1 — I’m a patent-deist.
2 — I think the patent system is no longer a mechanism for supporting IP owners, but a mechanism for making life difficult.
3 — Blindness: Nations and companies believe in patents like believing in a god and in religion.
- Nations inherit others’ patent approaches directly, resulting in non-senses. As a nation what’s your objective? Accelerating innovation, selling innovation, or exporting innovation?
- Queen Elizabeth has defined (1) some exclusivities to accelerate the growth of new industries by making leaders’ life easy; they wouldn’t think about the competition, and the queen will be the guarantor of choking any competitor. After Queen, the council defined a procedure to manage these exclusivities.
- What’s the objective today? We’re seeing that a lot of companies copying others inventions, and the patent system is not permitting this. Instead, companies try to build a portfolio of patents to make a workaround or fight with each other (when it’s time to choke others, they’re waiting for them to grow a little). So they only increase their cost. Also, the initial innovator will have significant costs, their granted patent won’t cover them forever. They should continuously feed the patent(system)s.
- A free roam of innovation might be an idea, but nobody would like to try this idea, it’s a fundamental change. According to what Bunnie (Andrew Huang) has told about China’s ecosystem on mutual sharing of the patents and China culture was inspiring. We generally criticize China’s law system while we’re looking from the outside. But Bunnie’s descriptions of China-based people were interesting. You may never appreciate China’s system while untrusting its system. Also, you may think; “if we go to China market, our innovation will be replicated.” But all of our conceptions and governance are based on beliefs, so we can change our beliefs; our mechanisms. A reality closer to China’s reality can work too.
4 — There is a force: I relate the patent system with religions much. And my position is a deist’s position; I know there is a force, you can’t play outside (2) of it. But I don’t agree when it enforces some rules. If I can find a way to get rid of it, I would do it. Also, I can’t deny the existence of it, so I couldn’t become a patent-atheist.
5 — Some Changes: I think exclusive rights for the inventions should be limited or their format should be changed; for example, we can choose to fund research instead of licensing the research. After putting a novel innovation a deep tech developer/researcher can go to the people for funding the research, he can mention the outcomes of the novelty.
6 — Be (with the) Objective: Why? Today’s objective is not to guarantee market access, but to accelerate growth and entrepreneurship. A lot of things happening in the red ocean. If there was no Queen Elizabeth’s example, could you imagine a government proofing an exclusivity? Free markets create the exclusive ones, with natural selection.
7 — How patent deism might help you?
- You’ll be a trustworthy proper person.
- You won’t believe any patent will protect you.
- You’ll try to find out alternative strategies.
For example, companies! Why you’re trying to build patents! You may choose to continue with trade secrets most of the time. You can develop some protection mechanisms for hiding the innovation in your solutions.
- If you’re a policymaker, you’ll work on a legal process to recognize open source licenses (3) and more.
- If you’re a high-level policymaker, you can rule according to the objectives of today, not yesterday. You’ll save your nation’s resources.
- If you’re a patent attorney, you can provide more cost-effective solutions to your customer; suggest more out-of-the patent area strategies, like trade secrets, etc. And change your pricing strategy to cover more services like FTO (freedom to operate), Trade secrets, etc.
Lookups
(1) Britannica Encyclopedia — Patent
(2) You Can’t Opt Out of the Patent System. That’s Why Patent Pandas Was Created!