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While it does allow individuals to profit from new ideas, a huge majority of "individual" trained and knowledgeable folks are working under implied or expressed contract that assures that their employer is the "owner" of what they create. They can't profit, so, as a consequence, they in fact lose their greatest motivation, and less gets created.
It may have once been a good idea for workers to have benefit from what they create, but it didn't take long for corporate entities to take possession of their workers' intellectual property rights. The rich and powerful always win.
Again, a wrong-headed assumption on your part. Here's how the compact works:
A) Employer pays Worker to research and design.
B) Worker researches and designs.
What you're actually doing is blaming the corporation for holding up its end of the bargain, while not blaming the worker for making a bad business deal or not negotiating a good employment contract--things that really talented people do all the time. And you also conveniently ignore that the corporation supplies the capital, the equipment, the working environment, the marketing, and the financial risk to make the invention/design/product successful in the first place--things utterly beyond the realm of the average inventor. Instead, you'd prefer to be lazy and pursue an agenda, saying nonsensical things without the slightest bit of reflection.
Hey, I get a call at least once a month from somebody who invented or designed some cool doodad in his garage or his basement. When I take their calls, I hear about how the gizmo will change the world, how it will make millions, blah blah blah. And some of them are actually pretty good ideas. So then I start to ask the questions and, almost invariably, get these answers:
Have you filed for trademark or patent protection? No, how much does that cost? A thousand or so, and I know a really good intellectual property attorney who will make the process simple. Oh, well, I don't really need that.
Do you have any money for marketing? Well, no. I'm going to take it around to trade shows and print up some flyers. In short, he's going to sell it out of the back of his car.
Do you have any kind of business plan? Not really. I figured that I would just make five thousand of these things, then I'll put that together. In other words, he's going at it precisely backwards.
Are you going to quit your current job to sell this? No, but I can do it at nights and on weekends.
I try to give all these people good advice. Go talk to the SBA. Go draft a business plan. Get some financing. Blah blah blah. Guess what? In my twenty-five years of this, I've only had one person actually come back to me having done half the things on my checklist. And that guy is a millionaire today and sends me Christmas cards. As for the rest of them? They'd check in occasionally, but eventually their great idea wound up in a carton in their garage, never seeing the light of day.
So let's get real here. After all, we're talking about programmers, engineers, and other technical professions. And it is rather common for corporations to provide incentives for key people on staff to develop new products and innovations. My wife's cousin was married to the developer of a well-known drug (Trust me, you'd know the name). He worked on staff at Eli Lilly, made millions, and retired at the age of 50.
What's more, if somebody wants to make millions off their great idea, then they'll start their own company. Untold millions have done it. After all, any idiot can have a good idea. Only the people who are willing to put their necks on the line for a good idea are the ones who deserve to truly profit from it.
Again, a wrong-headed assumption on your part. Here's how the compact works:
A) Employer pays Worker to research and design.
B) Worker researches and designs.
What you're actually doing is blaming the corporation for holding up its end of the bargain, while not blaming the worker for making a bad business deal or not negotiating a good employment contract--things that really talented people do all the time.
You're ignoring the fact that my statement was a response to Chango's position that "if they can't profit, they've lost their greatest motivation."
It's not about blame. It's the simple fact that denying a worker the fruits of his creativity can hardly be a successful strategy to motivate him.
I pointed out to Chango that most workers are insulated from the benefits of inventiveness, and in the long run, you seem to agree. Of the many imaginative ideas, most remain fallow, with no effective followup, except those in a corporate environment where the creative mind get's only a week's pay for his effort.
Grandstander, I wish you had put your statement in the Anchor Baby thread, where it would have a lot more timely relevance. In this topic, however, I'm afraid the people with the authority to eliminate the abuse are the self-same abusers. Which is how the abuse came about in the first place.
How would civilization have developed differently, if there had never been any patent, copyright, or trade mark laws, and everyone was free to produce and sell whatever they wanted?
