I may be wrong, but I don’t think that China, or lots of other nations, actually paid us much in royalties over things called “light bulbs”, either.
The more widespread and ubiquitous a particular innovation becomes, the less financially efficient the ownership of the patent becomes.
Think royalties are paid for any of these common everyday things? FM Radios, Coffee Makers, Table Saws, Refrigerators? Granted, patents expire after ‘x’ number of years, and the DMCA attempts to do the same for copyrights, but we’re dealing with two issues on the side here:
A) It is just human nature for the average person to chase after new conveniences and efficiencies; it’s even fundamental to the survival of businesses in this post-modern era.
and
B) The time frame for intellectual properties’ lifetimes of usefulness is much shorter than just a few decades ago. Are you seriously going to wipe your hard drive just to install Windows 3.11??
Good luck with either side of this particular fence….
I may be wrong, but I don’t think that China, or lots of other nations, actually paid us much in royalties over things called “light bulbs”, either.
The more widespread and ubiquitous a particular innovation becomes, the less financially efficient the ownership of the patent becomes.
Think royalties are paid for any of these common everyday things? FM Radios, Coffee Makers, Table Saws, Refrigerators? Granted, patents expire after ‘x’ number of years, and the DMCA attempts to do the same for copyrights, but we’re dealing with two issues on the side here:
A) It is just human nature for the average person to chase after new conveniences and efficiencies; it’s even fundamental to the survival of businesses in this post-modern era.
and
B) The time frame for intellectual properties’ lifetimes of usefulness is much shorter than just a few decades ago. Are you seriously going to wipe your hard drive just to install Windows 3.11??
Good luck with either side of this particular fence….