Tim Bates wrote:
> Samael said
> samael said:
>
> >Do you really want to live in a world where everyone spends their time
> >waiting for someone else to do some research?
>
> No, i just want to live in a world where if i do the research I am not
> put in jail becuase someone else did it before me.
THis isn't true about the US. You can do the research, you can even build the damn thing. You just can't make a profit from selling reproductions of it to others.
> The clearest justification for patents has been R&D recovery where trade
> secrets would not work. So, let's simply do that. Let's explicitly tie
> patents to R&D costs and restrict them in time to 5 years or the time
> taken to recover R&D costs, which ever is the lesser. Either that or have
> no patents and require alternative producers in the R&D recovery period
> to contribute pro-rata to the R&D debit.
Plus a reasonable return on investment.
> Economically, patents of 20 years encourage people to make poor R&D
> decisions.
Depends on the industry and technology level, as well as the ease of working around a patent.