If patents were usefully enforced and practical to obtain, it would matter who files first because that’s how patents work.

The $20,000 part of patents (and additional legal fees) are a problem because we are clearly at the point economically where tons of people who need stronger protections will never have the resources to obtain those protections. You can’t do that when it’s impossible to sell anything for more than 99 cents.

And we can't expect everyone to pay more for many of these things when there is so much inequality, lack of wage increases, student debt, etc. etc. etc.

Of course I go ahead and pay $50/year for ulysses or $20 for each Things 3 app, but my sister won't pay $3/m to iCloud on her filled up iPhone nor $5/m to Spotify or Apple Music to listen to music.

I think he meant it in the context of "Defending your app from copies and clones" (aka "to defend you intellectual property"). If you hold patents just to make them available for ever and free to anyone but patent trolls, that might be a different game.

With an interesting reply:

"Coincidentally, superior execution is also the most effective way to steal a good idea."

> This could have been a tweet

Right. Everyone should give their content to third party if they want to share it.

Off topic. The OP meant to say that the crux of the article boils down to something conveyable in 140 characters or less.

Does Mastadon float your boat, versus twitter?

I guess it's easy to say patents are bad when you're already a millionaire...

I think its the other way around: When you are a millionaire you probably don't care much about patents, because you can afford to pay for the license.

Quite the contrary. The millionaire knows he can take any idea he wants from a young upstart if it's not patented. He can hire more people, spend more money marketing his clone, get the big PR firm working for him, and relegate the true innovator to a historical footnote (at best).

If there's a patent, the force of law can be leveraged by the upstart to protect himself from such incursions, at least theoretically, and it requires expensive, tedious effort for the millionaire to circumvent the patent and/or defend himself against claims that he has infringed. Even if most inventors aren't going to pursue this course, the fact that the possibility exists is a deterrent.

Patents are not necessarily done well, but like many systems that have been co-opted by large corporate interests, they exist precisely to prevent such exploitation.

Software people must understand that software is not very hard or expensive to replicate. You don't get acquired because your software is good. You get acquired because you have a brand, an audience, a trademark, or a patent. There has to be some asset that the prospective acquirer cannot easily recreate by throwing 3-5 coders into a dark closet for a year or two (this costs around $1M / yr, much cheaper than any newsworthy acquisition).

So yeah, millionaires are likely to be very irritated that there's a patent that may force them to compensate the original innovator, or worse, buy their company entirely.

True, but I was looking at it from the point of view of publishing patents to guarantee a source of income.

Unless you are prepared to start suing other developers like yourself or sell to a patent troll, there really is no path to income, is there?

You don't have to sue people if they recognize that you invented and patented something. I've licensed patented tech to folks who range from solo devs to large nonprofits, and discussions never veered toward litigation at any point. I think it depends a lot on what you've created and whether your patents are likely to stand up.

You can make money by either licensing the patent or selling it. Large companies are usually prepared to buy out your patents if they think the tech is worth it.

It's literally the ONLY way to defend against copies and clones. At least, if you're dealing with lots of money and big ideas.

Marco is coming at from the perspective that everyone is a nerd, reads hacker news and knows the difference between "free beer" and whatever the other one is.

Most, nay, all software companies get shit patented. It's the difference between having a legal document protecting your ideas and, well, not.

Yeah, this is just bad advice. I think for most indy developers patents aren't worth the trouble for defending your IP against other indys--which, in the context of the article is probably what he meant. But for defending yourself against major players? Absolutely. And if you want a major player to buy you (instead of buying one of your competitors) it'll be the key differentiator.

> But for defending yourself against major players? Absolutely

The point is that you have no chance to defend yourself. Can an indy developer afford a legal defense of the scale required to "defeat" a major player? If they can will it even be worth their time and energy?