Patents, crimes against humanity!

[PS: this is my personal opinion and should not reflect in anyway the great company I work for.]

Quite often we hear the saying that a person is the product of their environment. We all know that everyone is unique and that this uniqueness boiled together with the events and experiences of a lifetime which make for truely unique individuals.

That being said, I often ponder these:

1) Are ideas our own? Truely and fully our own? They are influenced by eventhing around us. The same experiences that shape us and help mold our character are what help us form ideas. So, doesn't that mean that you share a little bit of the ownership of an idea with everyone and everything that caused you to develop it? Without them you likely would not have perceived it to begin with.

2) If you have an idea which can better the world around you, and you do not share it, are you steeling from those who helped you get to the point where you perceived it? If the great scientists of the past had not shared their ideas, where would our world be today?

I see patents as a form of theft against nature, against humanity. When a person claims sole ownership of, and imposes restrictions on an idea they are stating that they have not been influenced by the world in any way, they are deliberately making an attempt to subvert the natural progress of humanity by limiting the impact the idea can have on the next generation of thinkers who they themselves must be influenced by the world around them. This next generation is crippled in the sense that they have been physically restricted from venturing down a stream of thought which in some way expands of the original idea. They are in reality saying "Don't even think about it!" and meaning it in the truest sense.

I would never take a way the credit one deserves for the ideas they perceive, but it's simply dishonest to think they perceived them solely on their own. Thus any patent is a crime against humanity as it is solely designed to inhibit its use by others. Though perhaps not the goal of patents, their result is to deliberately impose further disabilities on humanity. We already have enough of those.

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I agree, but aren't patents necessary to drive capitalism? Otherwise companies would have no incentive to innovate or invent.

Would Google or Microsoft be around if there were no patents? Perhaps patents have helped humanity by driving people to create better technology/products.
I disagree! There are many other vehicles in the world which drive innovation. Necessity is a far greater incentive to innovate. Real human need is incentive. Patents only ever close doors. They never open them.

Open source is proof that innovation can exist without patents. In fact, a significant portion of the world will agree that OS is the way to develop software. Why does it have to stop with software?

Without patents industry innovates faster because there is "real" competition, because the "best" product will win. But being the "best" is a moving target, so competition is perpetual, and in a strongly competitive market this leads to many good "choices".

Perhaps specific entities which currently exist would no longer exist because they could not have survived without having been backed by patents, but would their technology also not exist? I dare argue the contrary. How many doors have been closed by large conglomerates who themselves have decided the fate of ideas. How much better off might we be if those doors could have been open.

There is a company that developed a knock-off aids treatment for a fraction of the cost. They were shutdown because another pharmacom had a patent on a portion of their compound. Did the price of other treatments ever come down? Did this innovative product ever finally make it to market? No!

This is the prerogative of patent holders. You have no choice in the matter at all. These are not even elected officials and they control your fate with regard to the patented concept, idea, technology. It's simply too much power.

A big company can effectively roadblock innovation and funnel it down a path they themselves have modeled. We've all seen this before and it's not right.
Nice post Ray!

I fully agree with you. Patents were a good idea in theory and they've probably been positive in the past, but IMHO today they only have negative efects in most if not all industries.

Not only I think patents are not necessary to innovate in most areas, I actually think they are counterproductive because many lines of investigation are cut due to the fear of patents and a lot of money ends up going to lawyers instead of to research.
No, patents aren't the necessary drive capitalism.
Competition and savings are the drive of capitalism. Patents are against competition.
Patents are crime against humanity also from the perspective of the free market. Here are some articles about it:

Seen and Unseen Cost of Patents - http://www.lewrockwell.com/tucker/tucker126.html
Do Patents Save Our Lives? - http://www.lewrockwell.com/tucker/tucker132.html
Against intellectual monopoly - http://mises.org/story/3298
The Evil of Patents - http://www.lewrockwell.com/tucker/tucker126.html
Does Monopoly Create Wealth? - http://www.lewrockwell.com/tucker/tucker124.html
I still agree with the statements of this post. Would be interesting to read others' opinions.