After reading this article, I am left with the thought, "A pox on all of their houses!".

Current copyright law not only fails in its basic function in maximizing the creation and distribution of new works, but it also happens to be disastrously constructed. With more and more creations now being considered 'derivative works', the law now prevents any clear certainty as to who owns what without going through a lengthy and expensive litigation process.

When it comes to our tools of culture and speech, the one area of law that should be easily accessible to all should be IP laws. Sadly, that is not the case. It has become little more than a self-justified business to employ IP attorneys - the 21st Century's breed of ambulance chasers.

Read the sorry tale here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/business/21marvel.html?pagewanted=1

Against knowledge comunisn.

"Current copyright law not only fails in its basic function in maximizing the creation and distribution of new works".

1. The ultimate purpose of Creation and Innovation is to allow people to enjoy life: the former directly, the later by reduction of work. The unique coherent definition of invention is just that: anything that reduces the amount of work comparing with present state of the art. That must be the criterium for patent offices to accept or reject a patent.

2. At the physical level the world is asymmetric: not every square meter is a gold or diamond mine. The same happens a the biological level: not every species is economicaly interesting. And the same happens at the neuromental level: we do not know the reason (genetic, epigenetic, environmental, family, education or whateverer) but unfortunately not everybody is a (great) creator nor a (great) inventor. Conclusion: the rest of us are interested in that these gifted people, these gold or diamons mines share their products with us.

3. So the function of IP, copyright and patents, is not maximizing creation and distribution of new works. It is --first, to allow innovators to get benefits from its innovations. --second, to convert an "agricultural" activity into an "utilities" activity. I explain myself in parallel to the well known classification of consumption conditions (rivalry, exclusion) of which there is a heavy use in your theory, there is an, afaik unknown, but natural and evident (this is why i publish it here without copuright; on the other hand if you read this think that hidden under prionpropatentuiq there is an human fond of priority), classification of production conditions according to two criteria: equality (if all the human processors which effects the same task work in same conditions: i.e. same effort same result) and duplication (if it make economic sense that two agents devote to the production of the same good). In an activity where equality does not holds but duplication make sense, then by convention we call it agricultural. Equality and duplication is industry. Equality and not duplication is utility. Not Equality and not duplication is facility. (i neither do like the names). When some knowledge is discovered by someone or group but remains unpublished he can use it to make more discoveries, but the other people working on the same problem no. On the other hand when it remains unpublished many people is working in something that they would leave if they knew it was already known. Is not this an stupid duplication, a great inefficiency ?. What are your feelings about all these people around working enthousiasthicaly for nothing ? So as said, research is now an agricultural activity and it is of the interest of all to convert it into an utility. For fairness and efficiency.

4. Your model is just too abstract. It forgets the man hidden under the creation or the invention. Not all the innovators are civile servants academics. Without copyright or patent even the first sale deal would be hard to close. I´m an inventor myself (well, probably not of the great kind) and you can not imagine how hard any step was before patenting. In order to prevent spillover i had to convert myself in a an autistic Robinson Crusoe. My options were patenting, trade secret, publishing or tumb. And if you want to get any benefit from your invention after deep thinking you realise that the unique posibility is patenting, which is still a weak IP protection. I suggest you should to forget for a moment abstract economic theory and just think more deeply about the micro level interaction. The only alternative to patent would be generalized trade secret. ¿Is that better ? The unique alternative to copyright will be live performances in music and maybe reading sessions for literary works ¿Is that better?. Of course in general i´m not against people which prefers to offer their innovations for free, unless they are academics paid by the government as in my country and in many countries.

5. Almost all products embodies other products and mos of them are sold cheap enough as to be marketed. Jus as patents and probably also creative works. How is this possible ?.

6."but it also happens to be disastrously constructed"

Well that sounfs to strong, but i agree that IP mechanisms can be improved. We need a complete property system: every piece of knowledge must able to be protected (as any other finantial asset has a corresponding property title, every piece of knowledege must have its corresponding property title), it should be hereditable property, we must find a mechanism to avoid the agricultural effect (unequality and duplication) in order that even the minimum improvement is inmediately published and the innovators gets its return, we must developpe technology markets etc...At the end everybody will have its own knowledge property (maybe not all of the grat kind). As history, the laboratory of the social sciences show us, society advances by the generalization of privileges not by its elimination.

That said i hope that the typos does not fogg the message.

It is copyright and patent that create a centralized, one-supplier market with supplier-set prices for each piece of knowledge, and therefore create "knowledge communism".

It never ceases to amaze me how so many pro-IP types are so thoroughly confused, propagandized, or simply corrupt that they actually claim that the free market is "communism" and the market with government interventions (like copyright and patent) that restrain trade is "capitalism" rather than the other way around.

1.First a correction: when i say to convert an activity which is done in agricultural conditions into one which is done in utilities conditions i wanted to say facilities conditions. I think it is clear form the context.

Inequality condition can be thought as an space invariant principle: equality holds when the output of the same human in average is similar under space translations. This does not happens in agriculture: close to an orchard you can find a desert. Duplication sometimes is desirable, sometimes not. For instance, no sense that 8 teams make a road when only one will be used at the end.

2."they actually claim that the free market is "communism" and the market with government interventions (like copyright and patent) that restrain trade is "capitalism" rather than the other way around".

Capitalism is based not only in competition but also in property rights. Unless you guarantee property rights, you will not get competitive market Think for instance about the worst case:

the selfishness person invents the Singularity or a log algorithm for an np-complete problem after many years of research and many investment. The result is very hard to invent but very easy to understand. According to the no IP protection theory what will happen ?

In summary, there are only two coherent alternatives: no IP protection at all, or a full IP protection, and economic science must research which one is the best.

"the selfishness person invents the Singularity or a log algorithm for an np-complete problem after many years of research and many investment. The result is very hard to invent but very easy to understand. According to the no IP protection theory what will happen ?"

All other companies will reverse engineer the invention as quickly as possible at minimal cost. Because the company that reverse engineered the invention has not incurred any cost to develop the invention, neither do they have the overhead of the inventing company, they will immediately be able to charge less.

The inventing company's first mover advantage is negligible because the product is so new that the inventing company, with only one year to establish a market and to become identified with the product, is unable to establish a significant association between the company and the product.

The end result is that the inventing company is unable to recoup their investment and either stops inventing, or goes out of business. The copying companies, on the other hand, drive the price of the product to marginal costs, but they are incapable of advancing the technology, other than incrementally, because they do not wish to take on the overhead.

Ultimately, the technology stagnates because breakthroughs, which typically require substantial investments, are no longer affordable.

Anonymous, i agree. Knowing that the dynamics of the system will finish this way, the selfish inventor will carry his great invention to the tumb.

priorpropatentuiq:

There have been a number of inventors who have trashed their inventions because they knew they could not control them. There have been many inventors who has stated very clearly that the only reason they revealed their inventions to the world is that they were able to have a patent that provided limited property rights for a time. There have been many inventors whose inventions were copied (or, in the words of the inventors, stolen) because they failed to patent their inventions, and the inventors gained zero.

There is a school of thought that claims that "the market" needs something, it will be invented. However, what this school of thought fails to do is to anticipate when invention creates an answer for a problems that the market has yet to realize it has.

A perfect example is the laser. It took more than 70 years to develop a practical laser and to find useful ways to apply the laser. If the market had its way, the laser would not have been invented yet (because the science needed for the laser was developed in the late 19th century, and the materials that formed the basis of the laser - none of which had practical market needs - were developed in the late 1950's; but the first market demands for the laser came in the late 1960's; had we waited until the market needed the laser to begin developing the laser, we would not have a laser even today), and we would not have CD's, DVD's, bar code scanners, laser range finders, laser radar, etc.

There are two ways to make progress. You can wait until you need a tool to invent the tool, and cause substantial delays in implementation, or you can invent lots of tools so that when the market needs them they are available. Patents tend to drive the latter behavior. The "market" tends to drive the former. Is the former less wasteful? Probably. But it is also slower.

Anonymous, i found you commnent highly informative. You say "There is a school of thought that claims that "the market" needs something, it will be invented".

I suppose that when you say "the market" you are refering to the NO IP protection situation. In this case, what will motivate the people to work in this particular problem the market needs according to this school? The lead ?

Precisely now we have a case which can validate or invalidate this theory. I´m refering to this P versus NP (and its parallel version P versus NC) problem that theoretical computer scientist like so much. There are houndreds of problems of important practical interest (and thousands less interesting)in physics (i.e the full non planar Ising model), biology (avalaible models of protein folding), economics (pure Nash equilibrium) or computer science that we can not solve but would like highly to solve.

We know this now since a while, more than 40 years, but no invention one way or the other. So, what is the time barrier that this school stablish as to say that the market has been succesful since the discovery of the need ? Ten years, one thousand years ? On the other patent defenders (as i´m) must admit that we do not have a patent either which solve this problem. The conclusion is that neither "market driven" strategy nor the "patent explorer" strategy seems succesfull. Maybe the "diamond mind" which will solve this problem has yet to be Born ?

2. The above considerations lead me to reformulate the worst-case problem in above comment as follows:

considering that there is only one person in the future which can solve the most beneficial problem (for instance this P versus NP, just an example), and this person is the selfiest man in history will he carry his invention to the tumb or will he disclose it (one way or the other) under market conditions (i.e. with no IP protection) ?

Pls note that although this is not a purely theoretical case. Maybe it is an extreme case, maybe unlikely, but not imposible. We just, do not know so we would like that any innovation regulation system ("NO IP" or "limited IP" or "Unlimited IP") provides a solution to this case for the benefit of all. Limited IP is the one we have now. Although i know the optimal patent theory, I do not buy it, and claim that only full IP (any idea is subject to property and this property is full, unlimited in time).

Pls note also that this may contradict my previous assertion that only inventions which supose work saving can be patented. I claim that this does not make any diference: with an unlimited propietary IP system, picaresque patents would not be harmful to the system. Once an unlimited system is stablished market will recognize them and nobody will buy it.

"prionpropanentuiq" vomits:

Capitalism is based not only in competition but also in property rights. Unless you guarantee property rights, you will not get competitive market

I agree. Property rights, of course, are another thing that copyrights and patents undermine. Copyrights mean that someone else can get the government to limit what I can do with my own pen and paper. Patents, that someone else can get the government to limit what I can do with parts I buy at Radio Shack with my own money. Clearly, these are tramplings of my property rights in my pen, paper, and parts.

In summary, there are only two coherent alternatives: no IP protection at all, or a full IP protection, and economic science must research which one is the best.

Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. The verdict is in: no "IP protection" is the best.

