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Brownian Emotion -- Chaos, Made to Order

Brownian Emotion -- Chaos, Made to Order: "Patents stifle innovation--software patents, doubly so.

That's just my opinion, of course, as is everything in this post. But I feel pretty confident saying this based on my experience and what I've heard from other inventors. The original idea for patents was to do just the opposite--to protect inventors from some greedy corporation coming in and stealing or stifling clever designs. But it seems pretty typical nowadays that some large corporation acquires the patent rights from the true inventor(s) and uses those rights to exploit the market and prevent competition, rather than reward the original innovation or motivate more of the same.

When I worked at Disney, for example, patenting something for the company earned the inventor a few thousand dollars and a plaque, while the company could make an infinite amount of money from his or her work. Sure, there's an implicit employer/employee relationship there, but where's the incentive for the inventor? Not money, as the salary is all the inventor gets, for the most part. Walt Disney was known for signing every piece of art his artists created, so credit isn't much of a motivator. Promotion may be, but I don't know too many inventors that aspire to be managers. I do vaguely recall a few smart people who confided to me that they might have some interesting ideas only after they left the company. Even then, they risked the wrath of Disney, once again stifling invention due to just the potential of big bucks from still unproven ideas."

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