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)
“Clearly, society has a tremendous stake in insisting on a woman’s natural fitness for the career of mother: the alternatives are all too expensive.”
—Ann Oakley (b. 1944)
“This is the patent age of new inventions
For killing bodies, and for saving souls,
All propagated with the best intentions.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“We recognize caste in dogs because we rank ourselves by the familiar dog system, a ladderlike social arrangement wherein one individual outranks all others, the next outranks all but the first, and so on down the hierarchy. But the cat system is more like a wheel, with a high-ranking cat at the hub and the others arranged around the rim, all reluctantly acknowledging the superiority of the despot but not necessarily measuring themselves against one another.”
—Elizabeth Marshall Thomas. “Strong and Sensitive Cats,” Atlantic Monthly (July 1994)