[mutters something about P vs. NP]

No patent needed for incentives here. Besides the fact that this sort of research is undertaken normally by universities, there's also the matter that anyone proving P = NP will become enormously famous as the "man who killed crypto". Add to that that there must be a ton of money being spent quietly on this by the NSA and their international counterparts. Any such agency discovering a proof of P = NP will then turn that money towards putting it into practice breaking other nations' codes, and towards quantum encryption. And any discovering proof of P != NP gets to sleep securely that night knowing that their own codes really are unbreakable and knowing that all their counterparts that are still frittering away money on P = NP and on quantum encryption are wasting their time.

considering that there is only one person in the future which can solve the most beneficial problem (for instance this P versus NP, just an example), and this person is the selfiest man in history

A remarkably dubious hypothesis. I daresay if anyone will ever exist that can solve a problem, more than one will eventually exist. Either the capacity to solve the problem is within reach of our species or it's beyond it. If it's beyond it no-one will do it. If it's within it everyone above some attainable level could do it.

Alonniemouse releases some methane:

A perfect example is the laser. It took more than 70 years to develop a practical laser and to find useful ways to apply the laser. If the market had its way, the laser would not have been invented yet (because the science needed for the laser was developed in the late 19th century, and the materials that formed the basis of the laser - none of which had practical market needs - were developed in the late 1950's; but the first market demands for the laser came in the late 1960's; had we waited until the market needed the laser to begin developing the laser, we would not have a laser even today), and we would not have CD's, DVD's, bar code scanners, laser range finders, laser radar, etc.

A perfect example of what? Not of any pro-patent position. Any laser patents gotten in the "late 19th century" or in the 50s would have expired long before they could turn the patenters a profit. In fact, laser research was largely carried out at universities and the like at first, as is common with basic research where no practical applications are yet on the horizon. Corporations generally don't invest in such research, patents or no patents. (Which means it wouldn't get done in Kinsella's anarchist paradise, either. It takes governments, universities, and similar public-sector organization, so a private-sector-only world stagnates technologically after a while.)

Earwax:

"A perfect example of what? Not of any pro-patent position. Any laser patents gotten in the "late 19th century" or in the 50s would have expired long before they could turn the patenters a profit. In fact, laser research was largely carried out at universities and the like at first, as is common with basic research where no practical applications are yet on the horizon. Corporations generally don't invest in such research, patents or no patents. (Which means it wouldn't get done in Kinsella's anarchist paradise, either. It takes governments, universities, and similar public-sector organization, so a private-sector-only world stagnates technologically after a while.)"

Well, worm, you mis-read again. I sometimes wonder at your reading skills.

The development of the laser took more than 70 years. The initial work was done in a university environment, back in the late 1800's. However, that work shifted to corporations in the 20th century and required multiple developments in order to make the laser practical, or even demonstrable, and nearly all that work was done by corporations. Can you say CORPORATIONS? Hmmmm?

But, my point was more basic. The MARKET would NOT have driven development of the physics behind the laser in a UNIVERSITY environment. Why would it? There was not "incentive" to develop what appeared to be wildly esoteric knowledge with no known application.

But, once the all-powerful "market" found a use for such a product, which would then drive the university and corporate research in a world without patents, it would likely have taken decades to achieve the knowledge we have today.

Of course, what really happened was the theoretical work, non-market driven, took place in the late 1800's. The component work took place throughout the 1950's, and was patented. Even more interesting, the patents all expired, with the exception of the Gould patents on the laser, well before lasers proved commercially viable. Again, not market driven.

With the exception of the Gould patents, laser technology was generally readily available for anyone to use about the time that commercial viability of lasers was demonstrated in a wide array of industries, all because patents drove a lot of "unnecessary" and "wasteful" research that was, in the words of a person from the 1960's, a solution looking for a problem. Without patents, much of the CORPORATE work performed in the 1950's and 1960's would not have been accomplished, and laser technology would have been set back by at least a couple of decades, or more.

I begin to fear that Lonnie is some kind of S&M weirdo that actually likes this.

In fact I think I'm going to wash my hands after this post.

With lye.

[insult deleted]:

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

Well, [insult deleted], you [false accusation deleted] again. [insult deleted].

No, you're the stupid one. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

The development of the laser took more than 70 years.

Far too long for a patent to have been of any use to incentivize more than a fraction of it.

Thanks for handing me ammunition on a silver platter. Got some more?

The initial work was done in a university environment, back in the late 1800's.

And long before Bayh-Dole, so without patent incentives. Should I rest my case now? Or give this masochistic freak more of what he evidently wants?

However, that work shifted to corporations in the 20th century and required multiple developments in order to make the laser practical, or even demonstrable, and nearly all that work was done by corporations. [insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

And even most of that work seems to have been done before a patent would have been of any benefit. There wouldn't have been any royalties to speak of from such a patent until perhaps as late as the 1990s and the widespread adoption of compact discs. Of course it would have long since expired by then.

But, my point was more basic. The MARKET would NOT have driven development of the physics behind the laser in a UNIVERSITY environment.

That's an anti-capitalist-anarchist argument (and a good one), not a pro-patent argument. Take it up with Kinsella and any other anarchists you can find around here.

In fact, it's patent lovers like you that crippled university R&D with Bayh-Dole. Biotech has been hardest hit so far, but the damage is spreading. I hope you're proud of yourselves.

But, once the all-powerful "market" found a use for such a product, which would then drive the university and corporate research in a world without patents, it would likely have taken decades to achieve the knowledge we have today.

And it did take decades, but it was decades ago, and so here we are.

So?

Even more interesting, the patents all expired ... well before lasers proved commercially viable.

Ammunition, hell. You just handed me victory on a silver platter. They got not a dime in royalties from those patents, so they incentivized nothing. They may well have somewhat slowed down R&D, though, by creating a minefield for researchers and discouraging information sharing, as now even happens to university research no thanks to Bayh-Dole.

Laser technology was generally readily available for anyone to use about the time that commercial viability of lasers was demonstrated in a wide array of industries, all because patents drove a lot of "unnecessary" and "wasteful" research.

Bullshit. Specifically, the claim that it was patents that drove that research. It obviously wasn't, since you yourself just admitted that the patents were worthless.

Without patents, much of the CORPORATE work performed in the 1950's and 1960's would not have been accomplished, and laser technology would have been set back by at least a couple of decades, or more.

Bullshit. Bogus conclusion drawn from disproved premise.

Beeswax:

Wash your hands? Good. Considering that you wallow in crap, you need to.

[Statements alleging insults deleted. All alleged insults are in her own mind.]

[Diversionary ad hominem arguments deleted.]

"The development of the laser took more than 70 years.

Far too long for a patent to have been of any use to incentivize more than a fraction of it."

Oh, my goodness, you sort of got that right. Except, you are wrong. The theoretical work mostly happened in the late 1800's. There were some interesting experiments that occurred in the first part of the 20th century, but it was a number of patented developments in the 1950's that finally laid the ground work for the laser. The biggest breakthrough came at the end of the 1950's. Of course, it took almost two more decades for the laser to see significant practical use.

"The initial work was done in a university environment, back in the late 1800's.

And long before Bayh-Dole, so without patent incentives. Should I rest my case now? Or give this masochistic freak more of what he evidently wants?"

The theoretical work would not be patentable today.

"However, that work shifted to corporations in the 20th century and required multiple developments in order to make the laser practical, or even demonstrable, and nearly all that work was done by corporations.

And even most of that work seems to have been done before a patent would have been of any benefit. There wouldn't have been any royalties to speak of from such a patent until perhaps as late as the 1990s and the widespread adoption of compact discs. Of course it would have long since expired by then."

The original laser patents expired in 1994. The reason for that is complicated. You may have some fun researching the reason for that.

"In fact, it's patent lovers like you that crippled university R&D with Bayh-Dole. Biotech has been hardest hit so far, but the damage is spreading. I hope you're proud of yourselves."

Oh, please. I personally think Bayh-Dole was a terrible idea. There have been tons of studies, some reported here, that show unequivocally that Bayh-Dole does NOT do what it was supposed to do. It should be repealed.

"Even more interesting, the patents all expired ... well before lasers proved commercially viable.

Ammunition, hell. You just handed me victory on a silver platter. They got not a dime in royalties from those patents, so they incentivized nothing. They may well have somewhat slowed down R&D, though, by creating a minefield for researchers and discouraging information sharing, as now even happens to university research no thanks to Bayh-Dole."

You really think so? The Gould patents were ultimately worth tens of millions of dollars. That seems like a ton of incentive to me.

"Laser technology was generally readily available for anyone to use about the time that commercial viability of lasers was demonstrated in a wide array of industries, all because patents drove a lot of "unnecessary" and "wasteful" research.

Bullshit. Specifically, the claim that it was patents that drove that research. It obviously wasn't, since you yourself just admitted that the patents were worthless."

The patents, with the exception of the Gould patents, were not worthless. They taught laser technology to dozens and hundreds of engineers. I too learned from them. The laser industry is built on those patents. Now, the vast majority of the patents may not have done much in terms of royalty, but the knowledge in them is priceless. Even better, the companies that filed for the patents paid for the knowledge to be published.

"Without patents, much of the CORPORATE work performed in the 1950's and 1960's would not have been accomplished, and laser technology would have been set back by at least a couple of decades, or more.

Bullshit. Bogus conclusion drawn from disproved premise."

Actually, I have a good conclusion. People were investigating bunch of technologies that appeared unrelated, but in fact were related through laser technology. Without the drive for invention, incentivized for patents, it could have taken decades for the knowledge for lasers to come together. You would be amazed at how many different, seemingly unrelated, technologies it takes to make a laser. All that knowledge was coming to fruition in the late 50's, though it has taken another 30 years to refine that knowledge further.

Now, go wash the crap you wallow in from your hands.

80)

Alonniemouse deposited a bowel movement in an inappropriate place:

Beeswax:

[insult deleted].

[insult deleted][incorrect speculation regarding my sex deleted].

[insult deleted].

No, you're the crazy one. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

"Far too long for a patent to have been of any use to incentivize more than a fraction of it."

[insults deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

... it was a number of patented developments in the 1950's that finally laid the ground work for the laser. The biggest breakthrough came at the end of the 1950's. Of course, it took almost two more decades for the laser to see significant practical use.

And by then all those patents had expired, before making any substantial amounts of monopoly rents for their holders. Probably not even enough to cover the PTO's filing fees.

Time and money was wasted on filing patents that would have been better spent on the actual research.

Lonnie, do you ever tire of having your ass handed to you? If so, why not quit debating this now. If not, perhaps you should consider seeking professional help.

"And long before Bayh-Dole, so without patent incentives. Should I rest my case now? Or give this masochistic freak more of what he evidently wants?"

