After going through the readings, I now see there’s more to patents than what is usually said about them. Originally, I thought patents were a good for society necessary to protect innovation, but I now see it’s more complicated than that. One of the problems with patents is that they prevent iterative improvements on inventions. If a company has a monopoly on an invention that is quickly adopted by society, there is little incentive to keep improving the technology. For example, if apple was the only company that was able to create smartphones, I doubt the technology would’ve had major improvements from the iPhone 1. In other words, patents may be a force that opposes the ides of capitalism. Monopoly of a technology prevents the forces of competition on the market to drive innovation.
An example given in the podcast was the airplane. The airplane was invented and patented by the Wright brothers. However, they were unable to make an actual fully functional plane. However, the patent on the technology prevented other people on perfecting the technology. Due to this, the airplane was perfected in a foreign country where the patent was not applicable.
Another argument against patents is the rising force of patent trolls. Patent trolls try to create as many patents as possible without actually implementing the patented device. Their whole business strategy involves threatening people into paying for the licenses of use and in suing those who refuse to do so. This kind of companies threaten innovation by making the world of innovation a hostile environment. You may unknowingly violate an existing patent and be targeted by one of these companies.
Due to this, I believe something has to be done about the current patent system. My ideas are not as extreme as those given by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine in their paper The Case Against Patents. I believe a patent system is still necessary, but I believe modifications should be made. First of all, I believe a requirement should be made that in order to request a patent they should have a working product. Once an inventor has a developed project, they can request for a patent. This would prevent patent trolls from abusing the system. Having to actually develop the invention would prevent people who just come up with the concept from stopping other people from actually creating it. At the same time, patents would still create enough of a protection to inventors to fulfill their function as an incentive.
The second change I would make would be to decrease the time patents are valid for. 20 years is too long of a time, especially in an age where major breakthroughs are created every year. If apple had decided to just patent the concept of smartphones without actually creating them, we might not have the highly advanced mobile devices we do today. A more appropriate time could be 5 years. This would fall more in line with the fast developments of the era, while still providing the incentive to create to inventors.
In terms in software, the issue becomes a bit more complicated. As a student I have been taught the value of the open source movement. At the same time, there should be some protection to software developers. Videogames, for example, are simply software created for entertainment. What if someone could simply get a copy of Grand Theft Auto and started selling it for much cheaper? If there was no protection, they could do this. They have no costs that they need to offset with their earnings. With no protection whatsoever, this would be possible. At the other end of the spectrum, what if someone got protection from something essential from the coding perspective. Imagine if they someone had gotten a patent for Balanced Binary Trees, our computer science lessons would be very different. The only solution I can think of is that decisions have to be made on a case by case basis, and that in order to do so properly, patent agencies should have experts in programming to asses cases better.