Yes, Starguy, the Wrights did sue Curtiss. In fact, their secrecy almost cost them primacy of invention. The International Aeronautics Federation declared Alberto Santos-Dumont the inventor of the heavier-than-air craft for a device that was little more than a box kite in a controlled dive. The Wright Brothers were doing their development work in secret waiting for a patent. They rushed off to the LeMans Air Show announcing themselves the true inventors and were greeted as "poseurs" until they proved themselves in a public demonstration. Then, later, they sued Curtiss. As you note - as we all know - their "wing warping" would not be useful for sophisticated aircraft while Curtiss's aileron was.

Moreover - and to the point - the REAL invention of the Wright Brothers (which even they did not appreciate) was the PROPELLER. Everyone had always been mislead by ships because of Ericksson's screw propeller. But water is so much denser than air that no one perceived the propeller as a WING until the Wrights figured it out. Now THAT was a true invention, truly deserving of intellectual property rights.

The moderator hid my comment on that article, which is why I posted this.

Thank you, CBJ. That is an interesting point. Founded in the epistemology of the problem, it does address the roots of the questions.

Rich, intellectual property rights are a complicated problem. Like the blind men and the elephant, each writer claims total knowledge, but each has only a part of the truth -- and an analogy, not a direct perception. We all agree that if you write a book, I do not have the right to take the book, put my name on it, and reprint it. But Henry Ford "stole" the idea of the motorcar when he saw someone in a Daimler and knew that he could build one. I have no immediate solution to all the sides of all the problems associated with this. But I do assert that it has sides - and more than two of them.

True but all of the most recognized groups within the Libertarian party seem to agree on patents. Can you give sn example of a nationally recognized group which does not?

Stossel is highly critical of the patent system.

Both actually. I read an article in Mises last week that argued against Intellectual Property rights. I was surprised to see them take that stance. I generally enjoy the discussions in the Gulch but occasionally some will post just to be disruptive. That is a little frustrating.

Fascinating discussion (I always seem to come in late). My logic on intellectual property is this: When you make something physical with material you own, like a chair or a sweater, it is yours. More directly, when a product of your body, such as a baby, is created, it is totally yours, even if the government would like to claim part ownership of it and jurisdiction over it as a future taxpayer, even before it is born. In fact, the government has rules in place for taking a child away from parents it deems unsuitable.

Now consider another product of the individual--mental rather than physical. If people cannot own their ideas and what they can use them for to produce goods or services whose financial reward accrues to the creator, we are back to a hunter/gatherer, finder/keeper mentality, pre-property rights, and people will end up scrappling over an asset like chickens in a barnyard fighting over a worm.

The Constitution set up protections for inventors to guarantee them first rights to income from their creation. It's why a farmer is entitled to the harvest from the seeds he has planted and the plants he has tended (at least before Monsanto). Early tribal societies would give the prime portion from a kill to the hunter, who would share the animal with the rest of the tribe, an early case of the division of labor.

I don't have patents on my products, but have 35 years' worth of trademarks and copyrights. My products use mostly geometry, which is public domain, and even my trademarks acknowledge that a name applies to a certain product in a limited category and does not take the word out of the language universally and exclusively. For example, I own the trademark "Blockout", but not the word "Block" nor the word "out". And only in the classification to which it belongs. If you want to make a shoe and call it Blockout, have at it.

It seems that those who are first with a new idea own it. Like fungus, that singularity begets an entire population of related ideas, each building on what came before and adding some new element to it. Squabbles over ownership don't really arise unless profits are involved. Then everyone wants a piece of the action.

The most significant viral spread of ideas has been in software, open source, the Internet: give it away free to get everyone addicted, and then sell them ever-changing upgrades. How else would, in a mere 20 years, an entire planet become wired and the majority of people walking around with a cellphone permanently attached to their skull and tablets in their bags.