You're ignoring the fact that my statement was a response to Chango's position that "if they can't profit, they've lost their greatest motivation."
It's not about blame. It's the simple fact that denying a worker the fruits of his creativity can hardly be a successful strategy to motivate him.
I pointed out to Chango that most workers are insulated from the benefits of inventiveness, and in the long run, you seem to agree. Of the many imaginative ideas, most remain fallow, with no effective followup, except those in a corporate environment where the creative mind get's only a week's pay for his effort.
Grandstander, I wish you had put your statement in the Anchor Baby thread, where it would have a lot more timely relevance. In this topic, however, I'm afraid the people with the authority to eliminate the abuse are the self-same abusers. Which is how the abuse came about in the first place.
Nice try. But given how your initial statement made the laughable statement that intellectual property laws exist only to support--what was the word you used?--tycoons, it's evident you have no working knowledge on the subject.
Then you blathered on to discuss how corporations take away incentive from workers to innovate. Again, I refuted this quite nicely, stating how corporations typically provide incentives for employees savvy enough and entrepreneurially-minded enough to negotiate for them--the same people who most likely will do the innovating to begin with.
Heck, before I began working for myself, I negotiated my incentive plans with two of my employers, getting a cut on the work I developed and the revenue it generated. A smart company, of which there are far more than not, understands that. You just paint with too broad a brush to be taken seriously when it comes to this topic.
Now, back to your leading question, "have intellectual property laws actually impeded progress?" Given how intellectual property laws have only been effective for a little over a century, and given how that same time period has actually seen an exponential increase of technical, business, and artistic innovation and knowledge, I'm not sure how anybody can possibly make that argument. The irony is that you typed that question into your computer that runs off electricity, hit the SAVE button that sent it flowing down thousands of miles of fiber optic cable to a website started by entrepreneurs who took advantage of the internet, itself a hotbed of innovation. So I'm guessing that you've chosen to ignore the incredible working example at your very fingertips.
Grandstander, I wish you had put your statement in the Anchor Baby thread, where it would have a lot more timely relevance. In this topic, however, I'm afraid the people with the authority to eliminate the abuse are the self-same abusers. Which is how the abuse came about in the first place.
The people who own concerns which utilize the creative thinking of their employees and retain legal rights to profits which flow from development and exploitation of that creativity, are also the people who wrote the patent laws? Or those same people currently hold Congressional seats?
The people who own concerns which utilize the creative thinking of their employees and retain legal rights to profits which flow from development and exploitation of that creativity, are also the people who wrote the patent laws? Or those same people currently hold Congressional seats?
I don't know why you're asking him. He doesn't have the slightest idea what he's talking about.
You're ignoring the fact that my statement was a response to Chango's position that "if they can't profit, they've lost their greatest motivation."
It's not about blame. It's the simple fact that denying a worker the fruits of his creativity can hardly be a successful strategy to motivate him.
I pointed out to Chango that most workers are insulated from the benefits of inventiveness, and in the long run, you seem to agree. Of the many imaginative ideas, most remain fallow, with no effective followup, except those in a corporate environment where the creative mind get's only a week's pay for his effort.
Grandstander, I wish you had put your statement in the Anchor Baby thread, where it would have a lot more timely relevance. In this topic, however, I'm afraid the people with the authority to eliminate the abuse are the self-same abusers. Which is how the abuse came about in the first place.
Yea, but the greatest innovations usually don't come from run of the mill employees being used and abused by corporations. What if the inventions of all those tinkerers and garage inventors could just be snatched by large corporations who have the resources to market the invention but not necessarily the innovation to come up with them in the first place? It would a predatory, idea stealing invironment and secrecy would be the order of the day. Windows would have stayed in Bill Gate's garage (maybe for the best ), Edison's lighbulbs would only light his house behind closed curtains, ect, ect and the innovation would have to come from some other country. We would be reduced to copying ideas, bolt for bolt Soviet style from other countries.
And we all know what happened to the Soviet Union...
