this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2026
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Technology
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open formats is the way to go. Patents seems more and more like a scam
Figures. Patents are the backbone of capitalism. Some say it invented capitalism as we know it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Software algorithms should not be patentable.
Sure for physical things that need prototypes and materials. That is not a thing with software.
You sign NDAs with your testers and prototypers for that.
Development cost is still a thing with software.
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.
thats a patent
Patents are a (relatively speaking) newfangled trick to turn ideas into legal "capital." In the same way that a corporation "is" a person.
The backbone of capitalism? I'm not following that.
Patents are a way to spread knowledge, whole still offering some [time limited] protections. Before them, trade secrets were the norm, and way too much knowledge was lost with it's creators.
It's an outdated legalism. 250 years ago, the patent office operated as an incentive to record and register ideas to the public in exchange for exclusive commercial license.
Now that simply isn't an issue
Software and business method patents have always been bullshit.
Patent the machine, not how you use it. Software is just instructions to a machine.
Perhaps patients have their place but software patients make no sense. One big issue is that it is not practical to avoid writing a system that already exists because there are many, many ways to describe the same software system. It's so difficukt to search that multiple people could have already patiented the same thing and be unaware the other exists.