donate to a starving patent troll? nah, skip (Re: patents in a free society (Re: Brother can you help a fiber?))

[Cathal Garvey]

> I previously suggested that there could indeed be a voluntary-ist
> system to replace our existing patent system.  Yes, an ideal kind of
> this system would have to be far more selective in 'granting' (e.g.,
> "approving") patents.  (perhaps only 20% of the current rate of
> granting would be allowed, possibly less.) There might even be
> competing such 'patent'-certification organizations.

(preamble: I'm not a libertarian, and I'm all for statist solutions to
actual _res publica_: things in the commons that are the responsability
of nobody in particular but to the benefit of everyone. I just don't
think patents solve a problem that actually exists or needs fixing.)

What's wrong with the voluntary-ist system, to me, is subtle. On the
face, it seems great; abolish "patents" as such and let people
patronise systems that certify patents and inventor-hood.

What I see as being wrong here is that without certification, people
essentially tend to do this already, and when they don't you can't win
them over anyway. This is the "Piracy is good" argument; someone who
would ever have been a customer anyway if given the opportunity not to
be, will generally be, and those who won't be customers if they can
avoid being customers will never or rarely be.

To put that bluntly; people will choose the product of an inventor
if it's not-shit and fairly priced/available. If they don't, it's
either a great idea compromised by stupid design, or it's crippled by
price or availability. People like to patronise the creators of good
things; we have the success of things like flattr and gittip to show
for that online, and the full caps of buskers worldwide in meatspace.

People buy products all the time that are generally shittier than the
competition because they have a brand name on them that people either
like or associate with status; take Apple as a key example.

This is the argument behind the Pirate Party movement's general
agreement that trademarks are a net benefit to creativity whereas
patents and most aspects of copyright are merely a tax on creativity.
It's more important to know who created something than to allocate a
monopoly to that person over the outputs of their creativity.

Coming back to the voluntarist system, while there's nothing outwardly
wrong about it, I think it would appear to "work" inasmuch as people
would buy from the inventors, but not because of certifying bodies and
voluntarist cartels. It would work because that's what people would do
anyway given a robust way to know where to attribute their gratitude
and patronage for a thing well-invented.

So I suggest rather than a cartel, that the certification bodies do
*only* that, and not enforce something on the purchase and sale of
products outside of that role. They should provide a way for people to
see who is generally believed to have created a good thing (whether
music, products, services or code), and provide certification platforms
for people to trust that they're delivering credit and money the right
way, and then butt out and let people get on with free association,
trade and communication.

I personally believe that in such a system, if an inventor loses out to
competition for a thing well-made, it's either because the final
product created by the otherwise bright inventor sucks, or it's an edge
case where the costs of development remain high (the justification
given for creating patents, though not the real reason they were
introduced). In such cases, there are much better (usually statist!)
methods of encouraging inventors to invent than creating a
state-enforced monopoly on production and sale of derived products,
such as research grants and/or start-up investment programmes.


On Tue, 12 Nov 2013 01:55:47 -0800 (PST)
Jim Bell <jamesdbell8 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> From: Adam Back <adam at cypherspace.org>
> 
> To: rysiek <rysiek at hackerspace.pl> 
> Cc: cypherpunks at cpunks.org 
> Sent: Monday, November 11, 2013 7:31 AM
> Subject: donate to a starving patent troll?  nah, skip (Re: patents
> in a free society (Re: Brother can you help a  fiber?)) 
> 
> >I cant see any rational player voluntarily opting to honor a grossly
> >abused ideas monopoly concept that only a force monopoly form of
> >government could even pretend to enforce.  
> 
> I think that a large part of the problem (even for libertarians such
> as myself) is that we have trouble imagining a non-statist solution
> to problems.  We are so used to the idea of a government doing things
> (even if done badly, or things that shouldn't be done at all) that
> it's difficult to construct a replacement that is consistent with
> libertarian principles.  I previously suggested that there could
> indeed be a voluntary-ist system to replace our existing patent
> system.  Yes, an ideal kind of this system would have to be far more
> selective in 'granting' (e.g., "approving") patents.  (perhaps only
> 20% of the current rate of granting would be allowed, possibly less.)
>   There might even be competing such 'patent'-certification
> organizations.  Stores might certify that they will buy only from
> companies that, themselves, certify that they do not violate any of
> the voluntary-ist patents.  Marks on the goods will announce those
> certifications. Companies that manufacture such certified products
> might also certify that they will refuse to sell their products to
> stores that do not limit themselves to such certified products. Any
> consideration of this kind of system will have to deal with the
> existing, status-quo (government managed) patent and copyright
> system.  Even if 80% of existing granted patents were improperly
> granted, that means that 20% are meritorious.  Now, I suppose that
> there might be some people who simply don't believe in any form of
> ownership of patents and/or copyrights.  But I suspect that most
> people would be willing to conform their buying to a voluntary
> system, IF frivolous patents are not granted, or they are
> subsequently 'un-granted' based on some sort of challenge mechanism.
> And, if large stores decide to limit their stock to such conforming
> products, it might be somewhat difficult to market goods that are not
> conforming. I realize that such arrangements may be hard for us to
> imagine.  But soon enough, we might have little choice but to do that
> imagining. Jim Bell   

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