How would online communities, involving billions of people, have arisen like the old village square where folks would sit around and converse and decide the weighty questions of the day or play games. Millions of online games hook nearly everyone into global projects. What a fertile medium for the dissemination of ideas that people are willing to share not for profit but for the sake of spreading those memes.

TED talks started out with $4500 tickets for people to attend the live events, until they decided to put them online free for the world to see. "Ideas worth sharing", they call it. The payoff is not in money but in minds. Those are intangible goods. But when it comes to physical goods that inventors or their investors produce, then property rights do apply. The patent office examiners have the unenviable task of arbitrating what is an original idea and what is just derivative. I suspect that favoritism can creep in for ruling in favor of one but not another. Having a decent patent attorney helps.

I find the best protection for your intellectual property is to get it embodied and famous as soon as possible so imitators can't grab it, too. They'll jump in with spin-offs soon enough. Not that that stops agents like the Chinese from treating it as finders/keepers. I'm having to defend my domain names regularly against unauthorized borrowers.

I understand that 100,000 new websites are added to the Web every day. How's that for viral propagation? Lots of people out there are busy with new or adapted ideas, to the point where entropy sets in and only the search engines can keep trying to track them all. And then someone up on the meta-level will have a breakthrough idea for a better way to organize it, or monetize it. I wonder how many more lone entrepreneurs, the singularities like Gates and Jobs and Wales, will be coming along and succeeding, even with a barnyard full of chickens pecking at their feet.

Hi, Rich,
I am curious. Which topic do you find great: patents as personal property or the quality of our exchanges here?

Excellent points and I am a little off base. I have thoughts about how the software industry has developed and how software programming is taught, which are clearly not as well thought out as my points on patents.

I agree. I think that is where the truly visionary individual like Steve Jobs excelled: he both understood his own invention but was also able to explain it to others. I completely agree with your observation that this is a rare skill set!

And there is no question that it takes discipline to curb one's enthusiasm about a new idea that can absolutely lead to code that isn't documented or that doesn't adhere to good design fundamentals. You make an excellent point there.

As for the transceiver example, it is hard to guess at how someone else makes value judgements without being there and considering the same inputs and outputs. I can either assume that it was a rational decision based on perceived profit margins, licensing costs, etc., or I can also just chalk it up to hubris -> irrational decision-making. ;)

I have worked with a lot of very successful entrepreneur programmers and unless they come from an EE background, most hand me either a requirements list or vague interconnected blobs when asked to describe their invention. I am not saying they are not smart, but the urge to jump in and start writing code seems to overwhelm the idea of structure.

ICs rarely do exactly what you want them to do either, but it doesn't make sense to build a custom ASIC for every application. I understand that it is often difficult to reuse code that does something similar, but I see that as the problem. I also do not see how it is rewarding to build, for example, a transceiver if one is on the market that meets your requirements, when you are in the cell phone business.

I see. I don't really agree with the "poor vocabulary" argument, however. Having written my own and re-written others' code enough times, I find that the majority of this is simply due to the fact that no two peoples' minds think in the same way. Thus, even though both are attempting to solve the same problem, the method for doing so takes alternate approaches, uses different versions of tooling, and/or adapting to different circumstances. This to me is novel, though I readily agree it makes comparison of software programming for patenting VERY difficult.

I also have a different take on your "wasteful" observation: most programmers I know enjoy the challenge of figuring something out for themselves. They generally eschew merely copying what someone else does because it isn't as personally satisfying. The other part that I have observed is that though problems may be similar, they are rarely exactly the same, which means that for any given situation, a minor adjustment is needed. It is really difficult to do that without understanding what you are tweaking, and often, writing your own both solves the problem AND customizes it to your specific needs.

As to your observation on code sharing, social media and forum sites have a cost and a purpose. Most people who use them get their payoff in recognition rather than in monetary remuneration, so it isn't as if they aren't receiving something of value for their contribution. I would add "without compensation" to your sentence "It also created a culture that using other people's work is acceptable" to complete it. It doesn't become theft until you refuse to "pay" for what you are getting. Value doesn't always have to be in money alone.

