konrradozuse t1_j883swa wrote on February 12, 2023 at 10:01 AM

Reply to comment by Rhannmah in [D] Can Google sue OpenAI for using the Transformer in their products? by t0t0t4t4

Agree, it only blocks innovation and makes it very expensive.

ArnoF7 t1_j8a296a wrote on February 12, 2023 at 7:56 PM

If there is no patent system then every innovation by any individual will be copied and mass produced by big corporations within the day it’s invented.

Imagine you spend a few years designing a new motor. if there is no patent system, Toyota or Tesla will mass produce it the moment they understand how it works. And since they are far more resourceful, you will never be able to produce anything that can compete with them in quality or scale. At least now with patent system they will have to pay you a little to use your invention.

You may not care if you can benefit from your own innovation, but I still think a system that can protect individual ingenuity is somewhat useful

konrradozuse t1_j8a3huf wrote on February 12, 2023 at 8:05 PM

You don't have to publish how anything works. If I code with other 4 guys chatgpt and we bring it online, it will take time anyone to copy it, and it will be easier to buy us.

Secret and first to market beats patent. Specially in software you can add one "moronic attention" layer and claim that does something different.

Actually patents protect more big corporations than little players they may patent hundreds of random things just in case even if is something which they haven't productize.

WhatsApp for instance, they could have been copied by any company (somehow they were copied) but was worthless.

ArnoF7 t1_j8a606r wrote on February 12, 2023 at 8:22 PM

No every innovation can be materialized just by a handful of people like a software app, and not everyone who is involved in this process is your buddy and can be assumed to have good will.

In any hardware-related industry, you will need corporations to mass produce your innovations. If there is no patent system, the moment the manufacturer figures out how to produce it, the innovation is no longer yours. In fact, this is one of the major reasons there is this whole US-China trade war in the first place. Basically, local Chinese contract manufacturers have access to the manufacturing procedures of foreign companies who invent the products, so they just directly copy it and undercut their customers.

Patent also protects the interest of individual researchers who do RD for corporations. But that’s another topic.

I_will_delete_myself t1_j8bfq3e wrote on February 13, 2023 at 1:53 AM

I disagree about that. Imagine you invest millions of dollars then someone makes millions of it and you lose millions of dollars.

cdsmith t1_j8gq1gt wrote on February 14, 2023 at 4:18 AM

Imagine you just didn't invest those millions of dollars, then, and instead someone else developed the idea and didn't want to freeze the rest of the world out of using it.

Patents only makes sense if you assume that the alternative to you inventing something is no one inventing it. Experience shows that's very rarely the case; in general, when an idea's time has come (the base knowledge is there to understand it, the infrastructure is in place to use it effectively, etc.), there is a race between many parties to develop the idea. Applies to everything from machine learning models to the light bulb or telephone, both of which were famously being developed by multiple inventors simultaneously before one person got lucky, often by a matter of mere days, and was issued an exclusive license to the invention, while everyone else who had the same idea was out of luck.