The theoretical work would not be patentable today.

Apparently Lonnie E. Holder, world-famous patent shill, er, attorney, does not know much about Bayh-Dole. Wow.

"And even most of that work seems to have been done before a patent would have been of any benefit. There wouldn't have been any royalties to speak of from such a patent until perhaps as late as the 1990s and the widespread adoption of compact discs. Of course it would have long since expired by then."

[calls me a liar]

No, you're the liar. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

US patents last at most 20 years. For a US patent to be unexpired in 1994 it would have had to have been issued no earlier than 1974. You mentioned dates in the 1950s.

"In fact, it's patent lovers like you that crippled university R&D with Bayh-Dole. Biotech has been hardest hit so far, but the damage is spreading. I hope you're proud of yourselves."

Oh, please. I personally think Bayh-Dole was a terrible idea.

Yet you support the Amazon one-click patent? You're either a hypocrite or crazy then.

There have been tons of studies, some reported here, that show unequivocally that Bayh-Dole does NOT do what it was supposed to do. It should be repealed.

There have been tons of studies, many reported here, that show unequivocally that patents do not do what they were supposed to do. They should be repealed.

"Ammunition, hell. You just handed me victory on a silver platter. They got not a dime in royalties from those patents, so they incentivized nothing. They may well have somewhat slowed down R&D, though, by creating a minefield for researchers and discouraging information sharing, as now even happens to university research no thanks to Bayh-Dole."

You really think so? [calls me a liar]

No, you're the liar. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

Either you lied that the patents made anyone any money or you lied about some of the dates; take your pick. But the timeline you laid out does not allow for any significant profits with patents that last 20 years or less from issuance until expiry.

"Bullshit. Specifically, the claim that it was patents that drove that research. It obviously wasn't, since you yourself just admitted that the patents were worthless."

The patents, with the exception of the Gould patents, were not worthless. They taught laser technology to dozens and hundreds of engineers.

So now the Gould patents were worthless? Which is it? They were worth millions or they were worthless?

First rule of lying successfully, Lonnie: keep track of your lies so as to avoid subsequently saying something that's inconsistent with one of them. Once you have a lot of lies floating around and you're not keeping good track of them, sooner or later one of them will blow up in your face. In our latest kerfuffles, no fewer than three of yours have already done so. I wonder which statement of yours will turn out to be number four?

Regardless, now you're back to the disclosure argument for patents, which I already torpedoed earlier. The patent system does not encourage true disclosure. It encourages maintaining trade secrecy as long as possible, and then when the secret's about to be discovered, getting a patent. It also encourages wording your patent as broadly as possible, and thus as vaguely as possible, both so it will cover more things while it's active, and so once it expires you might still have some trade secrets in that technology.

I also already said elsewhere the real way to limit the effects of trade secrecy and ensure technical knowledge spreads. The way Silicon Valley did it: have unenforceable noncompetes. I'd include NDAs as well.

Even better, the companies that filed for the patents paid for the knowledge to be published.

Without patents, maybe they'd have sold laser textbooks and made money publishing the knowledge.

"Bullshit. Bogus conclusion drawn from disproved premise."

[calls me a liar]

No, you're the liar. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

Without the drive for invention, incentivized for patents

Said "incentive" being what, a ghost of a chance for royalties if someone ever found a market to sell a large volume of the things to before the patents expired? A chance that, I might add, never materialized, for the vast majority of the patents in question if not all of them?

Riiiiiight.

[vicious insult deleted]

80)

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

And non sequitur.

Easy guys, let´s keep the discussion within the rational limits. Be reminded that to the audience, the one which insult weakens his position.

1. Beeswax said: "Copyrights mean that someone else can get the government to limit what I can do with my own pen and paper. Patents, that someone else can get the government to limit what I can do with parts I buy at Radio Shack with my own money".

Property rights over land mean that someone else can get the government to limit what i can do with my own feets and with my own hands: i can not walk trough this particular piece of space; i can use the ressources in this particular piece of space. What´s the diference ? That´s exactly the first flawed "anti-analogy" which is completely wrong in Boldrin-Levine theory.

2. The second thing which is wrong in their theory is the following proposition: competition alone in a communist knowledge regime (NO IP protection), produces more and better innovation than IP protection. Their style reminds me Gladwell (see for instance Outliers) a lot: select the case that fits the theory, sweep under the rug the one which does not fit; abstract when it helps, fine focus otherwise etc...

If what they are trying to prove is which regime produces more and better research they should have studied four cases (the unlimited IP protection alternative, although it is the one we will use in the future has not been yet implemented): --cases in which innovation has developped well in communist regime, --cases in which innovation has starved in communist regime (may i remind that patents right end after 20 years and that many innovation sectors has starved after expiration?) --cases in which innovation has developped well in limited IP regime, --cases in which innovation has starved in limited regime. A multicultural approach is welcomed. May i remind that China was closed to an industrial revolution under the Song dinasty ? That research in a scientific setting (Boldrin and Levine are great scientists but their book is not scientific) is welcomed. I would like to see them in this discussion.

3. In any case, as i said, the IP protection explicit economic function is not about maximizing the amount of innovation production, it is about publication:

the optimum IP protection regime would be the one which give innovators incentives enough so that any new knowledge (the set of truth propositions and correct instructions) avalaible in a mind is inmediatelly avalaible to the public. In particular we want an IP protection system that works well in the worst case. The worst case is the selfiest and most rational (cleverest) person in past and future history, which has invented the last innovation, the one that will drive inmediatelly society to the technological optimum, so that no further invention is necessary (for several reasons i suggest we call him the CKMMMS) and we want an IP system designed so that this guy inmediately shares his invention.

If you read carefully the above you realise that bellow comments misses the point, as well as the whole Boldrin-levine book: --"there's also the matter that anyone proving P = NP will become enormously famous as the "man who killed crypto". The CKMMMS is the selfiest man in history. He wants everything: fame but as much money as he can get from his invention. --"A remarkably dubious hypothesis. I daresay if anyone will ever exist that can solve a problem, more than one will eventually exist. Either the capacity to solve the problem is within reach of our species or it's beyond it. If it's beyond it no-one will do it. If it's within it everyone above some attainable level could do it". That´s a theoretical worst case. If your IP system can solve this case it is optimum, if not it is not. But it is also a plausible hypothesis about how things can happaen in reality: scientific evidence and current theories points to the fact that the creation of matter (big bang), the creation of life, the creation of the human brain has been singualrities, so the CKMMMS could also be that way.

After a second thought i think the CKMMMS uniqueness condition is not necessary. In fact there can be at present thousands or millions of CKMMMS out there. Are they sharing with us their invention ?

prionpropatentuiq writes:

Easy guys, let´s keep the discussion within the rational limits.

Lonnie won't listen to that sort of advice, I'm afraid.

Be reminded that to the audience, the one which insult weakens his position.

That'd be Lonnie.

Beeswax said: "Copyrights mean that someone else can get the government to limit what I can do with my own pen and paper. Patents, that someone else can get the government to limit what I can do with parts I buy at Radio Shack with my own money".

Property rights over land mean that someone else can get the government to limit what i can do with my own feets and with my own hands: i can not walk trough this particular piece of space; i can use the ressources in this particular piece of space. What´s the diference ? [insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

My hands and feet; someone else's land. Versus my hands and feet; my nuts and bolts, or pen and paper, or whatever.

Or look at it this way: a person can defend his real property by keeping it under lock and key, putting up a fence, patrolling its borders with a gun -- whatever. Land, car, bucket of spare parts, whatever it is. It's what economists call excludable and rival.

Information is neither. To "defend" a piece of information, by stopping anyone else using it (building something that works a particular way, writing down a particular sequence of words, etc.) requires getting the government involved and having that government monitor everyone and censor certain speech, restrict certain actions, etc., even when they occur between consenting private parties in their own private places.

In simpler language: you can defend your land, your house, your car, your furniture, your TV, etc. easily enough from me if I stay in my house minding my own business: you just have to sit there and do nothing. On the other hand even if I sit in my own house messing only with the things in there, things I own, I could be infringing your copyright or patent. You can't stop that without invading my privacy, or getting the government or someone else to do it on your behalf, and trampling on my right to do as I please with my own things in my own home.

Copyrights and patents are not property rights; they are antithetical to property rights. Theft of real property is a nonconsensual transaction where A removes something of B's without B's consent. Infringement of so-called "intellectual property" generally involves A doing something alone (writing an unauthorized sequel, building something that is covered by a patent) or with consenting partners (A and C swapping mp3s) that B maybe doesn't like, but isn't involved in.

Put it yet another way: if I have a chunk of land and you gain title to a different chunk of land, what I can do with and on my chunk is undiminished. If I have a pen and paper and you go to the store and buy your own pen and paper, what I can do with my pen and paper, and with and on my chunk of land, is undiminished. But if I have a copyright, and you go and get your own copyright, what I can do with my copyright, with my pen and paper, and with and on my chunk of land, magically is diminished! Your obtaining a copyright behaves very differently from your obtaining real property.

The second thing which is wrong in their theory is the following proposition: competition alone in a communist knowledge regime

There's nothing communist about the price of information being driven down to its marginal cost by market forces, any more than there is about the price of cars, television sets, or reams of paper being driven down to marginal cost by market forces. That in the case of information that marginal cost is zero seems to throw some people for a loop, but they simply aren't thinking logically.

(NO IP protection), produces more and better innovation than IP protection.

Yep; study after study proves that so-called "IP protection" has at best no effect on innovation and in practice often stifles it.

[accusation of "cooking the books" directed at Boldrin and Levine deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about them are at all true.

the unlimited IP protection alternative, although it is the one we will use in the future

It is not. "IP protection" is doomed; the people are waking up and things like sixty million filesharers using the Pirate Bay and the Pirate Party getting a seat in the EU legislature are nothing compared to the mass revolt against "IP" that is coming in the near future.

Your side is the one that is doomed. You have already lost the war.

may i remind that patents right end after 20 years and that many innovation sectors has starved after expiration?

Maybe if the businesses in those sectors grew too dependent on patent royalties and didn't have a smart business model in place with which they could be successful when faced with actual competition.

(This, and more Vioxx-like dangerous-drug scandals, are going to hit Big Pharma hard in the near future. I'd sell your Pfizer and Novartis stock now, if I were you.)

(Boldrin and Levine are great scientists but [insult deleted].)

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about them are at all true.

the optimum IP protection regime would be the one which give innovators incentives enough so that any new knowledge (the set of truth propositions and correct instructions) avalaible in a mind is inmediatelly avalaible to the public.

