Hey, Third World! We know what you need: Mmm, patent wars Britain's Intellectual Property Office will "promote the understanding of IP" in developing countries after signing a deal with the head of the UN's World Intellectual Property Organisation. Brit patent specialists will be flown out around the world to give workshops and seminars, essentially educating nations on the benefits …
We've got a patent on "A system of improving average wealth through infrastructure development. The system may include roads, irrigation, telecommunications, or anything else which may actually help a developing nation." You'll have to stop all development until you license under our very Fair and Reasonable terms of 99 percent (of gross) per capita.
Sorry, but the Brit IP office are way too late to this party - WIPO have been doing this for years (I have myself been a small part of it) and it has been well supported by plenty of other countries (Japan springs to mind as well as the US).
As someone who has worked a lot in development, knowledge of IP is critical to inward investment - nobody will do a deal with you for technology if you cannot show you will protect it, simple as that. Just because you think the current patent wars between Samsung and Apple are an expensive joke, don't forget what IP protection is really all about - reward for invention and encouraging investment in new ideas. Even China has now moved from being the world's biggest pirate to enforcing IP laws with real vigour (they have serious criminal penalties for copyright infringement) now that they are beginning to invent/create themselves.
Actually, I have worked in development and tech transfer for the past 10 years and IP management is the critical factor for access to any new technology. Sorry for all of you IT-obsessed freetards, but the rest of the world still needs to protect inventions in order to get investment funds to develop them into products.
If any of you took the trouble to study and understand the IP system instead of just whinging about Apple/Samsung or whoever, you might notice that respect for property - including intellectual property - is the basis for a functional society. The few exceptions I am sure you will point to are no reason to abandon one of the bedrocks human development.
I don't think anyone here has a problem with either Intellectual Property or paying for things. What we do have a proplem with are monopolies; being arse-fucked on the price; the creators being arse-fucked on their cut; laws being paid for that impinge seriously on our privacy and freedoms; and copyright terms being extended way past any sane realms.
So, Mr. numerial IP apologist; while IP may have once been a bedrock of human development it is now acting as a brake on development...both because of the insane extension of time and laws and the fact that -in the end- it's all of us who end up paying for it. The people who are benefitting most are passing off the costs.
... does not in any represent any form of "protectionism" or "mercantilism" whatsoever? Honest?
I say they're unwashed wearers of flaming pants, past their BBE date, and patent troll puppets, intent on creating more artificial "market" in which the sole viable business model is obtaining monopolies by waving bits of papers containing as vaguely worded language as they can get away with, so as to sue ever more people.
If "the third world" has any sense they learn from us, and do away with the WIPO and with at least this patent system, possibly patents entirely. At the risk of US and UK gunboats suddenly paying visits, but hey, it's that or have your own courts set against your entire entrepeneur population.
Is it too radical to brand this kind of evangelising, the new (new new) imperialism?
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Didnt Monsanto try to sue a load of third/second world farmers for daring to grow their patented gm crop without paying the licence for seeds? . If memory serves me correctly some of these farmers didnt want the gm crop, but it cross pollinated from adjacent farms.
There is no way shit like this will end well for the average person living in the developing world.
It will just mean big multinationals can gouge money, stiffle inovation and steal ideas from people and organisations least likely to be able to defend themselves in a first world court.
I think the last thing developing countries need at the moment are flocks of predatory lawyers circling the plains of innovation (do water butts have rounded corners?)
>I think the last thing developing countries need at the moment are flocks of predatory lawyers circling the plains of innovation (do water butts have rounded corners?)
Don't worry it won't happen because developing countries lack money and lawyers like the vultures they are only show up when they smell money carrion.
...but only if there's a radical rewrite to include at least the following:
- patents are non-transferrable
- patents have a fixed, non-extensible lifetime (10-15 years at most)
- patents can only be granted on production of a working model
- no software patents (copyright covers these adequately)
- discoveries and designs are not patentable
- prior art always takes priority
- all patents are global and documented in a readily searchable database
Yes, I know, the trolls and corp-rats would object, but tough: MBAs and accountants don't invent things and nor do 'managerial innovators'. They can always lease use of a patent from its inventor.
> So I invent a new design for a turbine blade shape
You should not be able to patent something based entirely on speculation.
To prove that it is an innovative design and describe why it is an improvement, you must at least have done some R&D.
Even Dyson built dozens, nay hundreds, of vacuum prototypes before he had something that he thought that he could get a patent for.
What the original poster is really talking about are, for example, speculative gene patents which contain no actual product information whatsoever. They are just fishing expeditions.
No but you can invent something based entirely on maths, numerical modelling and computer simulations.
I work for a consultancy, I design some new product or improvement to a product. I should be able to try and interest manufacturers in buying the idea without having to make it myself.
Yes patents on rounded corners of a tablet are silly - but so is limiting patents only to large manufacturers already in the field.
"patents can only be granted on production of a working model"
Doesn't need to be a physical model, could be a simulation.
Sure it can be challenged later etc but at least it's SOMETHING that demonstrates the claims made in the patent. It should not be allowed to get a patent based on a claimed improvement that is not demonstrated.
> no software patents (copyright covers these adequately)
Not always, it's a little more complicated than; software patent = evil
If you build a mechanical analogue computer for predicting tides you can patent that (well you could in 1872)
Now if you implement the same thing in analogue electronics you can patent that (in the 1930s)
Convert it to a single IC - still your invention and protected
What if you implemented the circuit on an FPGA - is that software?
Copyright only protects your specific FPGA code
If I took your analogue circuit and implemented it in my own FPGA in a clean room I haven't violated copyright - although I would have violated a software patent on your implementation.
So why should patents protect an idea implemented in brass gear wheels but not one implemented on a computer?
I think you'll find that the folks over there understand IP pretty well - they just don't see what's in it for them. Which is precisely what the USA did with European inventions during the 1800s, and what China are currently doing with American inventions. Until China takes this stuff seriously, what chance do they think they've got of convincing somewhere like South Sudan that they should care?
Most aid to 3rd World Countries is anyway granted with strings attached, usually that the aid is only applicable for purchases to be made in the donor country. Bottom line from the donor country's point of view is that it's like a hidden subsidy to their own businesses, just as if teh government id buying up teh stuff and shipping it out to teh 3rd World.
Fair enough, it's better than not giving a damn and sending nothing at all, BUT remember teh principle of teaching a man how to fish vs giving them fish. This whole thing seems like rich countries telling teh third world "We know how to fish, we're not going to teach you how, no worries we'll give you fish ourselves." Until the developing country starts developing and gets rich and then it's "Oh, you have money now, you gotta pay for your fish"
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