Your last paragraph doesn't describe any of the programmers I've ever worked with. Programmers are by their very nature some of the most logical people I've met. The place where things break down and you get the infamous "spaghetti logic" isn't usually due to the programmers, but because of the business rules they are attempting to mimic in code. What makes things a mess is because those business rules are rarely well codified, diagrammed, and proceduralized into something! When business managers are trained to think decisions through before jumping to conclusions, we will see better code as a result. Until then, we will continue to be frustrated by the disorder and haphazardness.

Don't get me wrong - I'm a big one for standards. I'm not advocating for disparate systems and inoperability - especially in communications protocols. That being said, however, I think it is way too simplistic to think that every problem can be solved with the same approach in the most effective, efficient manner. While the perfectionist in me still cringes at the idea of a solution that isn't 100% perfect, the realist in me is smart enough to reason with the business manager to say "for what you are willing to spend in resources, you will get a job that is 85% of what you want."

No. I'd want royalties. Or to have them cease and desist. So far I've managed to keep such instances cordial and peacefully resolved.There are still businesses with integrity.

Thank you. This is a great topic. I have been enjoying the dialogue.

Thank you Rich,

I do not contribute very much either. But I find far too many participants here making logical mistakes and ad hominem attacks. We all make mistakes. I call it a good day when I make less than hundred. But, people making personal attacks must be reminded that they are not allowed in polite society, even in vigorous debate.

Thank you, again for doing the reminding.

All the best!

Hi Starguy. I notice you have not posted much so I am wondering how you chose to use the term "troll". I am also wondering why you would use it with someone who had made very valid points. The Gulch is open for debate but not attacks.

And you are a troll.

Go away.

Yes, I understand the trade between hardware and software. And yes the ability to customize is a great thing.

By poor vocabulary i mean that two high level applications in the same space may use completely different words to describe what they are doing. This makes it very difficult to compare the two. From a patent point of view it makes examining these applications very difficult. Compare this to the electronics industry and you will see a more common vocabulary. The closer the software is to the hardware the more consistent the vocabulary in my experience.

I say wasteful, because I have seen and heard programmers say that they will reprogram something they need (sorry about the lack of specifics, but they would all related to clients' inventions) rather than buy it. Now I know there are some practical reasons for this - failure to build software as logical structures, which was supposed to be the point of C, but this created a culture of repeating each others work. It also created a culture that using other people's work is acceptable.

Also, many in the programming business tend to write code first and then figure out where they are going. When you ask them to describe their code it is a bunch of overlapping circles with no structure, which I am sure makes it a nightmare to debug. This may have been great for job security, but it means that each piece of software stands alone. Imagine if the seven layer OSI model had not been adopted and everyone combined level seven apps with layer one or two apps. Then everyone has to program everything and there is no interoperability.

It seems to me that the invetors' incentivs are to enhence their productivity, profitability and competitiveness. The goverment wishes that others profit from the invention and offers a limited protection in exchange for publication.
Inventors have a decision to make. If the invention is not detectable (difficult to reverse engineer) from the product, once it reaches the market, why would any sane inventor publicize the invention and alert competitors?
If there is no government protection offered, why would anyone spend the precious lifetime inventing, if the next day a competitor can copy with impunity? For public good? Hello, moochers.
Personally, I think that patents should last quite a bit longer. Why is copyright so much longer than a patent? I do not know.

The initial businesses involved in building computers such as Burroughs (where my father-in-law worked), IBM, DEC (where my uncle was a VP), and others were fiercely competitive, so of course they built all their own tools and methods of programming and designing their tools. You don't go try to sell something unique and different by making a copy of what someone else already has (unless you're Compaq). You can call this inefficient if you wish, but what it actually meant was that each problem got solved in a potentially unique way. What you end up with are computers that can serve a broad array of strengths and weaknesses that appeal to a broad range of users. I would argue that this isn't wasteful at all, but incredibly competitive and beneficial to the industry and society. One of the great things about the computer is the customization - it can become what you need it to be. Take that away through extreme standardization and what do you get? Stagnation. Case in point: the Windows operating system.