I'm glad you agree. That, of course, means zero "IP protection", since any "IP protection" at all means removing some knowledge from being available to the public, typically for decades.

In particular we want an IP protection system that works well in the worst case. The worst case is the selfiest and most rational (cleverest) person in past and future history, which has invented the last innovation, the one that will drive inmediatelly society to the technological optimum, so that no further invention is necessary (for several reasons i suggest we call him the CKMMMS) and we want an IP system designed so that this guy inmediately shares his invention.

Speaking of criminalizing private activities on private land, you do realize that what you are apparently smoking is probably illegal, right?

It's certainly addling your brain. Much of the above is simply unintelligible.

If you read carefully the above you realise that bellow comments [insult deleted], as well as the whole Boldrin-levine book: --"there's also the matter that anyone proving P = NP will become enormously famous as the "man who killed crypto".

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about any of us are at all true.

The CKMMMS is the selfiest man in history. He wants everything: fame but as much money as he can get from his invention.

Trying out as a science fiction author?

Don't quit your day job.

"A remarkably dubious hypothesis. I daresay if anyone will ever exist that can solve a problem, more than one will eventually exist. Either the capacity to solve the problem is within reach of our species or it's beyond it. If it's beyond it no-one will do it. If it's within it everyone above some attainable level could do it". That´s a theoretical worst case. If your IP system can solve this case it is optimum, if not it is not.

You're quite mad. The above wasn't a "worst case", it was simply a description of how things are. And it's not "IP systems" that solve problems like P = NP, it's people that solve problems like P = NP.

But it is also a plausible hypothesis about how things can happaen in reality: scientific evidence and current theories points to the fact that the creation of matter (big bang), the creation of life, the creation of the human brain has been singualrities, so the CKMMMS could also be that way.

Ah, now I get it. You're trying to sneak religion in via the back door, studiously avoiding the G-word in particular and inventing your own terminology.

Can't say I'm surprised that this latest bunch of pro-IP rants is coming from a closet creationist of some stripe (though at least you mention the Big Bang, and thus maybe aren't one of the especially nutty young-Earth variety).

After a second thought i think the CKMMMS uniqueness condition is not necessary. In fact there can be at present thousands or millions of CKMMMS out there. Are they sharing with us their invention ?

A polytheist creationist? What the hell? Or is this some new age thing -- aliens, maybe? If you don't like the Prime Directive, take it up with Gene Roddenberry. Yeah, yeah, I know about his present medical condition, but a new ager like you surely has a Ouija board and knows how to use it. Snap to it!

Beewax, than for your answer. Beleive it or not i found this discussion highly interesting. But that´s my last contribution.

1. Regarding the CKMMMS, i´m glad you catch the metaphor. But it is just a metaphor. I´m an (highly respectful with religion and interested just as a subject of study) irreductible atheist myself, so let´s keep this discussion under the limits of science. In any case, when thinking about this worst case scenario, i highly was surprised past day that almost all religions has came out to the same scenario. Of course that only proofs the universality of human mind and that religions also use rational means.

But more importantly, after thinking twice it is clear that this name CKMMMS for this character is a bad one. In fact there are four posible extreme characters in our movie: --the rational (cleverest) and bad (selfiest). Any sugestion for a better name ?; --the rational and good (the most altruist guy you might think of), this is the one we can name CKMMMS; --the not so clever but good and the not so clever but bad. We can not expect from this two to invent anything but incremental stuff so let´s trought them out of the movie. Now, one may think that it is bad luck that precisely the selfiest guy is the one which has invented the this great last innovation. But is it ? Is it bad luck ? Couldn´t it had been the case that the clever and good (the now correctly named CKMMMS) had invented this so great invention ? It turns out that in our movie the worst case is identical to the worst case. If it was the CKMMMS the one who invented this great inventor under the NO IP situation, he would carry it to the tumb as well. Think it twice. I have enough evidence that you are clever enough to reach the correct conclusion.

Pls note that in reality, we carry inside us the four characters and depending on the situation, we feel like one or the other, even we can choose to play the one or the other.

2. I know the excludable/rivalry clasification. In fact i prefer to see it as follows: excludable = controlable; rival = parallelizable consumption. If you see like this you can conclude that there is nothing natural in this distinction, it depends on the cost.

So let´s start from the begining. Take the all the land in the earth Earth. You effect a partition of the land (that´s a technical mathematical concept i supose you know) and you assign each part to a different person. That´s a property rights assignement over what you call an excludable and rival good.

Now take all posible truth propositions and all posible correct instructions of a certain size (a similar construction can be effected for creations). That´s a finite set, as all the land in the earth. You effect a partition and assign each part to a different agent. That´s IP. Each one controls his own idea and all the copies of it.

Moreover it is not truth that ideas are not non excludable nor non rival: think in a universe where there are 100 entities in a closed space where everybody can see constantly each others actions (think as a graph where vertices are entities and they are related by "observed by", "propietor of idea" and "use idea" ).90 entities are individuals. 10 are ideas. Are ideas (its use) in this case excludable and rival, yes ot not ? Like it or not that´s the world where we are going.

prionpropatentuiq (trying to pretend not to be) wrote:

Beewax, than for your answer. Beleive it or not i found this discussion highly interesting.

Surprisingly civil.

But that´s my last contribution.

Is that a promise?

1. Regarding the CKMMMS, i´m glad you catch the metaphor. But it is just a metaphor. I´m an (highly respectful with religion and interested just as a subject of study) irreductible atheist myself, so let´s keep this discussion under the limits of science. In any case, when thinking about this worst case scenario, i highly was surprised past day that almost all religions has came out to the same scenario. Of course that only proofs the universality of human mind and that religions also use rational means.

Nonetheless your beliefs appear to have a substantial faith-based component, even if you don't consider it to be faith in God, per se.

But more importantly, after thinking twice it is clear that this name CKMMMS for this character is a bad one. In fact there are four posible extreme characters in our movie:

And now we're apparently going off the rails and into cuckooland again. "Our movie"? WTF?

--the rational (cleverest) and bad (selfiest). Any sugestion for a better name ?; --the rational and good

Ah, I see. You've based your new age beliefs on the D&D alignment system: lawful good, lawful evil, chaotic good, and chaotic evil. Cute.

Pls note that in reality, we carry inside us the four characters and depending on the situation, we feel like one or the other, even we can choose to play the one or the other.

Well, then, you've done both Freud and the ancient Egyptians one better. They only had three (id, ego, and superego, or ba, ka, and akh, respectively, and amounting to roughly the same thing as near as I can figure). You have four!

I know the excludable/rivalry clasification. In fact i prefer to see it as follows: excludable = controlable; rival = parallelizable consumption.

Yes, you do indeed seem to prefer neologisms to using the same terminology everyone else uses. But why? Why do you want it to be harder for people to understand you?

Now take all posible truth propositions and all posible correct instructions of a certain size (a similar construction can be effected for creations). That´s a finite set, as all the land in the earth. You effect a partition and assign each part to a different agent. That´s IP. Each one controls his own idea and all the copies of it.

How stupid. First of all, everyone can defend the borders of their own land, but you need some mass surveillance society and Orwellian thought control to implement your silly "IP" regime. Second, land is rival. If I squat on it and mess it up, I mess it up for you. Information is nonrival. If I work with copies of information, it doesn't affect you in the slightest if you work with your own, separate copies. It's as silly to give you some kind of "rights" (really, mercantile privileges) in all copies of some story as it is to give you "rights" in all chairs, or all rocks, or all of the benzene molecules in the universe. What I do with my own benzene is no skin off your nose; there's no rational argument for giving you the privilege of restricting what I do with it, given that it's my benzene and I got it fair and square. Same with my paper, my ink, my computer, my bucket of spare parts, and anything I choose to assemble from these.

Moreover it is not truth that ideas are not non excludable nor non rival: think in a universe where there are 100 entities in a closed space where everybody can see constantly each others actions (think as a graph where vertices are entities and they are related by "observed by", "propietor of idea" and "use idea" ).90 entities are individuals. 10 are ideas. Are ideas (its use) in this case excludable and rival, yes ot not ? Like it or not that´s the world where we are going.

No, that is the world where you are going if you overdose on that wacky tobacky you've been smoking for the past several days.

The rest of us, fortunately, will avoid it.

""But that´s my last contribution. Is that a promise?"" Now yes, unless Boldrin or Levine entry in the discussion (no hope of course).

In any case, Beewax, I do not know what´s your motivation to be in this discussion (although i can guess it), and to be sincere i dont´care. But i´m not gratuitously or as a past time; i neither have hidden religious (í´m an atheist), nor pseudoscientific intention (for instance i´ve always considered Freudism and other pseudosciences %*(/*&!!).

To be honest i´m only here because i´m an owner of a patent and i have never understood why i have not ilimited rights over my invention, which by the way was very hard to obtain (by far a non obvious result) and very expensive to protect.

When ranting about this in another blog someone pointed to me to Boldrin-Levine theory as the definite proof that ideas can not be protected. I saw that Boldrin-Levine´s was (surprisingly) ignored by academia but acclamed in some circles. After reading Boldrin-Levine book i found it interesting as a theory (i love theories) but indignant. This lead me to think hard about the whole issue of innovations and its protections and i reached exactly the contrary conclusions than Boldrin-Levine. Conclusions that to help readers, if any besides you, i summarize bellow.

Innovations help humans to enjoy life. Creations directly. Inventions indirectly, reducing the amount of work needes to cover our needs. Creations are expressions of finite alphabets (colors, flavours, sounds, letters...). Innovations are special kinds of expresions: propositions or instructions.

There are 3 possible Innovations or Intelectual Property Systems: --No Intelectual Property, that´s Boldrin-Levine theory. --Limited Intelectual Property, that´s the current system in almost all if not all countries. Limited refers to the content and time of Intelectual Property protection. The justification of limits and the concrete limits are based on optimal patent theory. --Ilimited Intelectual Property, that is a system where there is no content nor time restriction. That is property rights over innovations are hereditary and every expression, every proposition content thing can copyrighted or patented.

I claim that the first system will lead to a jungle, the second to a technological suboptimum and only the third system gives incentives for economic agents such that efficient and economic innovation/knowledge markets arise. That is: --markets where every innovation avalaible to a mind (creation or invention) is avalaible to the public inmediately and therefore there are no unfair information asymetries nor inefficient duplicity of work. --innovations (creations and inventions) are traded at his most competitive price, --as a byproduct a knowledge society where innovation is so accelerated that it can reach its optimum equilibrium, which is a situation where no more inventions are necessary (since technology has reached his optimum) and creations might indefinitively be produced (inventions must have a finite limit but do not se why creations must have it).

