Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter (now X) and Square (now Block), sparked a weekend’s worth of debate around intellectual property, patents, and copyright, with a characteristically terse post declaring, “delete all IP law.”
X’s current owner Elon Musk quickly replied, “I agree.”
I’d like to get back to ‘for limited time’. Patents 10 years, no extensions. Copyright, 10 years, no extensions. Trademarks indefinite as long as the owner still has a meaningful business still operating and using the trademark ( this one is tricky to define well).
It’s still a misguided policy aimed at furthering the lie of individualism. Which why we have so many ridiculous true stories of parallel invention, and scientists racing to the patent office to claim full credit.
These people are building on the works of all those who came before. All should benefit from the results. And all should enjoy a basic standard of living, instead of this cut throat first past this finish line system, where all who fall behind will suffer.
I view the patent process as furthering the ability of others to benefit from the results: without patents, the only way to keep clones of your product from immediately appearing on the market is obfuscation and trade secrets. Patents grant a limited monopoly, but at the price of full disclosure. That full disclosure serves a useful social benefit as others can learn and innovate on what was done before. The limited monopoly encourages innovation because it helps people get exclusive rights to sell their work.
There’s a lot of bad patent behavior with patent trolls, etc. The duration of the patents should be relatively short and not extensible. But I think the disclosure aspect of the patent process does further overall innovation.
We can require disclosure without providing a government backed monopoly. Especially when the modern world has corporations enjoying the benefits of the monopoly, at the expense of individuals.