On Fri, 2 Sep 2016 10:05:38 -0700 Sean Lynch <seanl@literati.org> wrote:
I think patents may have made more sense when it was much harder for individuals and small groups to get funding to develop an idea, and the only people with the resources to develop them were the guilds and state-sponsored corporations like the East India Company.
I think you need to re-think that. The guilds and especialy the east india company are poster chilren for mercantilism, the very system that libertarians wanted to abolish. The east india company was the same kind of entity that military contractors 'rebuilding' countries destroyed by the anglo-americans are. And it was even worse than a purely 'commercial' gang that monopolized trade - the east india company was nothing but the imperial british army invading india and other countries of asia.
Patents were a way to protect the "little guy."
I don't think so.
Now it's much easier to get your hands on funding than it was then, whether it's a small business loan, SBIR, venture or angel capital, or crowdfunding.
And that's probably not true either. Well obviously the telecom side of things is better today than it was in 1700, but the finance side of thing not necessarily so.
It makes the "first mover advantage" much more significant when you can move as fast or even faster than a large company that has the same idea, and those larger organizations tend to be risk-averse anyway.
It's quite possible I'm biased from working in Silicon Valley, where most patents get applied for not for protection from having your idea "stolen," but for protection from other patentholders. Or because they're seen as valuable by potential investors/buyers, but that mostly matters before you have a customer base and infrastructure.