this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2023
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Ah, and here we scratch the surface of the problems with intellectual property in an internet connected era.
This! Patent, trademarks, copyrights, all those intellectual properties laws were created more than a century ago, a time very different from us, with no corporations capable of pushing hundreds if not thousands of patents per year.
Those laws are so outdated that they are played to the inverse of what they were supposed to do. They were created to protect the inventor to make sure he can win money on his invention, today they are used to protect big corporation to make sure they can buy or kill whoever who would risk attacking their revenue.
They were invented as a way to push creativity and protect it but they are used today to limit and block creativity. There's a good reason why creativity in technology in the last 10 years has come more from open source movements (additive manufacturing, blockchain, machine learning, etc.). It's the only way to still protect creativity, making it open, therefore non patentable.
A big part of the issue is just how long they last, which has been pushed back by big corporations (looking at you, Disney). 20 years should be plenty to recoup an investment, the original time was 14 years + a potential 14 more on renewal (so 28), and the current 95 years is ridiculous.
Definitely a big problem for copyrights, patents are still 20 years, but they are also problematic. Biggest issue is patent trolls, companies who patent anything, sometimes even things that don't really exist, just to attack companies who innovate.