General > General Technical Chat
Should all information be freely available to everyone?
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Psi:

--- Quote from: ebastler on November 29, 2023, 02:17:50 pm ---
--- Quote from: Psi on November 29, 2023, 09:21:56 am ---
--- Quote from: thm_w on November 28, 2023, 09:58:53 pm ---What are you thinking the benefit would be though?
If I produce a patent while working and being paid at a company, who would own it?

--- End quote ---

The company would get a license to use it forever, but you, or all the RnD team, or all employees at the company at the time would technically own it.
I know this idea has issues, I just like thinking about it sometimes.
I really don't like that companies can buy and sell patents. People come up with ideas and make discoveries, companies don't

--- End quote ---

Would that be an exclusive license to the company which employs the inventors? Royalty-free too? Then what would be the difference to the company actually owning the patent?

Or would the inventors be free to license their invention to competitors of their employer? Would that be fair, given that their employer paid for the inventors' time, and for a lot of extra effort to turn the patented idea into a marketable product?

In Germany, the "Employee Inventors Act" stipulates that

* the employing company has first right of refusal to claim exclusive ownership of the patent -- in which case they pay the examination fees etc.;

* if they make money from the invention during the term of the patent, they have to pay a royalty to the inventor -- but at a rate which is significantly lower than what an independent inventor would get, taking into account that the inventor was already paid for doing his job;

* if the company decides that they do not want to claim the invention (maybe business plans have changed, or it does not look like such a great technical solution upon second thought), the inventor is free to take it through the patenting process and look for other licensees independently.
Not a bad approach in principle, although implementation has its challenges in the details.

--- End quote ---

All fair questions.

I was thinking that the company would have the same rights they have now with patents,  except that...

- There would be a small fee paid by the company to everyone written on the patient paid every year.
Not a huge amount in most cases, but it would be tied to company profits and split between all people named on the patient.
- The company could never sell the patent, since they never own it.
- The patient is always owned by the people/team who created it, or maybe to keep things simple by all employees of the company at the time of patent creation who've been with the company for more than a 1,2 or 5 year etc..
- If the company was ever sold the new company would take over paying that yearly fee to all the people on the patent.
- If the company ever went under or was dissolved and no one had the license to use that patent any more the patent would become available to use by anyone. They would still have to pay the yearly fee to the people on the patent, but it would be a smaller fee in this case. 
- The company can, at any time, decide they don't want the patent any more. They stop paying the yearly fee and it changes to being available to use by anyone, same as above.  This means if they want to pay less to use it they can, they just have to let other use it too and then they get the cheaper rate.
- The patent would automatically becomes available to everyone after n years or after n sales of the company, or after n amount of total money has been paid out to the people on the patient.

Marco:
Humans should be isolated and/or moral enough for all information to be free, unfortunately humans are just the result of a random walk with some selective pressure and capable and willing of hurting each other.

Making RNA printers and viral genomes easily available is dangerous. WMD research has never been this affordable. AGI would present a similar problem, but I'm not optimistic we will make it that far.
hans:

--- Quote from: EEVblog on November 29, 2023, 05:32:05 am ---
--- Quote from: LaserSteve on November 28, 2023, 04:58:54 pm ---I work in Academia. I have access to vast amounts of interesting publications most can't afford. Depending on which of my colleagues you speak to, 30 to 60% percent of
academic papers in science are irreproducable.

 I'm hitting about 50% in biomedical and organic chemistry myself.

--- End quote ---

A handy rule of thumb is that half of all published scientific research is wrong.
And peer review adds nothing to that.

--- End quote ---

Nobody has time to fully scrutinize someone else's work. And in other cases, it can become an ego game of "hey, I think this section is missing these and these references" -- oh sure, you happen to be author on all suggested references.. What happens if I refuse? Ah right.. my manuscript gets rejected, and is now at risk of being duplicated by reviewers' team as they "got inspiration" (even though that is forbidden) and there is little I can do about it. In theory, the peer review system is perfect. But that assumes no bad actors.

IMO this is similar to having all information available to anyone. Virtually all technology developed today is marketed for some unicorn application/story of how it will save the planet. People will work on these devices for years to make them more efficient, more sensitive, more bandwidth, etcetera.
A social company will market it with you can use it for calling family, doing fun things with friends, etc. But almost all of the same tech can be overturned for spying, military and destruction.

Just look at happens to the Flipper Zero. The hardware is nothing exotic. Anyone thats used some radio chipsets in-depth (sub-GHz, WiFi, bluetooth) knows you can mess with other signals. Many "wireless keys" are simply "remote controls" that people mistake for keys. But suddenly people are afraid  of this "superpower" being available in an accessible package.

In reality its nothing new. Its simply a case of bad actors, again, and the level of education these actors have to jump over "to perform". A good actor would use a Flipper Zero to uncover (security) flaws and use it for whistleblowing. Security through obscurity [ultimately] never works, and at best it hides weaknesses in technologies/platforms for a period of time whilst they are subject to being exploited.
lezginka_kabardinka:

--- Quote from: EEVblog on November 29, 2023, 05:32:05 am ---
--- Quote from: LaserSteve on November 28, 2023, 04:58:54 pm ---I work in Academia. I have access to vast amounts of interesting publications most can't afford. Depending on which of my colleagues you speak to, 30 to 60% percent of
academic papers in science are irreproducable.

 I'm hitting about 50% in biomedical and organic chemistry myself.

--- End quote ---

A handy rule of thumb is that half of all published scientific research is wrong.
And peer review adds nothing to that.

--- End quote ---

Yes, of particular note are any fairy stories which begin "Milllllll-yuns of years ago, this life form first evolved..." - that junk is spread far and wide, poisoning and deluding many people.
EPAIII:
Re: personal information

You are not going to like my thoughts on personal information. It is my contention that any and all information collected by anyone or any company or agency about a person should be 100% the personal property of that individual. And any use of it should be totally illegal without PAYING that person's price for it.

In other words, we all should have title to the part of Google's database that is about ourselves. And they can't use it without our permission. And that applies to all the others who collect information about us. And especially to government agencies.

That's my position and I am sticking to it.
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