The Patent Game: Experiments in the Cathedral of Law

[NakedUndone]

(continued from below) To patent them or otherwise protect such basic ideas would be a great boon to whoever owns the rights, but it would be disaster to the rest of us who would now have to invent many alternatives, most of which would be inferior...

[NakedUndone]

The argument of the "tragedy of the commons" when applied to intellectual property seems flawed to begin with. It's not like you can use up an idea in the same way you can use up a pasture or a fishing straight. I've applied calculus and linear algebra innumerable times to innumerable problems and they show no signs of wearing out. The reason we learn these techniques is because they are so broadly applicable.

[NakedUndone]

One issue that's not addressed is, by how much more do the winners win in a strong patent system versus a commons system? This seems to be the main value of a patent system: not that it encourages innovation (quite the contrary, as he's shown), but rather that it keeps the spoils of that innovation in the hands of the rich, even though they may not even have originated it.

[zbigniewzapora]

Google Stephan Kinsella "Against Intellectual Property"

[sayhitotim]

skip to 38:00 if you're interested in the results

[quantumG]

Wow.. this is so bizarre. Is he honestly unaware of why those results are stupid?

Hint: in order to "invent" something in his game you just pick 5 random letters.

This is the complaint that engineers level at the patent system all the time: obvious things should not be patentable. But it seems patent attorneys continue to think that "obvious" means "hasn't been patented before" when innovators clearly mean: it actually takes hard work to come up with it!

[paranoiadmin]

I love that this ends with copyrights! :D

[llothar68]

Patents are not Games they are a curse.

[mnemonija]

It is unclear from the talk, but it seems they did not model the tragedy of the commons at all. does the value of goods drop sharply if they are produced by more entities? Even if it does, the next issue with the model is how easy it is to find unexplored inventions. in real world it takes time and resources to find out the value of an invention, and all actors are very likely to come up with the same inventions in a similar order, due to dependencies. similar to civ tech tree.

[zassounotsukushi]

This is great material, it's awesome to hear that someone has actually done experiments to substantiate claims regarding efficacy of patents. But I need more answers.

Why does the speaker talk about using future work to optimize how we use patents when present results show a clear B.V. solution - THEY DON'T WORK?

How can I take any conclusion from this talk other than vindication that intellectual "property" is simply exercising of tyrannical powers to keep connected interests in place?

[sayhitotim]

@zassounotsukushi the author needs to do more experimentation because the game they designed is very artificial