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this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2026
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I mean, I get the idea of patents. If there were no protection of "ideas", some random person could have one, try to bring it to market but could just be outplayed by a big corporation with enough money to copy this idea and sell it everywhere before he can even start production. They have more resources and money, but might not have had that idea. There should be some protection. Problem is, that these are also abused by the big corporations, so... Maybe we need to fix this somehow.
Software algorithms should not be patentable.
Neither should colours. Fuck you Pepsi Blue
You should be able to own the right to bring a novel idea into production, after it’s generally available then it should have no protection.
Basically if you come up with an idea, you get to get the first initial rounds of profits to make it worth your while, that’s it.
Which is also why Anti-Trust laws exist in pretty much every country and, when enforced, actually stop companies from becoming gargantuan Hydras.
In the US they haven't been implemented for too long, of course.
This is how it was before patent law. The sciences, arts, and commerce existed for thousands of years without these corporate laws. It is about creating artificial scarcity, which is an incredibly dumb concept in our modern world.
You need to eliminate the thought of the big guy stealing ideas from the little guy. This is propaganda used to play on our emotions. Intelectual Property benefits an extreme minority at the cost of billions of lives.
lol they also existed with hidden and encrypted ideas to, you know, protect intellectual property...
"This is propaganda used to play on our emotions"
Oh do tell
" at the cost of billions of lives"
😂
That literally has nothing to do with patents nowadays. No one is hiding anything anymore, it is about artificial scarcity to collect monopoly rents.
The fact that you deny that we have already lost billions of lives because of corporations trying to extract monopoly rents is your perogative. It is stupid and ignorant, but your choice.
The justification for patents is that after a (relatively) short period of being under patent, because patents have to disclose how inventions work, the idea isn't secret and anyone can use it. The patent system is the whole reason why companies don't and can't hide their inventions anymore. If we just got rid of the patent system wholesale, they'd go back to keeping things secret. That might be a big problem, or it might mean that, because anything that's been reverse-engineered would be fair game, more things end up available sooner, depending on whether companies can obfuscate things well enough that it takes longer for a hobbyist to figure out than the patent would have to expire.
Most patents for the medical sector are built off public research. Companies make minor changes to the formula to extend patents sometimes what seems indefinitely.
Reverse engineering a physical device at this point is trivial. There is no need. The reality is these are legal tools that slow down or limit innovation so the "inventer" can collect monopoly rent.
Software patents are absolute insanity often describing concepts from several decades ago like they are novel.
The entire patent system is absolute garbage rife with patent trolls gobbling up any small business that dares to exist.
There are so many examples such as the developer of X-plane that spent 1.5 million dollars and three years fighting a single frivolous lawsuit over a software patent.
https://www.x-plane.com/x-world/lawsuit/
The average patent lawsuit, if it goes federal is around $1.5 million and can go as high as $5 millions Patents are a game normal people get eaten up by.
From an ethical standpoint companies exploiting patent laws to overcharge is disgusting and the practice is rampant
https://www.i-mak.org/overpatented/
There really isn't anything positive for the typical person. In fact, quite the opposite. Patents are legal tools corporations use to extract monopoly rent. The rest is just propaganda.
It's usually fixed with a good competition. No one corporate can abuse the system if viable competitions exists.
But if I had to give some critique, then the duration for USA patent system is one that can create a money grab system by creating a costly dependency to a legacy system that has grown so long it is hard to replace.
Competition only works when the stuff you're protecting can have competition. If it's an algorithm that's objectively better with no alternative, it doesn't really work.
That's not entirely fair to claim as so. There is competition like AV1, but it is lacking in marketing and brutality. Can't really compete against big corporate if the goal is not to eat business profits from others like it is a vendetta.
Market liberalism is not the answer. It's what we have today. It ends up with the giants eating the competition and using any advantage they have got. Only active legislation works against legal abuse against those that see it as sport.
Legislation would help, but so would a vendetta against a big corporation. Can't really compete if your corporate is assimilated or not planning to eat away the profits from competition. :D
Not claiming that is all it would take
Greed should be banned, not the patents. I feel like if wealth taxes were 50%+, people wouldn’t be incentived to jack up prices like this.