The people who own concerns which utilize the creative thinking of their employees and retain legal rights to profits which flow from development and exploitation of that creativity, are also the people who wrote the patent laws? Or those same people currently hold Congressional seats?
That's an interesting question. Who DID write patent law? And why? Historically, patents in Europe in terms of formal and applied law date back to 1470. and the USA from 1790, supplanting and a virtual copy of English patent law. about which out lawmakers had little to say of novelty.
Aside from the fact that patent law is not something US lawmakers tweak and adjust anymore, it is compliance with international treaty in the global marketplace. This topic is not about US history, but about the global evolution of society and economics.
Criticism of patent law is not just a wild hair up my butt that automatically entitles me to tinfoil hat status. There is a legitimate body of criticism among rational thinkers who have published extensively on the balance of good and harm arising from intellectual property laws. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_patents .
A long standing argument against patents is that they may hinder innovation and give rise to "troll" entities. A holding company, pejoratively known as a "patent troll", owns a portfolio of patents, and sues others for infringement of these patents while doing little to develop the technology itself
I raised the topic not because I am personally opposed to such laws, but to foster discussion about the historical course civilization might have taken had such protections not been granted in historical times.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chango
And we all know what happened to the Soviet Union...
Yes, we do know. The US forced them to expend almost all their resources and technology on trying to defend themselves from America's threat to destroy them, with nuclear weapons if necessary, and to use actual military force to obstruct them from participating in the global marketplace. Which left them with little to spare to make their own ZIL. But that is an unrelated topic that's been covered elsewhere.
That's an interesting question. Who DID write patent law? And why? Historically, patents in Europe in terms of formal and applied law date back to 1470. and the USA from 1790, supplanting and a virtual copy of English patent law. about which out lawmakers had little to say of novelty.
Aside from the fact that patent law is not something US lawmakers tweak and adjust anymore, it is compliance with international treaty in the global marketplace. This topic is not about US history, but about the global evolution of society and economics.
Criticism of patent law is not just a wild hair up my butt that automatically entitles me to tinfoil hat status. There is a legitimate body of criticism among rational thinkers who have published extensively on the balance of good and harm arising from intellectual property laws. Criticism of patents - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia .
A long standing argument against patents is that they may hinder innovation and give rise to "troll" entities. A holding company, pejoratively known as a "patent troll", owns a portfolio of patents, and sues others for infringement of these patents while doing little to develop the technology itself
I raised the topic not because I am personally opposed to such laws, but to foster discussion about the historical course civilization might have taken had such protections not been granted in historical times.
But only a tinfoil hat wearer would actually endorse that viewpoint. A few minor abuses of existing law does not constitute a reason to invalidate it. Using that same logic, you might as well shut down the internet because you happen to get spam.
And, again, there is absolutely zero proof that intellectual property law has retarded technological progress. I can't imagine a person of serious intellect, reflecting on the progress we have made over the past century, making that argument.
But only a tinfoil hat wearer would actually endorse that viewpoint. A few minor abuses of existing law does not constitute a reason to invalidate it. Using that same logic, you might as well shut down the internet because you happen to get spam.
And, again, there is absolutely zero proof that intellectual property law has retarded technological progress. I can't imagine a person of serious intellect, reflecting on the progress we have made over the past century, making that argument.
First of all, I did not endorse the viewpoint, I only offered that it is an alternative to the orthodoxy. I asked for a discussion of the merits of intellectual property protection, not an absolute declaration that the topic is closed forever by closed minds.
There is also absolutely zero proof that intellectual property law has enhanced technological progress. There is nothing but the observation that both occurred simultaneously, and every logician here (except you) knows that that is not proof of causality.
It's like arguing that the Designated Hitter rule in the American League was the cause of the election and subsequent overthrow of Allende in Chile, because they both occurred within a particular historical time span. You have no takers, without further evidence.
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), Edison's lighbulbs would only light his house behind closed curtains, ect, ect and the innovation would have to come from some other country. We would be reduced to copying ideas, bolt for bolt Soviet style from other countries. 
