that these are also abused by the big corporations, so… Maybe we need to fix this somehow.
Which is also why Anti-Trust laws exist in pretty much every country and, when enforced, actually stop companies from becoming gargantuan Hydras.
In the US they haven’t been implemented for too long, of course.
You should be able to own the right to bring a novel idea into production, after it’s generally available then it should have no protection.
Basically if you come up with an idea, you get to get the first initial rounds of profits to make it worth your while, that’s it.
thats a patent
They need more regulating so they can’t be abused by trolls
There is different regulations all around the world so its probably got enough regulation. I dont think patent trolling is an actual problem im not aware of it happening at a meaningful scale.
A worse problem is AI basically destroying copyright overnight but only for some cases. This creates such a horribly asymmetric environment where big companies are blatantly ignoring copyright while other industries still have to respect it.
Sure for physical things that need prototypes and materials. That is not a thing with software.
Development cost is still a thing with software.
Not really.
I mean it is technically, but software companies have the largest profit margin of any other company in history, that is the extra they make after paying all the bills including developers.
the only thing that even comes close is finance, and it is still off by orders of magnitude.
It is so skewed that it is literally breaking the entire economic model.
Ideas are cheap, and can spread instantly without costing extra.
The indie developer a person that doesn’t need a company wasn’t a thing after the industrial revolution anyone who could compete was a novelty but now you can spin up a factory that serves everyone in the world with a day’s work. people wouldn’t accept it but that’s just because competition is so strong that people are picky.
Software is a completely different thing than physical goods and it needs to be regulated as such unless you want the economy to break.
Software algorithms should not be patentable.
Neither should colours. Fuck you Pepsi Blue
This is how it was before patent law. The sciences, arts, and commerce existed for thousands of years without these corporate laws. It is about creating artificial scarcity, which is an incredibly dumb concept in our modern world.
You need to eliminate the thought of the big guy stealing ideas from the little guy. This is propaganda used to play on our emotions. Intelectual Property benefits an extreme minority at the cost of billions of lives.
lol they also existed with hidden and encrypted ideas to, you know, protect intellectual property…
“This is propaganda used to play on our emotions”
Oh do tell
" at the cost of billions of lives"
😂
That literally has nothing to do with patents nowadays. No one is hiding anything anymore, it is about artificial scarcity to collect monopoly rents.
The fact that you deny that we have already lost billions of lives because of corporations trying to extract monopoly rents is your perogative. It is stupid and ignorant, but your choice.
The justification for patents is that after a (relatively) short period of being under patent, because patents have to disclose how inventions work, the idea isn’t secret and anyone can use it. The patent system is the whole reason why companies don’t and can’t hide their inventions anymore. If we just got rid of the patent system wholesale, they’d go back to keeping things secret. That might be a big problem, or it might mean that, because anything that’s been reverse-engineered would be fair game, more things end up available sooner, depending on whether companies can obfuscate things well enough that it takes longer for a hobbyist to figure out than the patent would have to expire.
Patents are a (relatively speaking) newfangled trick to turn ideas into legal “capital.” In the same way that a corporation “is” a person.
The backbone of capitalism? I’m not following that.
Perhaps patients have their place but software patients make no sense. One big issue is that it is not practical to avoid writing a system that already exists because there are many, many ways to describe the same software system. It’s so difficukt to search that multiple people could have already patiented the same thing and be unaware the other exists.
It’s an outdated legalism. 250 years ago, the patent office operated as an incentive to record and register ideas to the public in exchange for exclusive commercial license.
Now that simply isn’t an issue
Software and business method patents have always been bullshit.
Patent the machine, not how you use it. Software is just instructions to a machine.