Re: The patent process [Was Re: Sharing the Family PC is Patent-Pending]

[Barry Pearson]

Stefan Monnier wrote:
[snip]
> But we're talking about "making sure people invent", not "making sure
> people make money".
> In academia, most people spend their life inventing without much
> desire to make any kind of money off of it.  We're paid to invent,
> not for the invention.  Kind of like GPL programmers are paid to
> write the software rather than being paid for the software itself.
[snip]

Paid by whom? And paid how much?

If academia were to have the responsibility for doing all the inventions, then
they would need money from somewhere. It costs awesome amounts to research and
test new drugs. If they couldn't get it from profits from what they produce,
presumably they would have to get it from taxpayers.

So, instead of drug companies putting vast amounts of shareholder money into
research, at great risk, academics would put vast amounts of taxpayer money
into research, at great risk.

If you progress in this direction, you may eventually end up with the theory
pursued by the Soviet Union, driven by central management rather than the
profit motive. Did that work?

-- 
Barry Pearson
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