>> Interesting. I thought the whole point of a patent is to financially
>> cripple your opponents so you then have the whole market to yourself and
>> can then charge extortionate prices for a poor quality product...
> 
>     I assume you're not joking.
> 
>     The point of a patent is to promote the knowledge of technology. The 
> government makes you an offer: Make your design public, and they'll give 
> you exclusive rights to it for a limited time.

Yeah, that's the theory.

For example, the drugs companies have patents on particular molecules 
because it costs hundreds of billions of dollars to get a drugs license 
for one. If some company spends a hundred billion dollars getting a drug 
licenced, they do *not* want a bunch of other companies then coming 
along and making the same chemical, and selling it for 50p per tonne.

Typically at least, *making* the drug is dirt-cheap. But *testing* it to 
make sure it's safe (and actually works) costs an absurd amount of 
money. They don't want to pay for all that testing and then have 
somebody else benefit from it.

> Sooner or later, the 
> patent will expire and not be renewed, at which point anyone can make 
> it.

Surely somebody has already come up with a way to get round this minor 
detail?

For example, all of the Windows APIs are patented, to prevent ReactOS 
from existing. But how many decades old is Windows? Surely those patents 
should have expired by now. (Ignoring for the fact that a set of 
function names shouldn't be patentable in the first place...)

>     The requirement to disclose the design a product may not be amenable 
> to a company. So sometimes they don't patent it, but maintain it as an 
> industry secret. I'm told that stuff like the Coca Cola recipe is such 
> an example.

Ah yes, Coca Cola. Seventy billion gallons of the stuff is made every 
year, and yet, according to urban legend, only two people in the world 
know how it's made. Yeah, right. ;-)

Post a reply to this message

Mueen Nawaz <m.n### [at] ieeeorg> wrote:
> And what would be the rationale of not requiring it?

  My guess: If a working prototype would be required, then it would not be
possible to patent methods (rather than devices). A method (ie. a way of
doing something) can not, rather obviously, have any "working prototype"
because it's not a physical device. It's only a description of a way of
doing something.

  (Of course being able to patent methods is a braindead idea all in itself.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Mueen Nawaz <m.n### [at] ieeeorg> wrote:
> I'm told that stuff like the Coca Cola recipe is such an example.

  At least here things like recipes have absolutely zero protection
from law. You can't patent recipes, nor can you get copyright on them,
or any other protection for that matter.

  For example, it's completely legal to take eg. an entire book of recipes,
copy every single one of them to your own book, and publish it. As long as
you don't copy it *verbatim* (ie. you change the layout and wording), you
are not infringing anything.

  (This little fact gives a whole new ironical light to the fact that
if you use something like 10 consecutive notes from a copyrighted song,
amounting to something like 5 seconds, and publish your own rendition of
it, you can get sued and jailed.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

On 26-6-2009 10:13, Invisible wrote:
>> Sooner or later, the patent will expire and not be renewed, at which 
>> point anyone can make it.
> 
> Surely somebody has already come up with a way to get round this minor 
> detail?

What seems to work for drugs is finding a new illness for which it can 
prescribed and getting a patent on use of the drug.

What seem to work in the entertainment industry is giving money to 
politicians and asking them if they can change the law.

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   (Of course being able to patent methods is a braindead idea all in itself.)

I disagree. Patenting a method for manufacturing something seems quite 
reasonable to me. Why would you want to deny a drug company patents on a 
better way to make a particular drug, or deny a tire company a patent on how 
to vulcanize rubber with less pollution?  That's a serious question here. Is 
there some reason I can't think of why such patents are a bad idea, assuming 
that one believes *any* patents are a good idea?

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Insanity is a small city on the western
   border of the State of Mind.

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> analogue cell phone wouldn't be much use... 

Why would you say that? It took bigger batteries, and could carry fewer 
calls with more interference, but it wasn't really any different from analog 
vs digital long distance lines.

> (OOC, does anybody know how long electricity has been around? I thought 
> it was comparatively new.)

Electricity for communication (telegraph, radios, etc) has been around since 
early 1800s. Mid 1800s saw widespread electric distribution, electric 
lights, etc.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Insanity is a small city on the western
   border of the State of Mind.

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> For example, all of the Windows APIs are patented,

I don't believe that's true. Do you have a patent number for "Windows APIs"?

Some things are patented, like the method for storing long file names on an 
8.3 FAT disk in a way that doesn't mess up normal 8.3 file system drivers, yes.

> Ah yes, Coca Cola. Seventy billion gallons of the stuff is made every 
> year, and yet, according to urban legend, only two people in the world 
> know how it's made. Yeah, right. ;-)

I'm surprised how rarely things like Windows source code gets leaked, myself.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Insanity is a small city on the western
   border of the State of Mind.

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   At least here things like recipes have absolutely zero protection
> from law. 

So drugs don't have any protection? You can go to your country and 
manufacture and sell all the Viagra you want without asking anyone else for 
permission?

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Insanity is a small city on the western
   border of the State of Mind.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> >   (Of course being able to patent methods is a braindead idea all in itself.)

> I disagree. Patenting a method for manufacturing something seems quite 
> reasonable to me. Why would you want to deny a drug company patents on a 
> better way to make a particular drug, or deny a tire company a patent on how 
> to vulcanize rubber with less pollution?  That's a serious question here. Is 
> there some reason I can't think of why such patents are a bad idea, assuming 
> that one believes *any* patents are a good idea?

  I think that one major difference between the Americal and European
patenting ideologies has not been mentioned in the thread, which is why
not being able to patent ideas and methods might sound irrational:

  In the European patenting system (at least in principle) you cannot
restrict what people do. The only thing the patent restricts is selling
of the patented products.

  Here it's completely legal for someone to take a patent, build the device
described by that patent and use it for personal use. The patent does not
restrict that. Only if you start mass-producing the patented device and
selling it to people (or even distributing it for free), that's when the
patent restrictions kick in.

  Being able to patent ways of doing things, like in the US, would restrict
what people can *do* in the privacy of their home. If you can patent combing
your hair in a certain way or exercising a cat with a laser pointer, you
would be restricting people's behavior and ways of doing things.

  Those are, of course, quite extreme cases. However, there's a much better
example: Here recipes cannot be patented (nor fall under copyright). That's
because a recipe is a description of the way of doing something. You cannot
restrict what people do and how.

  Being able to patent eg. a method for vulcanizing rubber is completely
akin to being able to patent a food recipe.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> >   At least here things like recipes have absolutely zero protection
> > from law. 

> So drugs don't have any protection? You can go to your country and 
> manufacture and sell all the Viagra you want without asking anyone else for 
> permission?

  If you mean without permission from some company who "owns" the original
product, then AFAIK that's the case. (Of course to manufacture and sell
medicine you naturally need all kinds of governmental permissions, but
that's different.) But IANAL. It's possible I'm being wrong here.

  I can understand why an American would be surprised about such a thing,
even though I'm a bit surprised they would be surprised (tautology not
intended).

  I think the only commonly-used products which sales are restricted in
Finland are alcoholic beverages. But that's not because of patents or
anything like that.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message