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From: peter@ferranti.com (peter da silva)
Subject: Re: Patents: What they are. What they aren't. Other factors.
Message-ID: <id.KYMU.W3C@ferranti.com>
Organization: Xenix Support, FICC
References: <1992Oct28.153748.3758@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> <1992Oct28.220811.27666@netcom.com> <6581.Nov112.31.0292@virtualnews.nyu.edu>
Date: Mon, 2 Nov 1992 19:19:21 GMT
Lines: 24
In article <6581.Nov112.31.0292@virtualnews.nyu.edu> brnstnd@nyu.edu (D. J. Bernstein) writes:
> In theory, society gains from a (marketable) patent (which is novel,
> unobvious, etc.) by virtue of its publication; the inventor gains from a
> (marketable) patent because it is a temporary monopoly. When the idea
> isn't marketable, nobody gains and nobody loses. When the idea is
> marketable, somebody's going to market it whether or not there's a
> patent, and arguments about the benefits to society of marketing are
> entirely irrelevant.
There is an exception to this: when the cost of development is high, the cost
of reverse engineering is much lower, and the patented idea is essential to
developing the product. For physical objects, design and tooling is usually
high so this is almost always true. For software, there are very few cases
where this is true and where society would benefit from patents: software
development is generally cheap, and the number of currently patentable ideas
in a single software product is astronomical.
Without making this distinction, it's hard to see how society could benefit
from any patent.
--
% Peter da Silva % 77487-5012 % +1 713 274 5180 % Har du kramat din varg idag?
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