Another example: RISC vs Intel's x86 instruction sets. Toss in Motorola (old Apple devices). Now you even have ARM. This is the foundational microcode that everything else rides upon, yet each solve the basic hardware control functions differently and with different strengths and weaknesses. Are you really trying to argue that we never should have tried anything other than x86?

What about the competition between Token Ring, IPX/SPX, and TCP/IP? I for one was very glad I never had to run vampire taps, though I still believe IPX/SPX is a better layer3/4 protocol than TCP/IP...

I would also point out that writing microcode is also different than writing assembly, which is different than writing Cobol, which is different than writing SQL. Each is a different abstraction layer further and further removing hardware controls from something the programming even has to worry about in the first place, so I have to cringe at your argument that "All software is a way of wiring an electronic circuit" as a gross oversimplification.

The whole reason to use software is to be able to adapt to new circumstances. Yes, you can completely build a device in hardware. It will be very, very good at doing exactly what it was designed for. And only that. You can't fix bugs. You can't upgrade. You can't install additional functionality or programming without software.

And if by a "poorly developed vocabulary" you're referring to the plethora of programming languages, again, you miss the point that each one was created with a specific specialty in mind. Fortran and Cobol were for science and business - lots of mathematics - when memory was limited. Basic was great at branching and conditional logic. Java focused on portability. C++ took object orientation to a whole new level. To say that any one of these is confusing, overlapping, etc. is to miss the entire point that they were tools to serve different purposes. (Although if you want to look at Lisp as confusing, I'll agree 100%. Talk about "bracketology" ...)

"Three, many computer geeks have no idea what software does."

This geek does. Software is what enables me to do whatever I need to do. Software allows me to adapt to the changing needs of my business with minimal cost and materials. Software allows me in a few minutes to do what it would take a design team years of effort to achieve via hardware. Software equals convenience which in turn equals productivity and adaptability, which equal profitability.

To ponder: Can you imagine trying to build a hardware-based database? If ever there were a better example of a need for software, I'm drawing a blank...

I think computers caused problems for Patent for a couple of reasons. One, the patent office did not recognize software so they failed to gain expertise and even more importantly they missed out on 2-4 decades of prior art they normally would have developed. Two, the software profession did not develop software that was compartmentalized, so everyone creates their own UI, their own search routines, their own mathematical models, their own interfaces. And instead of buying the equivalent of a keyboard, screen, power supply, microprocessor, everyone writes their own, creating a very wasteful repetitive culture. Also a culture with a poorly developed (confusing, different, and overlapping) vocabulary to describe what they are doing. Three, many computer geeks have no idea what software does. They think they are writing math - they need some history lessons. All software is a way of wiring an electronic circuit. High level software is converted by a special circuit (compiler) into native/machine language which is then converted into voltages that open and close transistors to form an specific electronic circuit. Anything done in software can be done in hardware, because that is what the software does - wires the hardware.

I agree with your reasoning, merely pointing out the arguments. I'm a computer nerd by trade, so I can easily see both sides of the argument and the VERY thin lines.

The problem began with computers. Computers are customizable tools of the utmost utility. Once they were brought onto the scene, patent law went haywire because of the literal virtualization of intellectual property. One no longer had to have a physical product to demonstrate ingenuity.

Thus the difficulty: when what you are building is a tool to fulfill a specific purpose but the tool is ephemeral, does it really constitute a "novel" and "real" invention for the purpose of a patent? I don't have an answer. It's just the crux of the whole situation.

Is this currently a big issue in The United States? Don't we have patent laws? Don't patents expire after a certain length of time? Why the attempt to marginalize libertarians as unreasonable parasites? Don't libertarians have more in common with conservatives and objectivists than they do with progressives and why not focus on that ?