[LINK] Australian Patents

[Frank O'Connor]

My feelings on the patents system (particularly the US payments system) are probably somewhat different to others. I don't necessarily see them as a good thing.

Once you start patenting ideas and techniques as property - especially to the extent that is applicable in the US -  you effectively attack science and dissemination of knowledge and ideas.

Scientific advancement specifically, is generally an investigation of new functions of two knowns. We examine or re-examine knowns to hypothesise a new known/function/relationship. Phenomena may be incompletely known, but when you derive a new relationship between the two (mass and acceleration, energy and mass, lever length and pivots, etc etc etc) you move science along. And if the original concepts/phenomena/ideas etc are copyrighted/patented, you effectively stymie development and research in that phenomena whilst the lawyers sort it out.

And as for experimental equipment ... well, suffice it to say that if the Bunsen Burner, or Galileo's lenses, or test tubes, or anyone of a thousand useful pieces of common experimental apparatus had been patented/copyrighted then a hell of a lot of science and research would not have applied. 

We'd have been stuck in a legalistic Inquisition during the Golden Age of Science (which I'd argue was the 17th to 19th centuries) and nothing would have happened. Patents and Copyright would have served those who liked to keep us poor and ignorant, and more importantly consumers.

Second, as a species we tend to move along by disseminating knowledge and ideas. We 'live on the shoulders of giants' as one scientist put it. New techniques, new knowledge of our environment, newly revealed phenomena and patterns and the like make our lives better. And disseminating them freely has a 'networking effect' that accelerates our development, accelerates the solving of problems, makes our lives better, advances our species into new and exciting pursuits.

But the patent copyright system works to the Economics of Scarcity, and actively dissuades against dissemination of knowledge.

As an example, scientific journals and the like used to be a huge source of freely available relatively cheap, knowledge, new techniques, new inventions and development .... but now they are expensive, privatised and very restricted in what they can carry. Information is restricted and locked up ... because it is seen as too valuable (to someone) to be released. A few benefit from it to the exclusion of the rest of us. And they do with it what they like.

They monetise 'cures' for old age cancer, type 2 diabetes, the cold and acne ... but because there's no money in malaria, Ebola or other diseases that affect billions of people, ignore those diseases that kill millions annually. The affected people are too poor to be a market for them. Look at what they did with the AIDS medication patents if you want an example of this. Whole countries in Africa decimated by the disease, but the pharmaceutical giants wouldn't let go their iron hold over the copyright/patents to save lives .... they wanted their hundreds of dollars per dose, that Africans simply could not afford as that represented a year's income for a single dose.

And those who 'protest too much' .... and I'm looking at the US here - are hypocrites of the highest order. Throughout the 19th and early 20th Centuries, the US infringed terribly on the copyright and patents of Britain and Europe. They copied the inventions and plundered the research of established economic powerhouses to become an economic powerhouse in their own right. They improved on many of the devices and inventions that they copied, but they ignored the protestations of the Europeans concerning patents and copyright (and patent and copyright law was well established by the middle of the 19th century) and simply did what they wanted. Europe similarly plundered the Chinese in the 14th and 15th Centuries .... the time of the European Renaissance.

What goes around comes around.                     :)

Yet, when the Japanese in the 1950's and 1960's, and the East Asians generally in the 1990's, and now China in the Naughties did the same things in their rush to advance and feed billions of people, the USA has condemned them .... hypocritically as I said.

To me, it's a result of the rush to monetarise ideas and knowledge (which in the last 20 years has produced a quagmire of unenforceable restrictions and legalistic quicksand), its the Economics of Scarcity working in a dysfunctional way, it's nationalism working against the supposed globalist push, it's a restriction on science, the advancement of the human race, the dissemination of knowledge and ideas, and economic activity generally.

Unlike many others .... I don't see the patents and copyright system we're currently saddled with, as a Great Leap Forward. But the Western world, led by the USA, who, now that they've 'outsourced' the huge production capabilities that made them an economic powerhouse in the first place, feel to the need to lock-up and feed off the ideas that served that production powerhouse - now in China and the developing world - for time immemorial.

My guess? We'll be fighting vicious trade wars, and probably real wars, as a result of these restrictive patents and copyrights, and the hoarding of knowledge and techniques (or more specifically the failure to do so) within 20 to 30 years. They've probably already begun now. They'll be fought under the banners of 'freedom' and 'liberty' and nationalism .... but what they'll really be about is something much less admirable, much more mundane and grounded in seedy financial imperialism, rather than any noble ideas.