2. That beeing said, i can not resist to discuss for the last time your last (but reiterative) arguments:

"Information is nonrival". Information is not in a limbo: it must be embedded in some physical support (a brain, a book, an MP3 or whatever). And this physical supports are rival and excludable goods, exactly as potatoes. Once again i will try to push this proposition (information is not rival) to its absurd logical limits in order to prove that it is wrong: if in the universe there where only one long idea no human mind could keep in his mind but needed by humans to survive, and there were in this universe 10 entities consisting in 9 humans and 1 physical support of this idea (let´s say a book), this information or idea embeddded in this physical support would be a rival good. If one guy could control this good and decided not share it. Is that rival or not ?

So information is not by its nature rival or not rival, excludable or not excludable. In fact this argument aplyes to any good i can think of. What happens in our days is that because it is very cheap to reproduce, store and comunicate information (thanks to patented inventions) and very hard to control its reproduction, storage and comunication (due to the lack of inventions ?), we think it is not rival. But i repeat, that only depends on the cost, not on the nature of information. I´m surprised it is so hard to understand this.

"It's as silly to give you some kind of "rights" (really, mercantile privileges) in all copies of some story as it is to give you "rights" in all chairs, or all rocks" It could be said that almost all rocks in earth have propietors since almost all land has it. That´s the key of the idea: if things which nobody has created or invented can be assigned as property sine die, why not things that has been created or invented by someone ?

As for instance the idea of a chair. why can not it be protected ? The only reason that it is not is because it was invented long ago and therefore it is now a folk invention. In fact chairs with special designs can be protected AFAIK.

a couple of posts ago, prionpropatentuiq wrote:

But that´s my last contribution.

Unfortunately, prionpropatentuiq lied.

In any case, Beewax, I do not know what´s your motivation to be in this discussion (although i can guess it)

Duty calls.

i neither have hidden religious (í´m an atheist), nor pseudoscientific intention

That's an odd claim to make, given you've been cluttering up this blog with neologistic technobabble in a fine imitation of such luminaries as Archimedes Plutonium and the author of Time Cube.

To be honest i´m only here because i´m an owner of a patent

And we're here scheming to take your mercantile privilege away. Aww, too bad.

very expensive to protect.

It's weird the way pro-"IP" nutjobs talk all the time about "protecting" their "content" or their "invention". You don't protect such a thing by bottling it up and restricting access; that's how you strangle it.

Of course, if they were more honest and talked about protecting their "revenue stream" instead, people might have less sympathy for them.

What they really need is better business models. I suggest we usher in an era of rapid business-model innovation by yanking the "IP" rug out from under them. Permanently.

When ranting about this in another blog someone pointed to me to Boldrin-Levine theory as the definite proof that ideas can not be protected.

See above re: "protection"; the real way to protect ideas and information of any kind is to disseminate copies as widely as possible. Every IT tech who has to manage backups knows that.

As for proof that ideas cannot be contained, just look at the Pirate Bay and the like!

After reading Boldrin-Levine book i found it interesting as a theory (i love theories) but indignant.

As in, Boldrin and Levine seemed indignant? Or it made you feel indignant? The latter would be because it's told you that your patent is evil and anything you've derived from it is ill-gotten gains. If it's a pharma patent for a life-saving drug, blood money even.

Good; that's a sign that you might at least have a twinge of a conscience in there.

Atonement can be had by relinquishing the patent into the public domain.

This lead me to think hard about the whole issue of innovations and its protections and i reached exactly the contrary conclusions than Boldrin-Levine.

Maybe you got a + and a - switched somewhere.

I claim that the first system will lead to a jungle, the second to a technological suboptimum and only the third system gives incentives for economic agents such that efficient and economic innovation/knowledge markets arise.

Jungles are the most fecund ecosystems.

That is: --markets where every innovation avalaible to a mind (creation or invention) is avalaible to the public inmediately and therefore there are no unfair information asymetries nor inefficient duplicity of work.

"IP" prevents innovations being available to the public immediately by locking them up and/or pricing them out of reach of the vast majority of people for a long time, and "IP" also makes them unavailable for innovators to further develop. Tinker with it and improve on it and you get sued!

As for "inefficient duplicity[sic] of work", outside of cuckooland that's called "competition" and it's a major driver to develop improvements in efficiency and to innovate in general.

innovations (creations and inventions) are traded at his most competitive price

That'd be marginal cost, which'd require no "IP" creating monopolies that would in turn encourage charging monopoly prices.

it can reach its optimum equilibrium, which is a situation where no more inventions are necessary (since technology has reached his optimum)

Is that even possible? Maybe there's no end to further improvements.

"Information is nonrival". Information is not in a limbo: it must be embedded in some physical support

I'm not suggesting that the physical support be free. I'm not arguing that CDs and DVDs be priced at $0. Marginal cost for these things is not $0, after all.

And this physical supports are rival and excludable goods, exactly as potatoes.

And just as I can buy a potato, plant it, and grow several potatoes from it with my own soil and water, I ought to be able to buy a CD and make several copies with my own computer and blank discs, legally.

Once again i will try to push this proposition (information is not rival) to its absurd logical limits in order to prove that it is wrong

Things like discs aren't nonrival, but that's not the same as information. Information is nonrival. It can be copied endlessly without being diluted or diminished. If you still do not realize that then there is no possibility of our having a rational discussion.

But i repeat, that only depends on the cost, not on the nature of information. [insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

See above. Information is nonrival, even if its usual containers aren't.

"It's as silly to give you some kind of "rights" (really, mercantile privileges) in all copies of some story as it is to give you "rights" in all chairs, or all rocks" It could be said that almost all rocks in earth have propietors since almost all land has it.

Not the same thing. Nobody's land ownership gives them rights to all the rocks of a certain type on everyone else's land.

That´s the key of the idea: if things which nobody has created or invented can be assigned as property sine die, why not things that has been created or invented by someone ?

It's not about artificial vs. natural objects; it's about excludable and rival vs. not either.

As for instance the idea of a chair. why can not it be protected ?

Because unlike a specific instance of a chair, it's not rival or excludable by nature. It requires a very intrusive artifice to force it to seem to be either; indeed, as the RIAA has been finding out lately, a Sisyphean effort.

Beeswax, duty calls also for me, so i feel obliged to break my promise.

Second, an history about my family. It is not that i want to talk about this in public but once we have reached this point i feel it is necessary. You know, we had long time ago some cousins in my family. They did not like property. No reason, just, they did not like. You see some people is like that. You know how did they end ? Please check by yourself:

http://zaragozaciudad.net/lanavarra/upload/20071203205500-chimps.jpg

I´m not saying that´s a bad end. But is this what we want ?

Second, i´ve done some deep research on google and now i know who invented the chair. At the end not so folk invention: it seems it was someone which was not confortable seating (guess where!)...in a rock !!. That´s creativity. Now we enjoy life more.

Finaly, as soon as you read my arguments and answer to my points, let me know, i would be glad to restart the debate.

Beeswax, [implied insult deleted], so I feel obliged to break my promise.

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

Excuses, excuses.

Second, an history about my family.

Irrelevant.

They did not like property.

Doubly irrelevant, since I'm not against property. I'm for property -- it's one of the reasons I'm against intellectual "property".

Finaly, as soon as you read my arguments and answer to my points, let me know, i would be glad to restart the debate.

Already did so, in my immediately preceding comment. Haven't you noticed it yet?

Beeswax squatted and dropped an even bigger load than last time, and it really stinks.

[Statement of paranoid delusion deleted.]

[Statement regarding whether Beeswax has sex deleted.]

[Statement of paranoid delusion deleted.]

"... it was a number of patented developments in the 1950's that finally laid the ground work for the laser. The biggest breakthrough came at the end of the 1950's. Of course, it took almost two more decades for the laser to see significant practical use.

And by then all those patents had expired, before making any substantial amounts of monopoly rents for their holders. Probably not even enough to cover the PTO's filing fees."

Wrong. Again. Seriously wrong. The first Gould patent on the laser was awarded in 1977. Yes, it took nearly two decades for the USPTO to understand what a laser was and why it was novel. Under the rules of the time, patents lasted for 17 years from the date of issue. What that meant was that the patent expired in 1994.

Care to explain about how the Gould patent failed to earn the fees it took to file them? As I explained before, the Gould patent is considered to be the seminal patent that finally put together the information needed to explain how to make a practical laser. It also earned millions for its inventor.

"Time and money was wasted on filing patents that would have been better spent on the actual research."

Actually, the money and time was already spent. Laser technology is quite well developed, thank you very much, thanks to people like Gould.

"Lonnie, do you ever tire of having your ass handed to you? If so, why not quit debating this now. If not, perhaps you should consider seeking professional help."

Seems like you have had your ass handed to you. You have yet to make a single factual point, so I feel like I am debating nothingness.

"And long before Bayh-Dole, so without patent incentives. Should I rest my case now? Or give this [childish insult deleted] more of what he evidently wants?" The theoretical work would not be patentable today.

Apparently Lonnie E. Holder, world-famous patent shill, er, attorney, does not know much about Bayh-Dole. Wow."

Ummm...first, you are wrong, once again. I am not an attorney, moron. Second, the theoretical work on the laser would not be patentable today. What is your point? Gould demonstrated the laser in 1957 and filed patent applications soon after. His INVENTION was patentable.

Also, I should point out that the practical work ALL took place in companies, not universities. Bayh-Dole would not be applicable. Or is it that you do not know much about Bayh-Dole? I find that easy to believe given the breadth of your ignorance.

"US patents last at most 20 years. For a US patent to be unexpired in 1994 it would have had to have been issued no earlier than 1974. You mentioned dates in the 1950s."

Yes I did. Gould filed his first patent application in 1959. However, the USPTO took forever to rule on the patent, in 1977. Patents issued in 1977 lasted for 17 years from the date of issuance. What is your point, again? Just FYI, because I like to help ignorant persons such as yourself, the first patent was 4,053,485, based on an application filed on April 6, 1959, and issued October 11, 1977. The expiration date for this patent was October 11, 1994.

""In fact, it's patent lovers like you that crippled university R&D with Bayh-Dole. Biotech has been hardest hit so far, but the damage is spreading. I hope you're proud of yourselves."

Oh, please. I personally think Bayh-Dole was a terrible idea.

Yet you support the Amazon one-click patent? [Savage lie deleted. No, you are the hypocrite and your lies are evident to everyone.]

Please show me a single place where I "support" the Amazon one-click patent. I have neither supported it, or commented against it. At most, I asked for explanation regarding certain aspect of the patent and why it should be considered obvious. A factual inquiry is not "support." At least, it is not considered "support" in the English language and by a reasonable person.

