We are working on a brand new version of the game! If you want to stay informed, read our blog and register for our mailing list.
Bill: Patent Restoration Act
Details
Submitted by[?]: Herut Orthodoxy
Status[?]: defeated
Votes: This is an ordinary bill. It requires more yes votes than no votes. This bill will not pass any sooner than the deadline.
Voting deadline: December 2127
Description[?]:
| Without patents, businesses will be far less likely to come here. These businesses are high tech, low pollution... we need those. Intellectual property is still property and should be protected and preserved. |
Proposals
Article 1
Proposal[?] to change The patenting of software techniques.
Old value:: Software designs, techniques, formulae and algorithms cannot be patented.
Current: Software patents can be obtained from the patent office.
Proposed: Software patents can be obtained from the patent office.
Debate
These messages have been posted to debate on this bill:
| Date | 03:03:54, October 18, 2005 CET | From |  Liberty Party | To | Debating the Patent Restoration Act |
| Message | "Without patents, businesses will be far less likely to come here." Please provide some empirical evidence of this unsupported assertion. "Intellectual property is still property " Intellectual property is an entirely artificial concept and shares little, if anything, in common with tangible property. This is especially true of the economic foundations of private property systems. Private (tangible) property is intrinsically scarce and the whole point of economics is the efficient allocation of scarce resources. Ideas, in contrast, have no natural scarcity and therefore do not need to have a property system created simply to give them an artificial scarcity. In fact, the reverse is true: an idea increases in value the wider it is spread. Also, patents are state-enforced legal monopolies. Monopolies are always bad, and legally mandated monopolies even worse. |
| Date | 15:53:19, October 18, 2005 CET | From | Herut Orthodoxy | To | Debating the Patent Restoration Act |
| Message | "Monopolies are always bad" Wow, an open mind there. Actually, in the case of patents they are not. Without patents, what would the incentive be for pharmacutical companies to create new chemical compounds? In the case of software, where do you think a software company will open shop, in a nation where there is no protection for its operating system or custom software, or in a nation who actually appreciates the fact that ideas are actually far LESS common than property, and as such affords them the protection to stay in business? Don't think too hard. Property as a general concept is an abstraction since you're born with nothing, and you leave with the same. You trying to rationalize a difference between hammering some wood together and saying it deserves some greater status in property protection than the latest computer formula used in attempting to find a cure for cancer, or a computer formula that simulates the effects of a disease on the internal tissues of a human in order to better understand it. This rationalization is folly. |
| Date | 16:54:43, October 18, 2005 CET | From | Liberty Party | To | Debating the Patent Restoration Act |
| Message | Well, thanks for your empirical evidence of your unsupported evidence. I suppose you must think your support is so blindingly obvious that you have no need to adduce any evidence. "would the incentive be for pharmacutical companies to create new chemical compounds?" Ah yes, the classic 'drug companies say they need patents to stay in business' argument. An mantra that is repeated so commonly that it is now considered heretical to ask for some evidence of this claim. "In the case of software, where do you think a software company will open shop" Um, how about all the countries in the world today that have software companies and no software patents? Let's not pretend that all software companies want patent protection. Companies involved in open-source software are almost universally against software patents. Any small software company that accepts the reality that is cannot possibly afford to litigate either an infringement of its own patent, or defend a suit against a plaintiff with an invalid patent opposes software patents. The software industry does not begin and end with Microsoft. Having said that, even many large software companies either specifically oppose software patents (e.g., Oracle submission to the USPTO) or pursue defensive patent strategies (i.e., feel obliged to spend money building up a patent portfolio with the sole intention of cross-licensing) because they acknowledge that software patenting is, at best, a zero-sum game (as SAP have said "SAP would not need patents to protect its investments and is collecting them only as a defensive weapon to prepare for litigation in the U.S" - http://swpat.ffii.org/penmi/2002/europarl11/index.en.html and Cisco "The time and money we spend on patent filings, prosecution, and maintenance, litigation and licensing could be better spent on product development and research leading to more innovation" - ibid and Autodesk "There is absolutely no evidence, whatsoever—not a single iota—that software patents have promoted or will promote progress" - ibid). "a nation who actually appreciates the fact that ideas are actually far LESS common than property" Just because you say something is a fact, does not make it so. Where is your proof that ideas are 'far less common' than property. "Don't think too hard." Why, do you want me to keep the argument down at your level? "This rationalization is folly." No. Here's a little test you can perform yourself to check. Hammer some wood together, like in your example. Count how many hammered-together pieces of wood you have. You should count 1. Then go and give the hammered-together piece of wood to a friend. Now count how many hammered-together pieces of wood you have. You should now count 0. Now have an idea. You should now have 1 idea. Go and tell your idea to a friend. Now they have that idea, and you have that idea. That's a total of 2 ideas. This is the fundamental difference between property and ideas. You can call it a rationalisation all you like, but I can absolutely guarantee that this rule of nature *always* applies - an idea multiplies when it is spread, but a piece of property is finite and can only be shared at the expense of the owner. This important characteristic of property (absent from ideas) is the ENTIRE FOUNDATION of economics. |
| Date | 22:50:46, October 18, 2005 CET | From | Capitalist Party | To | Debating the Patent Restoration Act |
| Message | Patents for products that are produced and phyiscal are good Patents for ideas and ways of doing things that are physical are bad |
subscribe to this discussion - unsubscribe
Voting
| Vote | Seats | |||||
| yes | Total Seats: 123 | |||||
| no |
Total Seats: 432 | |||||
| abstain | Total Seats: 0 |
| Random fact: Your user name is not your party name. Choose a concise and easy to remember user name. You can change your party name at any point in time later in the game. |
| Random quote: "'The illusion of Pontesi nationhood'. The Serpent speaks. How can they say these things? How can they call our country an illusion? You can see it clear as day, these people won’t stop until they’ve destroyed us all." - Morgan Einar, former Pontesian general |