🚀 go-pugleaf

kleing@qualcom.qualcomm.com (Klein Gilhousen) writes:

>In article <1991May21.203853.5180@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> phil@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Phil Howard KA9WGN) writes:
>>There was once I time in which technology progressed so slowly that there
>>was definite social benefit to having a patent law.  Today I believe that
>>society no longer benefits from such patent law; it serves more to funnel
>>money to particular people in cases where the knowledge would eventually
>>become public anyway.  Technology has already gotten its boostrap from the
>>patent law; we don't need it anymore.

>Yea, right.  Everything that needs to be invented has already been 
>invented.  So who needs patents.

I didn't say that everything that needs to be invented has already been
invented.  Rather what I said was that we no longer need to use monopoly
as an incentive to get people to invent things.

If you discard the patent system effective today, even allowing already
issued patents to run their original terms, you would probably see a short
pause in new technology coming out, following by an upswing due to the high
level of competitiveness existant today.

In most the computer field, this is surely the case.

Unfortunately there might be some other fields where patents could still
be needed.  But we sure don't need them for user interfaces.
-- 
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/ Phil Howard -- KA9WGN -- phil@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu   |  Guns don't aim guns at  \
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