"There have been tons of studies, some reported here, that show unequivocally that Bayh-Dole does NOT do what it was supposed to do. It should be repealed. There have been tons of studies, many reported here, that show unequivocally that patents do not do what they were supposed to do. They should be repealed."

I agree with that point of view. As I have said before, I think Bayh-Dole was a terrible idea. Since I have already agreed with the one valid point you already have, why are you beating a dead horse?

""Ammunition, hell. You just handed me victory on a silver platter. They got not a dime in royalties from those patents, so they incentivized nothing. They may well have somewhat slowed down R&D, though, by creating a minefield for researchers and discouraging information sharing, as now even happens to university research no thanks to Bayh-Dole."

You really think so?"

As I have explained, multiple times (are you really so dense that I have to explain over and over and over and over and over that Gould received MILLIONS for his laser patents. MILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN ROYALTIES.

I should also point out that laser research and development was one of the hottest areas of technology development from the 1960's on. Things have slowed somewhat as the technology has matured, but there is not a single case of research being "slowed" by patents.

As for being incentivized, just because you do not earn a penny of royalties does not mean there was no incentive from laser patents. The companies doing the most development bragged about their laser patents as evidence of how wonderful their technology was. The advertising benefit from those patents was well worth every penny spent, and more.

[Statement of paranoid delusion deleted.]

"Either you lied that the patents made anyone any money or you lied about some of the dates; take your pick. But the timeline you laid out does not allow for any significant profits with patents that last 20 years or less from issuance until expiry."

Oh, my. You repeat the same nonsense, AGAIN. I tire from explaining to you. At this point you have the facts. As I have already explain, and I tired of explaining to someon who clearly refuses to understand F-A-C-T-S, though I can see you have an issue with facts as they seem to tear apart your fragile little world of delusion, the timeline in fact leads to a patent that expired in 1994.

"Bullshit. Specifically, the claim that it was patents that drove that research. It obviously wasn't, since you yourself just admitted that the patents were worthless."

The patents, with the exception of the Gould patents, were not worthless. They taught laser technology to dozens and hundreds of engineers.

So now the Gould patents were worthless? Which is it? They were worth millions or they were worthless?"

I had a typographical error, plus I mixed two statements. You should never be in a hurry when reporting factual information.

Let me explain.

Most of the early patents relating to lasers were not terribly valuable from a financial perspective. However, they were infinitely valuable from a teaching perspective. One of our favorite pasttimes was reading new laser patents when they came out to see what new technologies were available for use. Since most of these patents were for new components, to people designing lasers they were priceless, regardless of whether they earned royalties for their owners. I remember learning about using potassium niobate as a frequency doubler from the patent. Later I peformed a number of experiments with potassium niobate frequency doublers.

As for financial gain, even though most laser patents were not all that directly financially valuable, they were valuable to their owners because patents provided a lot of the teaching in the laser industry in the early years. While papers were interesting, they tended to be more theoretical. Patents showed implementations of the theory.

As for the Gould patents, they were worth millions in royalties. The Gould patents were among the few patents that were directly financially valuable in the laser industry.

"First rule of lying successfully, Lonnie: keep track of your lies so as to avoid subsequently saying something that's inconsistent with one of them. Once you have a lot of lies floating around and you're not keeping good track of them, sooner or later one of them will blow up in your face. In our latest kerfuffles, no fewer than three of yours have already done so. I wonder which statement of yours will turn out to be number four?"

Let me see. I have not lied once. I did make a mistake in how I wrote a sentence, but that does happen, and now I have explained what I intended to write. So, as for lies, Beeswax has not found A SINGLE ONE FROM ME. So your supposedly factual statement that I have been found out by you to have lied three times is, in fact, a well-documented LIE.

"Regardless, now you're back to the disclosure argument for patents, which I already torpedoed earlier."

Your limp, powerless torpedo failed to even register on my "disclosure argument."

"The patent system does not encourage true disclosure. It encourages maintaining trade secrecy as long as possible, and then when the secret's about to be discovered, getting a patent."

This strategy is incredibly dangerous, and has proven disastrous from more than one company. Not to mention that it is a quick way to be rejected for a patent. If you hide or suppress your technology, then the USPTO gain deem that you have abandoned the technology. Since the public policy purpose of the patent system is early disclosure, the USPTO has strict rules set up that permit a later developer to be awarded a patent because an earlier developer failed to disclose their technology.

However, the system also prevents someone who has implemented a trade secret from getting a patent. If you have a trade secret process for making floor boards, for example, and you sell floor boards made with that process, after a year has passed you would be unable to file a patent application.

So, in fact the patent system is set up to reward people who disclose their knowledge, and it withholds protection from those who fail to reveal their knowledge.

"It also encourages wording your patent as broadly as possible, and thus as vaguely as possible, both so it will cover more things while it's active, and so once it expires you might still have some trade secrets in that technology."

Your claims have to be supported by your specification. Failure to do so will get your patent invalidated.

The USPTO is quite strict about these sorts of details.

http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2010/03/federal-circuit-confirms-that-patents-must-meet-both-the-written-description-and-enablement-requirements-of-section-112.html

You will note the federal circuit properly ruled that a patent must describe the invention and the description must enable the claims. Broad vague claims will be slapped down by the court every time. Now that the USPTO has been spanked by the federal circuit, I think you will see them be more diligent about assuring both requirements are met.

"I also already said elsewhere the real way to limit the effects of trade secrecy and ensure technical knowledge spreads. The way Silicon Valley did it: have unenforceable noncompetes. I'd include NDAs as well."

You can wish for flying monkeys, but I doubt that will happen.

Non-competes are somewhat unenforceable. You cannot stop someone from practicing the technical training they obtained in college and through life experience, as you, being a highly trained engineer, well knows. However, you can stop misappropriation of trade secrets.

As for NDA's, they are valid contracts and people who violate them do so against their own best interest, particularly when they are suppliers. How long would a supplier last if they violated an NDA? Not very long.

"Even better, the companies that filed for the patents paid for the knowledge to be published.

Without patents, maybe they'd have sold laser textbooks and made money publishing the knowledge."

The people who design and sell lasers rarely, if ever, sell laser textbooks. However, some of the people who worked for laser companies have.

[Statement of paranoid delusion deleted.]

[Statement regarding my veracity, as yet unchallenged by Beeswax, deleted.]

"Without the drive for invention, incentivized for patents

Said "incentive" being what, a ghost of a chance for royalties if someone ever found a market to sell a large volume of the things to before the patents expired? A chance that, I might add, never materialized, for the vast majority of the patents in question if not all of them?"

There are multiple kinds of incentives. Royalties are one kind of incentive. However, manufacturers are typically uninterested in royalties. Their only interest is in retaining limited rights to inventions they spent thousands, tens of thousands, or millions of dollars to develop.

Yet another form of incentive is recognition within an industry. High tech companies love to brag about how many patents they have. Many customers recognize patents as a form of formal award for technical achievement, and see a correlation between advanced technology and patents, as any reasonable person would.

There are other incentives as well. Patents can be an incentive for engineers within a company. Many engineers love to see their names on patents as a kind of recognition for the importance and significance of their work, even if they do not see a dime for getting the patent.

You are too narrow minded when you think that incentive always has to mean money.

Alonniemouse vomited forth a torrent of vile nonsense:

Beeswax [vicious insult deleted].

[insult deleted]

[irrelevant statement deleted]

[insult deleted]

No, no, a thousand times no! You're the crazy one. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

"And by then all those patents had expired, before making any substantial amounts of monopoly rents for their holders. Probably not even enough to cover the PTO's filing fees."

[insult deleted]. [insult deleted]. [insult deleted].

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

"Time and money was wasted on filing patents that would have been better spent on the actual research."

Actually, the money and time was already spent.

No, you said that they filed all sorts of patents all through the time when the technology was being developed, most of which expired before any large-scale practical applications existed. Colossal waste of time and money.

"Lonnie, do you ever tire of having your ass handed to you? If so, why not quit debating this now. If not, perhaps you should consider seeking professional help."

Seems like you [insult deleted].

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[misquotes and insults me]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

"Apparently Lonnie E. Holder, world-famous patent shill, er, attorney, does not know much about Bayh-Dole. Wow."

Ummm...first, you are [insult deleted], once again. [calls me a liar], [insult deleted]. Second, [confesses his ignorance of Bayh-Dole once again].

No, you're the liar and the moron. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

Also, I should point out that [something irrelevant]. Bayh-Dole would not be applicable. Or is it that you [insult deleted]?

Certainly not. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

I find that easy to believe given the breadth of your [insult deleted].

No! None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

"US patents last at most 20 years. For a US patent to be unexpired in 1994 it would have had to have been issued no earlier than 1974. You mentioned dates in the 1950s."

Yes I did.

Well, there you go, then.

What is your point, again?

If you have to ask, at this point in time, then you are seriously out to lunch.

Just FYI, because I like to help [insult deleted] such as yourself

Wrong target. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

"In fact, it's patent lovers like you that crippled university R&D with Bayh-Dole. Biotech has been hardest hit so far, but the damage is spreading. I hope you're proud of yourselves."

Oh, please.

It is too late for the "beg for forgiveness" approach to work here, Lonnie.

[vicious insults deleted, including calling me a liar]

No, you're the liar. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

Please show me a single place where I "support" the Amazon one-click patent.

Right here.

[calls me a liar]

No, you're the liar. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

"There have been tons of studies, many reported here, that show unequivocally that patents do not do what they were supposed to do. They should be repealed."

I agree with that point of view.

Whaaaa? flabbergasted

Then what the FUCK are we fighting about?!

Since I have already agreed with the [insult deleted], why are you beating a dead horse?

Because until now you hadn't agreed with the rest. And because you continue to make erroneous statements about me in public, though, in fact, none of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

"Ammunition, hell. You just handed me victory on a silver platter. They got not a dime in royalties from those patents, so they incentivized nothing. They may well have somewhat slowed down R&D, though, by creating a minefield for researchers and discouraging information sharing, as now even happens to university research no thanks to Bayh-Dole."

[insult deleted] (are you really so [insult deleted])

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

laser research and development ... the technology has matured, but there is not a single case of research being "slowed" by patents.

That's now, after they've all expired!

As for being incentivized, just because you do not earn a penny of royalties does not mean there was no incentive from laser patents.

Sure it does.

The companies doing the most development bragged about their laser patents as evidence of how wonderful their technology was.

They could have bragged about their published peer-reviewed journal articles, or their snazzy demos at their CES booth year after year, or whatnot just as easily.

The advertising benefit from those patents was well worth every penny spent, and more.

Why not spend the money directly on marketing? It would be more efficient and without any evil monopolistic side-effects.

