1821

Are the patent portfolio based acquisitions because the big companies don’t want to be sued by the small companies or because they want to use those patents, offensively or defensively, against other big companies?

If you remove the patent system, and don’t replace it with some other form of IP protection, then many of those acquisitions wouldn’t happen,

Probably true, but the acquisitions which are really about acquiring the talent at the smaller company still will. Likewise those which are about acquiring existing contracts with 3rd companies. It’s a very common, and effective, way for large companies to bootstrap their way into new (to them) markets, demographics and/or product lines.

and the large corporation would simply push the small corporation out of the market, and the inventors in those small corporations would get nothing for their trouble.

Possibly. Sometimes, for certain. Just like today it’s sometimes a problem that a big company leverages their patent portfolio to put a smaller company out of business or to strongarm favorable acquisition terms. Where are the maxima? Which variables are we, as a society, actually trying to maximize in the first place? You and I have pretty different political outlooks, so it’s likely true that what I’d like to maximize won’t be the same as what you want to maximize. That’s cool. Resolving those sorts of things and turning them into policy is what our political process is about, when it actually works anyway.

1822

Buying users, too, don’t forget that. Cost to acquire is north of $3 these days, which makes buying someone else’s userbase more and more attractive.

1823

Yeah, you can’t just throw away patents. I’m pretty sure there needs to be reform since it’s costing us literally hundreds of billions of dollars from patent-trolls and the like, but you can’t throw out the system. The system is fine, it’s just how easily it’s manipulated that’s an issue. Jon Oliver did a piece on it and almost all the cases are tried in a single town in east Texas, to the point that large companies are bribing said town to get on their good sides so they can win more often.

1824

BP had already said they would release the information after x number of years (i forget the exact details, but i did put an article about it in this thread), now they are not, and as it was all about alternative energy technologies, it seems rather bad of them to not do as they previously said they would, especially given the current growing issues of man made climate change etc.

So we had the Pope (he with the direct line to God) come out in support of the divestment campaign, and now the Church of England joins:

‘Church of England to sell fossil fuel investments’:

The Church of England is adopting a new climate change policy and will cut its investments in fossil fuel companies.

It will sell investments worth £12m in firms where more than 10% of revenue comes from extracting thermal coal or the production of oil from tar sands.

The Church said it had a “moral responsibility” to act on environmental issues to protect the poor, who were the most vulnerable to climate change.

The Church manages three investment funds worth about £8bn.

“Climate change is already a reality,” said Rev Canon Professor Richard Burridge, deputy chair of the Church’s Ethical Investment Advisory Group (EIAG).

“The Church has a moral responsibility to speak and act on both environmental stewardship and justice for the world’s poor who are most vulnerable to climate change,” he said.

It would be interesting to see the American Christian discussion on all this, because i’m pretty certain that would mostly involve talking about how God created Oil for man to use as he wanted, and that man made global warming via increased CO2 was a communist plot, or something?

1825

Yeah, a lot of it stems from the fact that the patent system itself, and its implementation, is based on 18th century technological development. It doesn’t deal well with purely intellectual devices, like software, as just as much effort goes into their design and creation, but then they can be duplicated trivially, and require no specially tooled manufacturing infrastructure to produce.

The system definitely needs to be overhauled, but I always get the impression that many folks see cases of patent trolls, and don’t really understand the actual goal and purpose of the patent system.

1826

Oh I am fully cognizant of the reason for, the evolution of, and the uses of IP law. I didn’t take the time earlier, though perhaps I should have seeing how the conversation evolved, to explain my thinking.

I don’t disagree that some form of IP law is useful, and perhaps even desirable. I just find, on balance, that the current system as it is used today to be a net negative for society, and especially for those not already in positions of power. There is a lot more to it than cases of patent trolls, but also the fact our IP law systems are not equipped to deal with the complexity or volume of requests. Many bad, overly broad, non specific, or purely speculative patents get issued due to the fact the review process is broken by the deluge. This in turn means that the system is no longer funcitonal.

In an ideal world the IP system would undergo a complete replacement with new more sane rules. The problem is that those who benefit most from the current system would fight tooth and nail against this. See: Disney and Mickey Mouse (Yes I am rolling Patents and Copyright together. Yes I know they are different, but the problems are similar enough). So without a massive public support this type of complete rebuild will not happen. And the big players are crafty enough to know how to undermine the public support.

So since a complete overhaul is likely off the table I’d rather see the whole thing torn down. Based on what I’ve seen and studied no IP system would be an improvement over our current system. We obviously would disagree on this point.

Anyhow If I thought there was even a sliver of hope for a sensible IP law system that could be put into law, I’d support it. As is, I don’t have that hope, so I would rather just cut out the tumor now.

1827

Oh I am fully cognizant of the reason for, the evolution of, and the uses of IP law. I didn’t take the time earlier, though perhaps I should have seeing how the conversation evolved, to explain my thinking.

