Wednesday, April 05, 2006

BBC NEWS | Business | Netflix sues Blockbuster on DVDs

BBC NEWS | Business | Netflix sues Blockbuster on DVDs
The mere existence of patents such as these is assinine.
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2 comments:

jj mollo said...

I couldn't agree more though I do have some sympathy for Netflix. I think it's about time to rethink what the patent system does for us. Supposedly it makes people take risks, to do things they wouln't otherwise do. Somebody would have developed that online sales system whether or not it was patentable. Another misuse is patenting information, such as the sequencing of a gene.

Copyrights should also be redesigned to encourage innovation rather than making a select few wealthy. One thing we should not be using patents and copyrights for is to protect the interests of large companies. We have too much concentration of power in almost every industry you want to talk about.

On the other hand, encouraging drug developers to take chances is very important. The problem is that it doesn't work that way. Small companies do the development. The Big Pharm companies just buy out the little companies as soon as the risk has been absorbed by the entrepreneur. And a lot of the time, the patent is never implemented. They just wanted to avoid the competition, or the risk of production was greater than they originally thought. In either case the smaller company would have done better. Maybe patents should be non-transferrable. Or maybe they should expire as soon as they are acquired by companies over a certain size. By all means, I'd like to see them expire when the original holder has become richer than an NBA star. We have to have some balance in this society.

9:57 AM
jj mollo said...

So, how do you keep a hippie from smelling?

9:32 PM

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