Hey, weren't you just finally coming around to realize that patents were bad, just a few minutes ago?

[insult deleted]

No, you're the crazy one. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

"Either you lied that the patents made anyone any money or you lied about some of the dates; take your pick. But the timeline you laid out does not allow for any significant profits with patents that last 20 years or less from issuance until expiry."

Oh, my. You [insult deleted], AGAIN.

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

I tire from explaining to you.

Then kindly shut up.

At this point you have the facts.

Indeed; and I have them on my side. I'm glad you're beginning to admit this. Admitting it's the first step.

As I have already explain, and I tired of explaining to someon who [insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

"So now the Gould patents were worthless? Which is it? They were worth millions or they were worthless?"

I had a typographical error

You certainly had an error allright, but I wouldn't characterize it as "typographical".

Let me explain.

I'll pass. Though I have a feeling you're going to anyway, and then I'll have to change your diaper afterward.

Most of the early patents relating to lasers were not terribly valuable from a financial perspective.

Well, there you go, then.

However, they were infinitely valuable from a teaching perspective.

Peer-reviewed journal articles would have been superior. All the same vitamins with none of the evil monopolistic side-effects. And low in saturated fat!

One of our favorite pasttimes was reading new laser patents when they came out to see what new technologies were available for use.

How awkward. Having a journal with a name like Lasers would have been a much more workable system.

While papers were interesting, they tended to be more theoretical. Patents showed implementations of the theory.

There should have been a journal for those, too. Probably the only reason there wasn't was because people a) put the info in patents themselves (but had there been no patent system, would have published articles instead) and b) hoped to put a tollbooth in the path of anyone else using this stuff (but had there been no patent system, wouldn't have been able to and may not have even conceived of doing so).

As for the Gould patents, they were worth millions in royalties.

And Lonnie's opinion of the Gould patents flip-flops again. At this point, obviously, his credibility is about zero.

"First rule of lying successfully, Lonnie: keep track of your lies so as to avoid subsequently saying something that's inconsistent with one of them. Once you have a lot of lies floating around and you're not keeping good track of them, sooner or later one of them will blow up in your face. In our latest kerfuffles, no fewer than three of yours have already done so. I wonder which statement of yours will turn out to be number four?"

Let me see. [calls me a liar].

No, you're the liar. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

(Irony alert.)

I did make a mistake

That much is certain.

So, as for lies, Beeswax has not found A SINGLE ONE FROM ME.

Rather than just one, I've found at least three.

[calls me a liar]

No, you're the liar. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

"Regardless, now you're back to the disclosure argument for patents, which I already torpedoed earlier."

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

Thinly-disguised dick-size insults, Lonnie? You really must be getting desperate.

"The patent system does not encourage true disclosure. It encourages maintaining trade secrecy as long as possible, and then when the secret's about to be discovered, getting a patent."

[a bunch of Lonnie's nonsense deleted]

However, the system also prevents someone who has implemented a trade secret from getting a patent. If you have a trade secret process for making floor boards, for example, and you sell floor boards made with that process, after a year has passed you would be unable to file a patent application.

Yeah, right. How would anyone prove you had used that process for a year? It's a secret, duh. You could use it from 1997 until now, find out that the secret's leaked, and file a patent application, then claim to have been using it only since 2009. Who would be able to prove otherwise?

So, in fact the patent system is set up to reward people who disclose their knowledge, and it withholds protection from those who fail to reveal their knowledge.

In theory. And, as usual with patents, theory and practice differ markedly.

"It also encourages wording your patent as broadly as possible, and thus as vaguely as possible, both so it will cover more things while it's active, and so once it expires you might still have some trade secrets in that technology."

Your claims have to be supported by your specification. Failure to do so will get your patent invalidated.

What "specification"? Enforcement of that is a complete and utter joke, as most software patents prove.

The USPTO is quite strict about these sorts of details.

Yeah, so strict they allowed the infamous one-click patent and numerous other broad and vague software patents. What was the "specification" in the patent NTP sued RIM over?

You will note the federal circuit properly ruled that a patent must describe the invention and the description must enable the claims. Broad vague claims will be slapped down by the court every time.

Oh, if only that were so. If only.

Now that the USPTO has been spanked by the federal circuit, I think you will see them be more diligent about assuring both requirements are met.

Optimist.

"I also already said elsewhere the real way to limit the effects of trade secrecy and ensure technical knowledge spreads. The way Silicon Valley did it: have unenforceable noncompetes. I'd include NDAs as well."

[non sequitur deleted]

I'll consider my point above to have been conceded in my favor by Lonnie.

...as you, being a highly trained engineer, well know

So now you admit that many of the nasty things you said or implied about my intellect were lies.

Good, good.

As for NDA's, they are valid contracts

in many jurisdictions, but probably shouldn't be.

"Without patents, maybe they'd have sold laser textbooks and made money publishing the knowledge."

The people who design and sell lasers rarely, if ever, sell laser textbooks.

Because they use the USPTO instead. In a world without the USPTO, that might have been different. More likely, they'd have published journal articles, and someone else would have published textbooks distilling the knowledge in those articles. Much the way things are done in many other fields, particularly ones where patents are inapplicable like pure mathematics and architecture.

[insults deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

"Said "incentive" being what, a ghost of a chance for royalties if someone ever found a market to sell a large volume of the things to before the patents expired? A chance that, I might add, never materialized, for the vast majority of the patents in question if not all of them?"

There are multiple kinds of incentives.

Is vagueness a recurring habit with you, or just a temporary condition?

The incentives are the licensing fees and monopoly rents, period. Your vague protestations to the contrary notwithstanding. And most of the patents in question didn't make a dime.

recognition within an industry

Having a blockbuster product will get you that. Having a snazzy demo at the CES will get you that. The patent system is not needed for this.

High tech companies love to brag about how many patents they have.

High tech nations love to brag about how many nukes they have.

It's called a strategic arsenal and a deterrent.

It doesn't mean if we could abolish the ability of nukes to go bang, we shouldn't.

Now, we actually can abolish the ability of patents to go bang. Without the threat of incoming patent infringement lawsuits, there's nothing to deter so big stockpiles of patents are not needed anymore. And there goes your latest "incentive".

Many customers recognize patents as a form of formal award for technical achievement

Naïve ones, maybe.

That patent issued in 2006 for the doubly-linked list certainly impressed me, but it isn't the patent holder's "technical achievement" that wowed me. Their greed and chutzpah, maybe.

and see a correlation between advanced technology and patents, as any reasonable person would.

No, a reasonable person that's been educated on this particular issue will see no such correlation at all, because it isn't there.

So far, your best argument in favor of patents (which ten minutes ago you'd said you'd finally decided were bad!) has been that they can be used to pull the wool over consumers' eyes.

Burn them. Burn them all!

Patents can be an incentive for engineers within a company.

Because the company may reward engineers that contribute to its strategic nuclear arsenal. See above about the need for that going away if patents were eliminated. Note also: example of a market-distorting incentive. How much valuable engineer time is wasted documenting claims for some fairly broad and vague patent instead of doing real R&D?

Many engineers love to see their names on patents as a kind of recognition for the importance and significance of their work, even if they do not see a dime for getting the patent.

An article in a prestigious journal is a perfectly good substitute for a patent here, so we don't need patents for this either.

You are [insult deleted] when you think that incentive always has to mean money.

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

And you are naïve when you think companies care about anything but money.

Beeswax popped zits on his ass and here is what squirted out:

[Irrelevant nonsense deleted.]

[Irrelevant statement protesting Beeswax's sanity deleted.]

[Irrelevant statement relating to Beeswax's paranoia deleted.]

[Irrelevant Beeswax statement of opinion substituting for fact deleted.]

[Irrelevant statement relating to Beeswax's paranoia deleted.]

[Yet another irrelevant statement relating to Beeswax's paranoia deleted.]

[Irrelevant statement relating to Beeswax's paranoia deleted.]

[Irrelevant statement relating to Beeswax's paranoia deleted.]

[Irrelevant statement relating to Beeswax's paranoia deleted.]

[Snide comment by Beeswax substituting for fact deleted.]

[Irrelevant statement relating to Beeswax's paranoia deleted.]

[Irrelevant statement relating to Beeswax's paranoia deleted.]

[Snide comment by Beeswax substituting for fact deleted.]

[Irrelevant statement relating to Beeswax's paranoia deleted.]

"Please show me a single place where I "support" the Amazon one-click patent.

Right here.'

I looked through every post I made. Not once did I support the one-click patent. So, another of your heinous lies found out.

[Irrelevant statement relating to Beeswax's paranoia deleted.]

[Edited Beeswax statement alleging I said something that I did not deleted. So, you are not happy lying by yourself? Now you need to implicate others in lies?]

[Irrelevant statement relating to Beeswax's paranoia deleted.]

[Irrelevant statement relating to Beeswax's paranoia deleted.]

"laser research and development ... the technology has matured, but there is not a single case of research being "slowed" by patents.

That's now, after they've all expired!"

Actually, laser development EXPLODED during the time the patents were in force. In fact, development was probably the FASTEST when the patents were in force. Now that the technology has become mature and the rate of patenting has slowed, so has progress in the field. I find that interesting and amusing.

[Irrelevant Beeswax statement of opinion substituting for fact deleted.]

"The companies doing the most development bragged about their laser patents as evidence of how wonderful their technology was.

They could have bragged about their published peer-reviewed journal articles, or their snazzy demos at their CES booth year after year, or whatnot just as easily."

Except journal papers prove nothing. They are just journal papers. Patents, on the other hand, are an indication of an actual device that might be a step toward a real product.

[Irrelevant Beeswax statement of opinion substituting for fact deleted.]

[Snide comment by Beeswax substituting for fact deleted.]

[Irrelevant statement relating to Beeswax's paranoia deleted.]

[Irrelevant statement relating to Beeswax's paranoia deleted.]

[Snide comment by Beeswax substituting for fact deleted.]

[Snide comment by Beeswax substituting for fact deleted.]

[Irrelevant statement relating to Beeswax's paranoia deleted.]

[Snide comment by Beeswax substituting for fact deleted.]

[Snide comment by Beeswax substituting for fact deleted.]

[Snide comment by Beeswax substituting for fact deleted.]

[Irrelevant Beeswax statement of opinion substituting for fact deleted.]

"One of our favorite pasttimes was reading new laser patents when they came out to see what new technologies were available for use.

How awkward. Having a journal with a name like Lasers would have been a much more workable system."

Not really. Papers are papers and tend to be focused on the theoretical. Patents explain how to actually build something. Have you actually read a journal? Most of them are worthless from a practical viewpoint.

