this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024
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Obstructing competition has impact on every agreed policy, first. Second, it obviously has direct impact in maximizing revenue.
20 years ago some people in developing countries still used DOS.
My preference would be just 5 years with no conditionals. Simpler things are harder to abuse.
That's stupid, sorry. Like saying tanks are not related to air force. They are components of the same system.
I don't see your point. I've seen DOS used in inventory systems in developed countries, and any patents related to DOS expired 25 years ago. Patents aren't why developing countries use old tech, in fact most don't enforce or even recognise US patents (or any IP law, for that matter).
What you seem to be talking about is copyright law, which is a completely different topic.
If patents are too simple, they'll be ineffective at actually solving valid business concerns and companies will just lobby for longer protections. Pharmaceuticals, for example, often need longer than 5 years to get a product to market, and creating a generic drug from a patent can take much less time and can piggyback off the studies the original company went through and get fast-tracked through the regulatory process. If they're able to reset the clock when they go to market, they may be okay with a shorter duration.
Any policy change needs to balance the very real concerns of all interested parties.
Only in the very abstract sense of trying to sell more stuff.
But patents have nothing to do with the main areas of planned obsolescence people are annoyed at, like TVs, laptops/phones, software, etc. Nor do they have anything to do with privacy issues people are concerned about, like Microsoft Recall, data breaches, or data brokers. It's a completely separate system from any of those concerns.
I mean normal people for daily stuff still used DOS sometimes. As an idea of how long 20 years is. OK. 20 years ago people were renting VHS tapes. 20 years ago Revenge of the Sith came out.
It's not a different topic, it's about patents expiring fast enough to not allow an entrenched oligopoly, but not fast enough to make innovation not worth it.
5 years after market entry, OK.
Yes and no, balance of concerns leads to something like politics, with no principle at all, just power games. It's what we have now.
Reducing competitiveness is pretty directly connected to planned obsolescence. It's possible because of oligopoly and because of a few companies making the fashion of what one can use in year 2024 and what is from year 2004 and isn't normal.
Not really. TVs, phones, laptops, appliances, etc are all really competitive markets, and all of them have issues with planned obsolescence. The reason for this has nothing to do with patents at all, but the manufacturer cutting corners to keep costs down, or in the case of phones and some laptops, blocking their manufacturers from selling parts.
That's what the right to repair movement is all about, and it has nothing to do with patents but schematics and contracts. They're intentionally making things harder to repair. They would rather their customers come to them for repairs (where they can upcharge), buy their protection plan (recurring revenue), or replace the device (chance at an additional sale) instead of repairing it themselves. None of that is related patents whatsoever.
Then we need rules on how long they can take to bring it to market. Hence 5 years, with an optional renewal if they need more time. One renewal, that's it, so a maximum time of 10 years if they use full 5 years to bring it to market.
No they are not. It's a few large producers of components, mostly, with litigious interfaces, like USB, mostly, with Intel, AMD and some ARM CPUs, mostly, with drivers for Windows first, mostly.
This means there's demand for things easier to repair, but nobody's making them. That's because of barriers in the form of patents and licenses. You are not going to dissuade me, LOL.
Agreed.
Sure, CPUs and GPUs are pretty homogeneous, but that's also changing with Intel launching GPUs, Qualcomm entering laptop CPUs, Apple making their own silicon, and Nvidia potentially entering consumer CPUs (they're entering servers).
Making a new CPU, GPU, or storage device has a pretty high barrier to entry due to engineering costs (and yes, patents), but prices are pretty reasonable and planned obsolescence isn't really a thing.
I have never thrown out a CPU, GPU, or storage device because it broke too soon or got too slow, I threw it out because I wanted an upgrade. I have thrown out laptops because they became unusable due to terrible design (e.g. hinge got messed up on one, power connector broke on another, etc). So the ones with the most patents seem to be the ones that are the most reliable, whereas the combined product (laptop, appliance, etc) is the one that dies because they cheaped out on components. For example:
If you go back 50 years, appliances lasted 20+ years, whereas now you're lucky to get 10. That has nothing to do with patents, it's just classic cheaping out on components.
The things that I have with tons of patents tend to last forever, it's everything around them that seem to fail and be incredibly hard to repair.
Not necessarily. The Fairphone exists and is pretty easy to repair, yet it's niche. Likewise with the Framework laptop. For washing machines (I just had to replace mine), durable options like Speed Queen exist, yet most seem to go for the cheaper, disposable option.
It has nothing to do with patents, people just prefer the cheaper or higher end option, and they're apparently not willing to pay a premium for repairability.
The right to repair movement is trying to expand repairability to all devices, not just those that cater to the repairability niche.