Analysis on balance: Standardisation and Patents

[simo]

On Tue, 2008-12-02 at 17:19 +0000, Alex Hudson wrote:

>     "Such a case reverts the initial idea of patenting: The technology
>     is valuable because it is patented, not patented because it is
>     valuable."
> 
> 
> I think this is pretty weak. You don't patent things because they are 
> "valuable", you patent them to make them valuable. That's the whole 
> point of IPR as far as I can see.

I disagree.
You patent things to make them exploitable when there is a need of an
initial investment in research.
Patents, in theory, should protect investments in realizing valuable
ideas by granting a short term monopoly.

The fact that some patents *create* value is *the* problem.

Anything that does not require an important initial investment should
not be granted a patent, because it does not deserve it.

>     "From the perspective of most SMEs, 100.000 EUR patent research
>     costs are prohibitively expensive"
> 
> 
> So they just don't do it ;) There are plenty of SMEs that are patent 
> holders, and this is really just an argument to reduce the cost of 
> obtaining a patent, which isn't really what we want.

It would level a bit the field by allowing more SMEs to get patents, but
certainly will not change any of the problems of the current system.

Simo.