Reading 12: Intellectual Property

Patents are guarantees from the government of one's right to their own intellectual property. There are a variety of reasons for granting patents, primarily ethical and economic. It makes sense that one should have a right to their own creations. No one should be able to claim your work as their own. Economically speaking, patents create a great incentive for invention. A patent generally guarantees an inventor 20 years of exclusive right to sell their product. So, if one invents a new, or ground-breaking, invention a patent makes sure that they will not have any competition, having the entire market share, for that product.

I think that patents have a place in society. The economic incentive they provide to companies creates an avenue for many inventions that make society better. I don't think they are necessary for society, but they are beneficial. But, the current structure of our patent system hinders progress. Companies end up repeatedly renewing their patents, preventing beneficial products from entering the market, instead keeping the prices extraordinarily high.

I don't think that patents on specific software should be granted. Patents should be more specific, and concrete. When one patents a machine, or other concrete invention, it is obvious when a competitor is attempting to illegally copy that invention - without prying into the specifics of the machine. However, with software, this is not obvious. If one tries to file a copyright claim on software, the claim necessitates that that software is examined. But, this examination means that the company must reveal all the specifics of that program - losing their intellectual property in the process. There is one case, however, in which I think a software patent should be awarded. You can already patent processes for solving tasks. So, I think if one develops a new algorithm, that can be implemented in code, they deserve a patent for that process.

The current structure of the DMCA, and the way in which some companies deal with copyright requests, illustrates the broken nature of the copyright system. There are many examples today of youtube channels being completely shut down due to these copyright notices. What happens is that, as soon as a video is posted, a copyright claim is posted against this video. Youtube's policy regarding these claims is to immediately remove the offending video, and force the user to prove the fact that their video does not violate that copyright. This policy completely prevents new content generation. These videos are generally posted under the "fair-use" clause of the DMCA - as they are reviews of new games and videos and contain selected samples of this content. However, I think this is more of a problem with the content-sites response to these claims, than with the copyright system itself.