[Irrelevant Beeswax statement of opinion substituting for fact deleted.]

"As for the Gould patents, they were worth millions in royalties.

And Lonnie's opinion of the Gould patents flip-flops again. At this point, obviously, his credibility is about zero."

Actually, I have no "opinion" regarding Gould's patents. They were worth millions and that is fact.

[Irrelevant statement relating to Beeswax's paranoia deleted.]

[Snide comment by Beeswax substituting for fact deleted.]

"So, as for lies, Beeswax has not found A SINGLE ONE FROM ME.

Rather than just one, I've found at least three."

Actually, smartass, you have found zero lies from me, while you have lied multiple times. In fact, your whole life is a lie.

[Irrelevant statement relating to Beeswax's paranoia deleted.]

[Irrelevant statement relating to Beeswax's paranoia deleted.]

[Snide comment by Beeswax substituting for fact deleted.]

[Snide comment by Beeswax substituting for fact deleted.]

"However, the system also prevents someone who has implemented a trade secret from getting a patent. If you have a trade secret process for making floor boards, for example, and you sell floor boards made with that process, after a year has passed you would be unable to file a patent application.

Yeah, right. How would anyone prove you had used that process for a year? It's a secret, duh. You could use it from 1997 until now, find out that the secret's leaked, and file a patent application, then claim to have been using it only since 2009. Who would be able to prove otherwise?"

You know, people do it all the time. Plus, if you lie and the lie is discovered, which tends to happen, then you may as well flush your patent, AND you will be severely punished. The government does not like to be lied to.

[Irrelevant Beeswax statement of opinion substituting for fact deleted.]

[Irrelevant Beeswax statement of opinion substituting for fact deleted.]

"The USPTO is quite strict about these sorts of details.

Yeah, so strict they allowed the infamous one-click patent and numerous other broad and vague software patents. What was the "specification" in the patent NTP sued RIM over?"

You will note that the USPTO invalidated every single NTP patent on re-examination. Had RIM waited just a little longer, they would not have had to pay a penny.

[Irrelevant Beeswax statement of opinion substituting for fact deleted.]

[Irrelevant Beeswax statement of opinion substituting for fact deleted.]

[Irrelevant Beeswax statement of opinion substituting for fact deleted.]

[Irrelevant Beeswax statement of opinion substituting for fact deleted.]

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[Irrelevant Beeswax statement of opinion substituting for fact deleted.]

[Irrelevant statement relating to Beeswax's paranoia deleted.]

[Irrelevant Beeswax statement of opinion substituting for fact deleted.]

[Snide comment by Beeswax substituting for fact deleted.]

[Irrelevant Beeswax statement of opinion substituting for fact deleted.]

[Irrelevant Beeswax statement of opinion substituting for fact deleted.]

[Irrelevant Beeswax statement of opinion substituting for fact deleted.]

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[Irrelevant Beeswax statement of opinion substituting for fact deleted.]

[Irrelevant Beeswax statement of opinion substituting for fact deleted.]

[Irrelevant Beeswax statement of opinion substituting for fact deleted.]

[Beeswax non sequitur deleted.]

[Irrelevant Beeswax statement of opinion substituting for fact deleted.]

[Irrelevant Beeswax statement of opinion substituting for fact deleted.]

[Irrelevant Beeswax statement of opinion substituting for fact deleted.]

[Irrelevant Beeswax statement of opinion substituting for fact deleted.]

[Irrelevant statement relating to Beeswax's paranoia deleted.]

"And you are naïve when you think companies care about anything but money."

And you are even more naïve if you think that companies only care about money. I am sorry that you have become some jaded in your short, sorry life that you have become bitter. I feel sad for you.

On the other hand, you make responding to you easier. You have no facts to back you up, only the stuff you make up and lies. I can see this thread getting shorting and shorter.

Alonniemouse forgot his Depends:

Beeswax [insult deleted]:

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No, you're the crazy one. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No, you're the crazy one. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No, you're the crazy one. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No, you're the crazy one. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No, you're the crazy one. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No, you're the crazy one. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No, you're the crazy one. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No, you're the crazy one. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No, you're the crazy one. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No, you're the crazy one. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

I looked through every post I made. Not once did I support the one-click patent. [calls me a liar]

No, you're the liar. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

People attacked the one-click patent and you rushed to its defense by viciously counterattacking the attackers. We all saw you. There's really no point in denying it.

[insult deleted]

No, you're the crazy one. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[calls me a liar]

No, you're the liar. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No, you're the crazy one. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No, you're the crazy one. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

"That's now, after they've all expired!"

Actually

Actually, nothing. That's now, after they've all expired!

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

"They could have bragged about their published peer-reviewed journal articles, or their snazzy demos at their CES booth year after year, or whatnot just as easily."

Except

Except nothing. They could have bragged about their published peer-reviewed journal articles, or their snazzy demos at their CES booth year after year, or whatnot just as easily.

journal papers prove nothing.

They prove more than a patent does. The USPTO and many other PTOs seem to grant patents more or less on a whim, without much real examination. Certainly nothing in patent law requires the thing you're patenting to work -- there're lots of patents on putative perpetual-motion machines and the like.

Peer-reviewed journals, on the other hand, are exactly that: peer-reviewed. Generally (with some exceptions, mostly in the pharma sector), if something appears in a peer-reviewed journal there's solid evidence behind it.

Patents, on the other hand, are an indication of an actual device that might be a step toward a real product.

A CES exhibit demoing new tech is an indication of an actual device that might be a step toward a real product. A patent is an indication of lawyers having written forms and submitted them to other lawyers, who signed stuff and sent more papers back to the first bunch of lawyers.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No, you're the crazy one. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No, you're the crazy one. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No, you're the crazy one. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

"How awkward. Having a journal with a name like Lasers would have been a much more workable system."

[calls me a liar]

No, you're the liar. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

Patents explain how to actually build something.

So do engineering journals. What were you reading, pure-physics journals instead?

Most [journals] are worthless from a practical viewpoint.

Nonsense. Their publishers couldn't possibly get away with charging such high prices for them if they were worthless.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

"And Lonnie's opinion of the Gould patents flip-flops again. At this point, obviously, his credibility is about zero."

Actually,

Actually, nothing. Lonnie's opinion of the Gould patents flip-flopped again. At this point, obviously, his credibility is about zero.

[calls me a liar]

No, you're the liar. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No, you're the crazy one. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

"Rather than just one, I've found at least three."

[calls me a liar]

No, you're the liar. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No, you're the crazy one. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No, you're the crazy one. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

"Yeah, right. How would anyone prove you had used that process for a year? It's a secret, duh. You could use it from 1997 until now, find out that the secret's leaked, and file a patent application, then claim to have been using it only since 2009. Who would be able to prove otherwise?"

You know, people do it all the time.

Oh, yeah, now there's a real counterargument. "People do it all the time", sans specific names, sans evidence, sans pretty much anything except a vague offhand remark by Lonnie, the proven liar.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

"Yeah, so strict they allowed the infamous one-click patent and numerous other broad and vague software patents. What was the "specification" in the patent NTP sued RIM over?"

You will note that the USPTO invalidated every single NTP patent on re-examination.

In other words, they did exactly as I said rather than being as strict as you claimed, but eventually someone was able to browbeat them into eventually admitting to one single mistake out of their litany of thousands, if not millions, of them.

Had RIM waited just a little longer, they would not have had to pay a penny.

They couldn't wait; not with an injunction stopping them from doing business in the meantime. You might as well suggest a person trapped in a room without air wait for the firemen to eventually come and chop down the door.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No, you're the crazy one. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No, you're the crazy one. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

"And you are naïve when you think companies care about anything but money."

And you are [insult deleted]

No! None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

On the other hand, you make responding to you easier. You [insults deleted, including calling me a liar].

[insult deleted]

No, you're the liar. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

I can see this thread getting shorting and shorter.

So, does that mean that you're promising to delete your asinine contributions to it? Or that you're threatening to hack in somehow and delete my comments?

If you do the latter, it'll be the slammer for you.

Beeswax popped his colostomy bag:

I removed all of Beeswax's copious lies, rantings and irrelevancies and found the following statements remaining.

Oh, there are none. Beeswax has not advanced his case one bit, and just adds to his litany of lies.

Come back when you stop lying, exaggerating, ranting, insulting, fantasizing, being paranoid, and just a plain, obnoxious jerk.

Alonniemouse came down with a bad case of the runs, and poured forth:

Beeswax [vicious insult deleted]:

NO! None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

I removed all of [calls me a liar][insults deleted].

No, you're the liar. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[calls me a liar]

No, you're the liar. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[calls me a liar][several vicious insults deleted]

NO! None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

Beeswax spewed like pus from a septic wound:

[Deleted Beeswax denials of the lies he told.]

[Deleted Beeswax denials of his paranoia.]

[Deleted Beeswax denials of his psychosis.]

[Deleted Beeswax denials of his paranoia.]

Just does not leave a lot left for me to say anything about. Thank you for permitting a short post, Beeswax!

Alonniemouse burped up:

Beeswax [vicious insult deleted]:

No! None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[calls me a liar]

No, you're the liar. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No, you're the lunatic. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No, you're the lunatic. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No, you're the lunatic. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

Just does not leave a lot left for me to say anything about.

Then why say anything at all, Lonnie?

Beeswax had some serious flatulence issues:

[Deleted Beeswax statements of paranoia.]

[Deleted Beeswax psychotic statements.]

[Deleted Beeswax schizophrenic statements.]

[Deleted Beeswax lies, which were nearly all his statements.]

[Deleted Beeswax pleas for help with his mental issues.]

[Deleted Beeswax ad hominem statements that he things are appropriate replies to facts and logical arguments.]

It seems that Beeswax has little to say.

Then why say anything at all, Lonnie?

Gee, I do do not know why you are saying anything at all. All that spews from your pie hole is venom, lies, expletives and paranoid statements of delusion. You should pretty much throw in the towel.

Beeswax [insult deleted]:

Did not. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No, you're the lunatic. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No, you're the lunatic. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No, you're the lunatic. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[calls me a liar]

No, you're the liar. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No, you're the lunatic. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

It seems that Beeswax has little to say.

I have much to say. You just have your fingers stuck in your ears like some immature little twerp when he doesn't like what he's hearing.

"Then why say anything at all, Lonnie?"

Gee, I do do not know

You don't know why you're doing what you're doing?

Seek help.

[several vicious insults deleted]

No, you're the lunatic. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.

The discussion betwheen beeswax and prionpropatentuiq continues here:

link here

As I say in my last comment there, i can accepts insults, but not bad taste.

PooPatentTroll revives a dead thread to say:

[insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at all true.