Now, medicinal patents. These are generally issued to a company who pours millions (or billions) of dollars into research. Between design, testing, trials and approval, medical breakthroughs are generally very expensive. In this instance, I won't begrudge a company from charging a lot of money for their drug to recoup their investment. The thing with medical patents is that after twelve years (in the US)(1), generics can be produced. There is a very clearly defined "expiration" on this exclusivity. Once this is over, the market takes over, prices drop, and more people have access to the drug.
And now a word on artificial vendor lock in. This is when a company uses some "feature" of their system to make it very hard to switch from their system to somebody elses. This is good for the company in the short term, because it will help them "keep" customers longer. If you drove Fords your whole life, and were used to some special interface (brakes on the steering wheel for example), then there would be a "friction" for switching to anybody else, because you would have to learn a new interface. Like I said above, this can be good in the short term for a company, but in the long run, it can introduce two major problems. First, once their customers are locked in, many companies cease to innovate. They have someone "hooked" and they decide to just coast. Second, customers begin to feel a desire to switch, to find another product. The problem is they have this barrier to overcome, and it creates resentment for their vendor.
Some vendor lock in is inevitable. When you buy an iPhone or Android, they use fundamentally different systems. Some software written for one is not available on the other. This is not artificial, it is just how the system is. What is artificial is when Apple used to DRM their music so it would only play on an iPod (I know they had their reasons, such as appeasing the RIAA 'gods', but as a consumer, it feels artificial). This keeps people from switching to an Android. I'm not specifically picking on Apple here, nearly all vendors have something like this, and I believe it is bad for them in the long run. (4)
Now to the part that I think is asinine... technology patent and copyright "abuse." I think that companies have a right to protect their intellectual property, but there NEEDS to be a shorter window on these things.
- First, Mickey Mouse. When Mickey was originally created, it was 1928, and the copyright life appears to have been about 50 years (which still sounds ridiculous to me). Then over the years, industry lobbying has pushed this to life of the author plus 50, then life plus 70 or 120 years if created by a company. (2) At the rate things are going, Mickey Mouse will never enter public domain.
- Second, technology patents. These desperately need to be short term. The computer world is fueled by... well, technology. When a company gets a patent whose life is very long, they can abuse that patent to keep customers locked to themselves. Without some sort of sharing, we would never have the technology we have today. The invention of computers has been a very iterative process. If one company owned a patent and chose to abuse that patent (either through excessive licensing fees or simply keeping others out), we would not be where we are today.
- Third, if a patent is overly broad, this is also bad (3). This gives very broad ground to litigate.
Henry Ford once said "I invented nothing new. I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work... progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready and then it is inevitable."
Conclusions: I think patents need to be for a very specific feature. I think they need to have a very clear expiration written into them. I think that expiration should be based on the amount of time it will take to recoup the cost of the patented item (how many times has the cost to produce Mickey been recovered?). I think that companies need to wake up and see that consumers aren't stupid, and can feel vendor lock in (and it doesn't produce positive feelings towards a company).
Update:
And now I've found a much better version of this posting as a youtube video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd-dqUuvLk4Conclusions: I think patents need to be for a very specific feature. I think they need to have a very clear expiration written into them. I think that expiration should be based on the amount of time it will take to recoup the cost of the patented item (how many times has the cost to produce Mickey been recovered?). I think that companies need to wake up and see that consumers aren't stupid, and can feel vendor lock in (and it doesn't produce positive feelings towards a company).
Update:
And now I've found a much better version of this posting as a youtube video
Citations/notes
