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Rob Landley

Technology doesn't advance when patents are granted, it advances when patents expire.

The first cell phone call was made April 3, 1973. Cell phones took off 20 years later when the patents expired.

cnn.com/2023/04/03/tech/cell-p

Steve Sasson created the first self-contained digital camera in 1975:

web.archive.org/web/2013012119

20 years later, the patents expired...

8 April at 12:45 | Open on mstdn.jp
2 comments
Duncan Bayne

@landley I'm *super* not convinced that patents have any sensible philosophical grounding (in the sense that say physical property rights do), nor that they offer any pragmatic payoff either.

8 April at 12:48 | Open on emacs.ch
Rob Landley

@duncan_bayne originally they lasted 7 years, and the point was to get people to document and publish their inventions rather than keep them secret like guilds did, and people had a nasty habit of dying with a secret, ala
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexible

Extending patents to 20 years, while technology has gotten WAY better at reverse engineering the formula of Coca-Cola or the 11 herbs and spices in the chicken? That's just capitalist greed.

8 April at 12:58 | Open on mstdn.jp
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