Another Call for Abolishing Patents
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
This conclusion is one I already fully support – but I worried about putting it on my blog – where my readers, as far as I knew – had little interest in technical and business matters. I did time in the trenches of the high-tech world – from which I emerged somewhat shell-shocked. But I could not see how others could relate to my experiences.
But after thinking about it, I decided that they too were seriously impacted by the sad state of the economy – and the sad state of our technology-dependent workplace.
Instead of investing in technical progress (which they usually do not understand), companies are investing in patents – and in vicious patent wars (something they can understand). They think intellectual property is like any other property – something they could grab and hold onto.
This is not the way software works. There, innovators want others to imitate them – so everyone can get on the same bandwagon (use the same standards), and ride off into a great new world. The want everyone to connect to their stuff, and use it.
This is not just the way products get made – this is the way jobs get made too.
And we need jobs desperately.
That we do.
You might want to check out Ha-Joon Chang’s “Bad Samaritans: the Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism.” Since I’ve loaned out my copy, I can’t pin-point the exact chapter; but from the table of contents you would be able to see how one of the chapters [it might be chapter 3] fleshes out considerably your thesis.
That’s an interesting perspective, linking sharing with creation of jobs. In my previous company I always used a share of our profits towards sponsoring FOSS initiatives. It was one of the best ROIs ever.