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 is true that men themselves made this world of nations ... but this world without doubt has issued from a mind often diverse, at times quite contrary, and always superior to the particular ends that men had proposed to themselves.”
—Giambattista Vico (1688–1744)
“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)
“There is a patent office at the seat of government of the universe, whose managers are as much interested in the dispersion of seeds as anybody at Washington can be, and their operations are infinitely more extensive and regular.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“UG [universal grammar] may be regarded as a characterization of the genetically determined language faculty. One may think of this faculty as a ‘language acquisition device,’ an innate component of the human mind that yields a particular language through interaction with present experience, a device that converts experience into a system of knowledge attained: knowledge of one or another language.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)