Patents are government granted license granted to a person or company for an invention or unique process that allows the entity exclusive privileges to commercially produce and sell products that use the patented technology. Patents are necessary because they protect all of the work that companies or people put into creating a new design/technology/method. If these creations were not protected, there would be no incentive for people to continue to innovate because as soon as a new idea came to fruition, any other company could take the invention and sell it as their own. Patents protect the rights to these new designs and help to incentivize continued creation of new and better things.
I think that patents promote invention. Without protection of intellectual property, the incentive to research and invest in new technologies is largely diminished. Patents help to even the playing-field so that companies with the means of quickly mass-producing products due to their scale are not at liberty to steal ideas of individuals or small companies and benefit unfairly from their work. However, this line of thinking does have some problems. When all parties collaborate, innovation would likely occur at a faster scale because all parties would have access to the most up-to-date technologies. I think that this trade off is worth it because it protects individual rights and ensures product diversification, which is very important in preventing monopolistic markets.
I admire Elon Musk and Tesla’s decision to release all of their patents and to make their hard work and technologies public knowledge so that the world can benefit from cleaner energy usage. However, I also recognize that this decision was not solely made for the good of the world. While Musk seems to be an altruistic individual and in it for the betterment of the world, the article about the decision also stated that Tesla realized that their competitors did not have the electric car infrastructure necessary to quickly out produce Tesla with similar electric cars. Instead, the lack of popularity of electric cars and continued output of new gas cars was the biggest competition that they faced. Knowing this, releasing their patents also served to help other companies produce electric cars in the hopes that they would divert some energy away from gas cars and help to make electric cars more popular in general, which would help Tesla.
For the specific case of software patents, I definitely believe that software should be able to be patented. Algorithms and complex strategies for many technological challenges are just as impressive and unique as physical inventions. However, due to the fast-paced evolution of technology, I think that it would be preferable to have shorter-term patents for software. A twenty year patent in the realm of computer science is absurd. Some physical buildings take 20 years to build. Cars can still be used 20 years after production. Software is currently changing so rapidly that 20 years represents many several to dozens of evolutions in all aspects of computer science. This extremely rapid period of growth makes me wish that software patents would only hold their value for a few years-enough time for the creators of the invention to benefit from the patent but not so long that progress is extremely hindered by a 20 year long hold on other entities being able to use and improve upon the technology.
Lastly, these articles discussed patent trolls. Patent trolls seem sickening and despicable. I can never imagine getting satisfaction out of working for a company that only produces patents and makes money solely off of suing other companies for infringing upon obscure protocols that we were able to get patents for. However, I currently don’t know how a system can be made to protect rights while also preventing these patent trolls from abusing the system. I hope to hear more about this from my classmates.
Luke's ethics blog 