Just to clarify, I didn’t mean that YOU or really even anyone in this thread, fell into that category of not understanding patents… Merely that in most conversations with most folks, the idea of the patent system seems to be very poorly understood.

I don’t disagree that some form of IP law is useful, and perhaps even desirable. I just find, on balance, that the current system as it is used today to be a net negative for society, and especially for those not already in positions of power.

I don’t think it’s quite fair to go that far. I think the patent system gives us a huge number of benefits, today, which are often overlooked because they are passive effects of having a system of patent protection.

For instance, if you removed the patent system, pharmaceutical companies would basically halt their R&D process. It costs mountains of money to develop a new drug, on the order of billions of dollars. Once it’s actually developed and tested, then it’s basically trivial to manufacture that chemical compound. No Pharma company would invest billions of dollars developing a new drug, when a competitor could then just take that work and start manufacturing the drug and compete with them in the marketplace. Seriously. NO ONE would do that. You would not get new drugs.

Ironically, the Pharma industry is always portrayed as some great evil example of the patent system, but the reality is that basically every new drug developed over the past half century woudn’t have been brought into existence without the patent system guaranteeing the developer a large return on their investment… because the investment in drug development is immense.

1828

I don’t think CraigM is discussing that. He is saying the current patent system is broken and needs replacement. Pharma is one of the industries where a lot of patents are sane (you patent a chemical product). And nobody is arguing against those patents.

The problem with the current system comes when you can patent non-developed (or poorly developed) ideas, or even generic methods and approaches that ought to be too broad to be patented, basically making any development in the field impossible without patent breach. These kind of abuses are damaging the economy because they are prominently used to stiff competition (which is the opposite the system ought to be doing) and huge percentage of patent requests are of this kind (overloading the system).

In in a lot of industries patents are becoming a liability for innovation. That’s hard to argue against, and that does not mean a (sane) patent system is not necessary, either.

1829

And there is the counter that Pharma would be better served (in the public interest side) by scrapping the patent system and having public investment be used to drive research. After all the case of antibiotics clearly shows how new drugs are made is a problem, as in we haven’t seen new antibiotics developed since they are not a profit center. Some of the most important categories do not get researched because they aren’t as profitable. Far better for them to invest in researching a drug that has long term usage than a one off cure.

Or how there was, until the courts got involved, patenting of genes. So a test, say BRCA, was far more expensive than it should be. Now they can only patent the method of detection not the actual gene.

Long story short, I acknowledge the point you are making, but am shifting the conversation. While it would reduce the incentives for a Pfeizer to develop a new drug, that method of research isn’t even the best way to accomplish our goals. Besides their (Pfeizer’s) interests don’t always match what the publics interests are. Sometimes it runs counter, such as the case of antibiotics or pushing certain drugs. So while, yes, changing IP law would have other effects, those other effects may also require looking at other systems that currently do not serve the public interest either, but are ignored because of the current IP laws.

Though, as I’ve said, I am in favor of some form of IP law, just not the one we currently have. IP law comes with a timed government monopoly on the use of knowledge. That privilege also should bear some responsibility. Right now it is all benefit for the holder, with none of the responsibility. Part of that responsibility should include some form of usage. You create a drug? demonstrate you are trying to use that. Creating a cure for X, but then sitting on it because it isn’t profitable enough (substitute for any other topic) just isn’t right. Using patents as a way to go after competitors is absurd. Sitting on a horde of patents, some extremely broad and ill defined, simply to use them as a form of corporate Mutually Assured Destruction (i.e. the phone industry) makes me yearn for the whole system to be torn down.

1830

Long story short, I acknowledge the point you are making, but am shifting the conversation. While it would reduce the incentives for a Pfeizer to develop a new drug, that method of research isn’t even the best way to accomplish our goals. Besides their (Pfeizer’s) interests don’t always match what the publics interests are. Sometimes it runs counter, such as the case of antibiotics or pushing certain drugs. So while, yes, changing IP law would have other effects, those other effects may also require looking at other systems that currently do not serve the public interest either, but are ignored because of the current IP laws.

I understand the notion that Pharma companies focus their efforts on what is likely to be profitable, there isn’t much evidence to suggest that the public sector would be capable of doing this work. It’d be immensely expensive to fund the types of trials required for FDA approval, so the taxpayer would be footing an absolutely immense bill. And what diseases are you going to try and cure? You won’t be able to cure them all, so now you’re putting the choice into the hands of bureucrats who likely have no understanding of the feasibility of drugs, and thus are most likely less well equipped to decide how to allocate resources to actually find a cure.

The reality is though, if you really want to fund that kind of thing? That’s cool. We kind of already do that through grants from the NIH. But it doesn’t preclude the existence of patent protection for privately developed drugs. Having Phizer be able to protect their developments doesn’t stop you from investing in public research into things that the private companies aren’t looking into… Now, the reality is, public research has a far worse track record than private industry in this field, but that’s just kind of how it is. You can’t get the benefits of private industry, and then try and control them through central planning.