A bloody trade war for patents and copyright. Yeah ... I think our species will tear itself apart for the buck. We've done it in the past, and never seem to learn. Especially when the economic going gets tough ... and its getting tough now. All we need is a little tip and we're in a Depression ... and under stress people and nations tend do incredibly stupid things.

So I guess, with a somewhat apocalyptic view like that, it's not surprising I don't have a lot of time for patents, copyright and locking up knowledge and ideas.

But, your mileage may vary ...

Just my 2 cents worth ...
---
> On 6 Dec 2014, at 12:25 am, Stephen Loosley <stephenloosley at zoho.com> wrote:
> 
> This patent situation is just crazy.
> 
> "Australians need to get patenting"
> 
> By ABC's Alan Kohler Thu 4 Dec 2014, 10:09am
> http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-04/kohler-australians-need-to-get-patenting/5937370?
> 
> 
> Although Australia is beginning to participate in the worldwide start-up boom, it does not seem to be doing it in a way that allows the technology to be exported, writes Alan Kohler.
> 
> Australia is finally seeing a wave of tech start-up activity, but so far this is not translating into patent applications.
> 
> For some reason, the number of patents filed here by Australians, per capita, has actually declined over the past decade. Globally, it's going through the roof, led by China.
> 
> And that's at odds with what's going on in this country in venture capital. 
> 
> Australia sat out the 1990s tech boom with an almost complete absence of information and communications technology (ICT) innovation, but not this time.
> 
> There is a new, more sustainable global boom in innovation and start-ups, prompted, in part, by lower cost cloud computing, which is making processing cheaper. It is centred on Silicon Valley and New York in the US, as well as Israel.
> 
> It's hard to get data on what's happening in Australia, but anecdotally it's clear that Sydney is very much part of the global boom. There is a boom in venture capital and start-ups here, and that's now leading to dozens of small IPOs and backdoor listings on the ASX.
> 
> But Australia is punching well below its weight in patent applications.
> 
> According to the most recent data available from IP Australia (which is not very recent - 2012) there were 2,627 applications filed by Australians domestically, or 114 per million people, down from 120 per million a decade ago.
> 
> More than 90 per cent of the patents filed in Australia are by foreign entities. In most countries it's about 50 per cent, with the other half coming from locals. The number of patents globally is about 2 million, which is growing at 6 per cent a year. China is now filing about 400 patents per million - four times the rate of Australia.
> 
> Paula Chavez, an American patent lawyer now working with Australian firm Wrays, says a lot of the problem lies in the cost of filing in Australia, which is much higher than in the US.
> 
> She says that a patent application in the US can cost around $2000-$3000; in Australia it's at least $10,000. Also she says it's harder and more expensive to sue in Australia to protect your IP, because the loser pays the legal costs of the winner (not the case in the US):
> 
>    There's a lot of innovation going on in Australia, but not enough capture of the IP.
> 
>    That's evidenced by Australia's IP trade deficit. According to an IP Australia report, $4 billion was paid
>    in 2013 to foreign patent owners for IP and only $748 million was received.
> 
> So although Australia is beginning to participate in the worldwide start-up boom, it does not seem to be doing it in a way that allows the technology to be exported. If Australians don't file patent applications both here and abroad, they'll have nothing to sell apart from URLs and trade marks, which is not enough.
> 
> Ian Maxwell, an adjunct professor at RMIT University, recently wrote that Australia's 20 largest corporations have just 3,400 patents between them. Thirteen of them have less than 20 in total.
> 
>    By comparison the 20 largest US listed companies hold many hundreds of thousands of patents
>    and they collectively file over 20,000 patents year. Google alone owns 51,000 patents and IBM
>    has a similar number.
> 
>    This discrepancy between Australian and US corporations is primarily due to the focus of large
>    Australian companies on exploiting their 'protected' share of the local market rather than exporting
>    technology solutions.
> 
> A report by the US Patent Board, published in the Wall Street Journal this week, makes it clear that stock market value tends to follow the number of patent filings.
> 
> There's also a large trade in patents themselves. Google bought Motorola, with its 17,000 patents, for $12.5 billion, to protect its Android operating system. Microsoft bought 800 patents from AOL for more than $1bn, and then sold 70 per cent of them to Facebook for $550 million.
> 
> The Senate Economic References Committee is currently running an inquiry into "Australia's innovation system", due to report by July 2015. None of its terms of reference specifically refers to patents and its 177 submissions does not seem to have included one from IP Australia. The inquiry seems to be mostly focused on Government funding of research and innovation.
> 
> Unless Australia's approach to IP protection is improved, the lift in innovation and start-up activity won't be sustained.
> 
> --
> 
> Cheers,
> Stephen
> 
> 
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