Terry Harris wrote:

>>>>> - giving a limited-time monopoly encourages investment in new
>>>>> discoveries that otherwise would not be discovered
>> 
>> This is a prerogative that is not proven at all. Same thing with
>> copyright on music, for example. There is nothing that proves that
>> there won't be music without copyright on it. Actually, history
>> shows that there was music without copyright. And there were
>> inventions without patents. Things would be different without them,
>> that's for sure, but who's to know how exactly?
> 
> Would pharmaceuticals spend hundreds of millions on research,
> development and testing of drugs knowing they would be immediately
> copied and sold by companies which had spent almost nothing? 

Maybe not. I'm not sure whether we wouldn't be better off, though, with
physicians focusing more on health and healing than on prescribing drugs
and other (increasingly expensive) treatments. The crisis in "health"
care around the world (well, the "developed" world) is IMO at least
partly caused by this shift of focus from what heals to what creates
profit. There is not a clear correlation between the ability to heal (of
a method, a product, a treatment) and its potential for profit, yet it
is the latter that determines what is researched, published, known and
being applied. This is not necessarily a good thing. It's not at all
clear whether many of the ailments these drugs are supposed to treat are
not to some degree a consequence of this state of affairs in the first
place.

> A patent system is needed 

I think this is not more than a postulate. It is not a necessary
conclusion based on facts.


> The value of a patent needs to represent the cost of the invention
> because it is invention that the system is trying to encourage and
> protect.

This is again one of those suggestions that seem to make sense but on
closer examination don't. How can you determine the cost of an
invention? See also my other message for an example. How do you factor
in the knowledge necessary to get there? If Russell invents a novel
low-power voltage converter, it isn't just the few hours he needed from
the idea to the first realization, it's the years, maybe decades of work
and study that got him there. How to factor this in? 

Besides, this is using the patent backwards. The patent system is meant
to make ideas better sellable in a market economy. In a market economy,
it's not the cost or a postulated value that determines the price, it's
the (subjective) value to the buyer. If it's not for inserting ideas
better in a market economy, what would be the purpose of patents?

Also, such a system would punish the effective ones (the ones who can
get to workable solutions by mostly /thinking/ -- hard to put a price
tab on this), because the value on their patents would be small, and
reward the less efficient ones (the ones who need big and expensive
laboratory infrastructures to get to the same result), because they
could easily prove a high value of their patents. Is this where you want
to go? If not, this rule isn't for you... :)


> It over values trivial but useful inventions which didn't need to be
> encouraged or protected, it actually encourages patenting which I'm
> sure frequently involves more cost and effort than the patented
> invention did.

You seem to think that this is a flaw that is just in the current
implementation. I think that this is a flaw that is inherent in the
principle of patents. The apparent difficulty in coming up with a
consistent and well-defined set of rules that, at least theoretically,
would address the shortcomings seems to confirm my angle.

Gerhard
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