These days, the big guys can just trample over small ones, and use the list of patents they have as a counter-sue threat against other big guys. Small guys are constantly threatened by big guys with patent lawsuits, they can't really dream about enforcing a patent a large guy. Even if they have the perfect patent they just get bought up for it. And now the patent is part of that big list mentioned above, where it can be used for development or just sit in a drawer and have the project killed just so that competition can't use it.

Say you manage to fix this, but then you go to China and they will copy everything you do and sell an exact replica the next day with impunity.

There is no win, I don't see any benefit of patents in the western world today, they're only used to slow technological progress - the exact opposite of the intent.

What am I missing here? This is a very shallow take with my little knowledge, but I just don't see the benefits of patents.

OK. Has this ever been true?

I remembered a story about the Wright brothers suing competitors and engaging in a patent war, instead of spending their time and energy continuing to innovate.

Say you manage to fix this, but then you go to China and they will copy everything you do and sell an exact replica the next day with impunity.

Is this necessarily a bad thing? These Chinese firms made open source 3D printers more accessible to the hobbyist communities, and some of them are even known for quality. Granted, some of them cut corners so much that a burning 3d printer became a meme.

3D printing as a hobby only becomes a thing once the patent expired.

I am sympathetic to the idea of the small inventor trying to make it in the world. But people, big and small, corporations and individuals, can and did abuse patents, even innovators.

It pains me that I have to explain this to adults on HN, but: yes, this is bad. The foreign investor/customer paid dearly with time and money for the research and development. The factory runs an additional night shift and makes another batch of product. They then sell the night shift products at a reduced price undercutting the original vendor because they do not have to recoup the development costs. The vendor with the higher price cannot sell his stock of product because the demand is already satisfied from the cheaper night shift product.

OK. That wasn't what I am talking about. I am talking about 3d printer vendors entering the market, not being duplicitous about it. 3d printers are often open source, completely out in the open. So you would naturally expect clones.

So there's no duplicitous dealings going on here.

There are definitely cases where an innovator gets a patent and then is able to make a successful company that makes life better for everyone, even in software (e.g. RSA). Pick your favourite small inventor success story (Dyson?) and they most likely have a patent on whatever it is they made. The argument for patents is that they make that kind of basic research profitable (including for hobbyists) and therefore encourage more of it to happen. It's very hard to actually confirm that counterfactual one way or another, but it sounds logical at least.

The big corporations have the resources to build and sell the invention and defend against a patent lawsuit regardless.

Moreover, the big corporations already can use patents against smaller competitors and can fund more R&D to get patents and can simply sit on it.

Also, it isn't always a good idea to disclose how your stuff work. For example, SpaceX doesn't do that because the Chinese government will copy their stuff. Not that it matters. The problem with the space industry is that the old space contractors and governments rest on their laurel even when SpaceX became the Goliath of the Space industry.

You think one pathetic patent would stand up against a FAANG’s warchest, if they really wanted to implement it? They will use your idea and bury you with their own patent portfolio, unless you license it under terms that are generous and favorable to their interests. If you want to play hardball, they will use their lawyers to drown you in legal debt before a judge ever hears the case.

In this light, it should be clear that innovation has been completely crushed under the heel of the present system of fascist corporatism. Eliminating patents will not solve that overarching problem, though we know such an outcome would never be permitted to happen. Patent pools do not solve it, as that sacrifices the autonomy and independence that is the very essence of being a small fish.

You can sell your patent to a troll that can stand up against FAANG.

When I was taught to read a patent, I was told to skip to the claims, and the rest was useless except to provide definitions for words used in the claims. The description is _supposed to_ allow another practitioner to reproduce the invention, and many engineers who write patents do take the trouble to do this right. But as far as I know, the patent office does not verify that the description is valid or useful. They do try to check for novelty. I've also heard advice that engineers should avoid reading any patents because when there's a patent fight, damages are greater for willful infringement. Given that the usual practice is to ignore a patent's technical description, is a patent really useful as a disclosure of methodology? It seems like in practice, the only point is to plant a legal claim on some intellectual territory. As you note, the legal aspect may have genuine benefits, but the technical disclosure aspect seems to be useless.

If independent invention were a valid defense and the terms were a bit shorter then the only patents which would actually affect your business would be those which you legitimately couldn't come up with on your own (which seems like the point of the whole system -- you get a monopoly and we get blueprints in return). Shorter terms of 5-10 yrs would allow for faster iteration on important ideas.

Alternatively, compulsory license agreements like you have for some aspects of music could substantially reduce the chilling effect on new inventions. You don't have to worry about somebody suing for multiples of revenue; you just always have the ability to pay a reasonable royalty -- the patent owner still gets handsomely compensated, but important new inventions can start rolling out immediately.

Or else if the bar to get patents were a little higher then the system would work a lot more smoothly. The fact that cloudflare was able to invalidate the vast majority of patents when a troll sued them strongly indicates they shouldn't have been awarded in the first place even under current guidelines.

So there's absolutely nothing at all to prevent a situation where you put time and money into developing something, and as soon as it gets legs, a megacorp instead of buying you out or licensing it from you, just copies it and pushes you out of the market?

I'm open to the idea of some intellectual property rights remaining (like the "natural rights" you see in a lot of the world, or retaining current trade secret laws), but I still think we'd be in a better place than we are now if the current system were completely abolished.

Moreover, these patent lawsuits mean that said inventors spend more time talking to their lawyers instead of getting these inventions to market.

In principle, a patent is supposed to cover this. The text of the patent has to provide a recipe for reducing the idea to practice. As I understand it, if the recipe is unworkable, the patent is void.

Whether the patent office is stringent enough about this requirement is an open question of course. It may vary from one field to another. For instance, a patent for a new kind of optical lens is required to include a complete "prescription" for the lens, which is recognized as a sufficient set of data needed to replicate the idea. (One of my patents is like that).

Better than an obnoxious oligarch controlling all ideas forever, which could happen if you completely abolish patents. Do you have any more nuanced (i.e. realistic) suggestions for reform?

Even if you do, the second you do it and it sells, it gets copied in China faster that you can say IP.

I work in the display industry. I've never heard that e-ink "stuns" the development of technology. Could you elaborate on your meaning? Please see my comment history to see why I keep asking about this.

Network effects and the ability to spend 100x what you can raise to destroy you as an example to others or just to duplicate it. I mean, great, you have a new SQL Server. I'll even grant that it's 1,000x better/faster/etc than the current SQL because you sprinkled fairy dust everywhere. How are you going to roll it out to customers before Oracle/Amazon/MS/Google reverse engineer it and deploy it to all their existing customers?

At least with IP, there is a bidding war among those companies to buy out your tech - you'll probably get paid. And a limited period of ownership before the world gets the benefit universally.