Proposed Alternatives To The Patent System
According to James Bessen, elimination of the patent system would increase the incentives for innovation in all industries except chemistry and pharmaceuticals by eliminating startup litigation costs.
Alternatives have been discussed to address the issue of financial incentivization to replace patents. Mostly, they are related to some form of direct or indirect government funding. One example is the idea of providing "prize money" (from a "prize fund" sponsored by the government) as a substitute for the lost profits associated with abstaining from the monopoly given by a patent. Another approach is to remove the issue of financing development from the private sphere all together, and to cover the costs with direct government funding.
Trade secrets are an existing alternative to the patent system. Given their popularity, it has been proposed to strengthen nondisclosure and employment law pertaining to trade secrets.
Famous quotes containing the words proposed, alternatives, patent and/or system:
“It has been proposed that the town should adopt for its coat of arms a field verdant, with the Concord circling nine times round.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The last alternatives they face
Of face, without the life to save,
Being from all salvation weaned
A stag charged both at heel and head:
Who would come back is turned a fiend
Instructed by the fiery dead.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“The cigar-box which the European calls a “lift” needs but to be compared with our elevators to be appreciated. The lift stops to reflect between floors. That is all right in a hearse, but not in elevators. The American elevator acts like the man’s patent purge—it works”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“The dominant metaphor of conceptual relativism, that of differing points of view, seems to betray an underlying paradox. Different points of view make sense, but only if there is a common co-ordinate system on which to plot them; yet the existence of a common system belies the claim of dramatic incomparability.”
—Donald Davidson (b. 1917)