IP law comes with a timed government monopoly on the use of knowledge. That privilege also should bear some responsibility. Right now it is all benefit for the holder, with none of the responsibility.

That privilege does come with responsibility.

They are forced to disclose the idea, which becomes a matter of public record that anyone can freely review and improve upon.
They are actually INVENTING SOMETHING.

I mean, come on… it’s like you’re saying here, “Hey, those guys didn’t do anything to deserve having a monopoly on using this idea, which didn’t exist at all until they came up with it!” Their part of the deal is that they invented something useful.

Part of that responsibility should include some form of usage. You create a drug? demonstrate you are trying to use that. Creating a cure for X, but then sitting on it because it isn’t profitable enough (substitute for any other topic) just isn’t right.

This just seems kind of ridiculous though to try and enforce… I mean, they absolutely COULD just sit on that idea.

All you are preventing here, is the idea that they could create a cure (apparently by accident), go through the patent filing process, and then actively prevent anyone else from then making the exact same discovery and then going to market with it (which would make no sense, since if doing so is profitable, why wouldn’t the original company have done so?). They could still simply choose to never file a patent at all, and sit on the discovery without disclosing it… that’s what Bell Labs did with the magnetic tape idea… they didn’t patent that. Because if they had patented it, then ANYONE ELSE could have seen that idea. That’s part of the societal benefits to patents. Other folks can see the idea, and then improve upon it and still be able to use it. Without the system, there’s no incentive to disclose any of that stuff publicly.

Also, your suggestion that someone can only have their idea protected if they are “using it” is extremely bad for small inventors, because often we don’t have the financial means by which to actually realize our ideas. I don’t have access to the capital necessary to create a manufacturing system to produce my idea and bring it to market.

But, by allowing me to patent it, the idea is MINE. Which means that I can then go to a big company who has the ability to bring it to market, and sell the idea to them.

If I can’t patent it, just because I’m not “using” it, then I can’t be reimbursed for my idea at all. The big company can just take it over and say, “Bad luck, chump! We’ll be sure to enjoy all the phat lewt we earn from your idea!”

1831

If the GOP actually thought that the earth was not warming, or that warming was actually natural and not man made, then why would they be cutting hundreds of millions of dollars from NASA 's efforts to study earth sciences and climate?

1832

Because their mandate is space and shouldn’t overlap with the EPA?

1833

Because their paymasters are all involved in industries that create huge CO2 emissions.

‘Why Tesla is backing batteries’:

Car maker Tesla has unveiled plans to start making large batteries that can be used to store power in homes and businesses. It has unveiled two versions of the wall-mounted battery packs and said it hoped to start shipping and installing the devices by the summer.

The same technology used to power Tesla cars, a lithium ion battery, will also be used in the large battery packs it is about to start making.

It is likely that many of the first people to buy a battery pack will be people who already own a Tesla car and are looking for a cheaper way to charge their vehicle.

In many places, charging the car’s battery using solar power will be much cheaper than doing it using electricity from the grid.

Aside from this, the battery packs could prove useful to people keen to cut their electricity bill by generating some of the power they use from the sun. Others may use them to store energy bought when it is cheap so they can avoid paying for higher-priced power.

Tesla also has plans to sell the batteries to utility companies as a way for them to store the power they generate at times of low demand.

1834

I guess Aeronautics is space now.

1835

Don’t you have some people who used “your” incorrectly to correct? :)

Space and aeronautics is what NASA is supposed to cover, not environmental studies, which already has the EPA. NASA has a huge budget and it was significantly increased this year, for what it’s worth.

1836

Kinda funny denier video: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/06/denier-land-how-deniers-view-global-warming/

1837

“Huge” as in bigger than last year. It’s budget is still barely there.

Or are you going to fund a space program for the EPA so they can do their jobs better? Plus the EPA is regulatory, not exploratory. It’s like saying the FDA covers food, so we don’t need the CDC to look at food-borne pathogens because that’s the FDA’s job.

1838

Very sizable and was increased significantly, so “barely there” is a strange characterization. Compared to what, the defending interests across the world?

Or are you going to fund a space program for the EPA so they can do their jobs better? Plus the EPA is regulatory, not exploratory. It’s like saying the FDA covers food, so we don’t need the CDC to look at food-borne pathogens because that’s the FDA’s job.

That’s just nonsense, and it’s not as if science related to alternative energy and global warming isn’t massively funded relative to virtually every other scientific endeavor, both directly and indirectly, through publicly funded subsidies and tax relief. NASA should focus solely on problems associated with space and flight - the mandate it was created for, and the achievements towards that mandate over the past 35 years are shameful compared to the first 30 years of its existence.

1839

Part of the reason NASA is related to studying things like climate is because they have the ability to launch sensors up into orbit.

1840

So is their budget. During their first 30 years they had a budget for things. Then we decided to let the Russians do it or something.