Time to Replace Replace Patents With Copyright?

Time to dramatically increase world wealth at near zero cost, by ending some of the…

Big Problems with the Present Patenting Process…
1. A patent will never (ever) be granted to an inventor, if the inventors idea has already been published anywhere. This is regardless of how original, or how much of the inventors own work it is:

It is important that you do not make your invention public before you apply to patent it, because this may mean that you cannot patent it, or it may make your patent invalid. www.ipo.gov.uk...

Consequently the only way to discuss the idea with people who have signed confidentiality agreement, and even then it would be up to you to prove beyond reasonable doubt who exactly broke the agreement.
2. Although often talked about there is no such thing as a “worldwide patent”. Rather an inventor must apply for an individual patent in every country that has signed the 1973 Patent Cooperation Treaty.
3. This is a severely time constrained process. If you have already received a patent in e.g. the UK, then because it will have been published by the UK patent office (as part of that process) it cannot then be patented in e.g. the United States www.uspto.gov...
4.

Familiarize yourself with the manufacturing requirements before you apply for an international patent. Some countries demand that your invention be manufactured within their borders for a certain amount of time--usually 3 years--before they will proceed with your patent request.
www.ehow.com...

5. Patents only last a maximum of 20 years. This in contrast to copyright which tends to last up to 70 years after the author-producer died www.ipo.gov.uk...
6. For every country you apply for a patent you will obviously need to spend time and money. The minimum cost for both a U.S and EU patent is around $5500 but in practice you will be looking at about double that in legal fees.

Copyright In Contrast…
1. Is free. All you have to do is prove you are the author-producer, and one way of doing this is to send several identical, dated, sealed letters to yourself (containing the material) and to then bank vault it. For things less valuable than the next chapter of Harry Potter simply putting them on a webpage, with all rights reserved, plus your name, will do.
2. It lasts longer
3. It applies in every country, that has signed international copyright treaties (most of the world’s countries)

The Biggest Difference…
There is no way an inventor can ever copyright his invention! Sure: He can draw a drawing, can copyright that drawing, and nobody will be able to copy that drawing without his permission. But anybody could use his invention, because nobody has to use exactly the same drawing to communicate it, all they have to do is use a cross section rather than 3 d modelling, or change the colours-scale ect. In addition: Most countries that have a patenting system, specifically say you cannot use their copyright system for inventions. In this way inventors are doubly (legally) prevented from copyrighting.

How Inventions Could be Copyrighted
At the moment a patent office does not protect an inventors invention. Rather it only gives the inventor the legal argument-avenue to protect their own invention, i.e. at their own expense & risks of prosecuting those who might violate it.
I do not propose this changes! Rather it is exactly why inventions could & should be copyrighted.
All an inventor should have to is do the same as what a Copyrighter has to do. I.e...
A. Prove they came up with the idea first
B. That it was new, original & non-obvious
C. That they had contacted violators about any violations and asked for it to stop -compensation for any violations already made.

All this has to be resolved in court anyway, so it can continue to be resolved in court.

D. There should (perhaps) be a "copyright search" where manufactories unsure if an idea is theirs to freely reproduce, can apply to a national body to prove they have made reasonable efforts to determine that an idea is theirs to freely copy, and that they may therefore legally continue until notified by an inventor.


Why World Growth Would Be Stimulated...
1. It has often been observed that WW1, WW2 and The Space Race all stimulated technological development, and therefore (in the long run) global wealth for all. The obvious question is then: “How to cause money to be put into inventions-knowledge, without there being a war, or mission to land on distant rock millions of miles away”
2. The present Patent System was designed to reward innovators with the money they need to pay for more Research & Development. It works ok (if you’re a big drugs company, with access to expensive, yet well-oiled patent protection legal teams). But it does not work well if you are most people, and of course there are far more “most people” than professional people. As a result many ideas will be saved for a day that never comes.
3. Since the costs of the present system deters inventors from applying for where they are entitled to apply, as a direct result governments are receiving less tax revenues (assuming an inventor would be taxed on their earnings). Obviously if no inventor payments are made, no extra government tax is due.
4. There is an argument that patent are far more deserving of royalties than art, film and music. It is often more difficult to create a useful machine-process than a work of art-film nobody has seen before. Because it is more difficult to come up with important ideas that reduce waste-time, destroy pollution, and ultimately make the consumer richer, these activities should be better rewarded than art & music. If this was the case, the amount of money put into R&D would boom, there would be an escalation in the world’s numbers of engineers-scientists (that otherwise would simply not have happened). And there would therefore be more advances in dealing with pollution, global warming, and avoidable waste.
It is also true that some money would be “lost” to the inventors (since R&D does not come for free) but at least it would be taxed, and one would have thought (giving what marks us out from the living standards of 500 years ago is technology) that the beneficial effect of more inventors-researchers would be far greater than the costs of making it easier for people to protect their contributions to world knowledge, and therefore be paid for it.

Conclusion...
As someone applying for a patent it makes me count my lucky stars, I actually have the money to do it (around £8 or 10,000 in total, just for the EU & America -I still have no idea about India & China ect). But most of the worlds 7 billion don't have this kind of money, especially when just applying is taking a business risk.

But most people can afford paper & therefore copyright. Consequently they should be able to use it to stimulate world growth-wealth all humanity. Too many people die with useful ideas kept quit!
It strikes me as pure stupidity, that the things mankind least needs more of (i.e. music & art) get the most protection, whilst those we most need e.g. cheaper & improved environmental safety, get the least.

You have a good idea. Patents are definitely a problem.

But I feel like just coming up with an idea for something isn't enough to truly copyright an invention.
I feel like the invention should actually be made first, or some attempt to actually produce the invention.

But why Ghost? If somebody is an impoverished African-Indian, or a cleaner at Walmart, and they come up with a new way to make electricity, clean water ect, then (given their idea hasn’t been discovered in the last 3 million years, of humanities existence) chances are, this idea, really should be theirs, (for at least 20 years).
Demanding they actually build it, is going to delay the release of their invention by years (if not decades, possibly their lifetime). The current patent system enables anyone who can up with an idea that works according to the known laws of physics to patent their idea (regardless of whether it is already constructed) and so I think (in the interests of getting the technology out into the world) this should continue.

Both copyright and patenting cause you to release all the details of your idea. This is the single most positive thing, of both systems, as it stimulates further worldwide, creative development.

And if you don’t like it, bear in mind the creator(s) of reality gave us all a brilliant intellectual property protection system called “secrecy”!

The challenge is to get inventors to speak their secrets, and to my mind it matters little if the inventor has built the idea or not (especially if it is going to be released after just 20 years).