this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2025
648 points (96.6% liked)
Technology
68918 readers
4450 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'd like to get back to 'for limited time'. Patents 10 years, no extensions. Copyright, 10 years, no extensions. Trademarks indefinite as long as the owner still has a meaningful business still operating and using the trademark ( this one is tricky to define well).
It’s still a misguided policy aimed at furthering the lie of individualism. Which why we have so many ridiculous true stories of parallel invention, and scientists racing to the patent office to claim full credit.
These people are building on the works of all those who came before. All should benefit from the results. And all should enjoy a basic standard of living, instead of this cut throat first past this finish line system, where all who fall behind will suffer.
I view the patent process as furthering the ability of others to benefit from the results: without patents, the only way to keep clones of your product from immediately appearing on the market is obfuscation and trade secrets. Patents grant a limited monopoly, but at the price of full disclosure. That full disclosure serves a useful social benefit as others can learn and innovate on what was done before. The limited monopoly encourages innovation because it helps people get exclusive rights to sell their work.
There's a lot of bad patent behavior with patent trolls, etc. The duration of the patents should be relatively short and not extensible. But I think the disclosure aspect of the patent process does further overall innovation.
We can require disclosure without providing a government backed monopoly. Especially when the modern world has corporations enjoying the benefits of the monopoly, at the expense of individuals.