Open source and patent protection
Foreword
There are two pieces of news that are quite interesting: one is the founder of Tesla Motors who promised to open up all its patents, hoping to support the shift in the automotive market. His speech, "To the Man of Great Dreams", circulated wildly on the Internet, and netizens appreciated his great ambition. Another piece of news is that while "Today's Toutiao", which claims to be a "news porter", received 100 million US dollars in venture capital, various copyright lawsuits also came to it. On the day of the press conference where it obtained venture capital, Sohu News launched an investigation into its infringement.
The issue of “infringement” that Luo Pang said in his New Year’s Eve speech in 2019 seems to be a company in order to quickly obtain image spokespersons. (Know that the little fresh meats are very popular today). If you follow the original logic to contact one by one, the broker People signed, endorsement contract review, day lily is cold. Directly do not say hello, directly requisition, open the other party's rights protection to come to the door, directly sign or withdraw the file, according to later investigation, in fact, all the stars are vying to sign the first. At such a time when time is king and quick response time, if you follow the old traditional way, it is estimated that the stars will be robbed by other companies.
The specific advertising company is unknown, but it should be obvious to compare today’s Toutiao with the companies that are busy with the lawsuit. And today, both Sohu and Tencent imitate Toutiao and launch various similar products. I don’t know if Toutiao has any. Time to protect patents and conduct counterclaims for infringement? You can't see it on the news. On the other hand, Oracle, which was once considered to have more lawyers than programmers, today’s decline in the industry makes people feel that the traditional industrial or pre-digital era of intellectual property rights and patent protection to promote innovation concepts need to refresh their understanding.
Patent and innovation in the digital age
The effectiveness of intellectual property laws such as patents and copyrights is premised on the theory of incentives. In order to encourage people to create, intellectual property law grants a monopoly on creative products, and those who enjoy this right can take those who use the creative products without permission to court.
However, the digital age has increased the tension between innovators and free riders. For example, before that, copying a book always had related expenses such as a photocopier. In the digital age, digital files can be copied infinitely at a cost close to zero. One might argue that we need stronger intellectual property laws to prevent rampant and unfair piracy.
But theories do not always conform to reality. History is full of negative examples of patent rights, which damage innovation rather than help innovation.
As we all know, James Watt improved the existing steam engine technology. However, because of Watt's patent, the steam engine technology has not been adopted on a large scale. In fact, people didn't start mass production of steam engines until the related patents expired, which became the main force that promoted the first industrial revolution.
We are not surprised that patent laws can harm innovation. The British royal family used patents to increase income, and related patent rights were even granted to common commodities such as salt. This triggered a strong public protest. James I was forced to revoke the existing monopoly and made it clear that patents can only be granted for innovative inventions.
In the United States, the government knew that textile machine technology was stolen from the United Kingdom and still granted it a patent.
Protecting yourself at the expense of others is certainly not limited to patents. The United States was also an unabashed pirate. The United States is keen to protect the interests of its citizens and refuses to provide copyright protection for works published by non-US citizens such as Charles Dickens.
Open source and intellectual property law
The key to the rapid development of blockchain technology is that the source code is open source. People are free to copy the code and improve it. Unlike proprietary software, blockchain technology does not use copyright law to protect source code.
In addition, traditional industries will work long hours before the product is released. In contrast, many blockchain developers will take the initiative to explain what they are doing before releasing a product. Some people will share this information even before developing their own products, while others can use these ideas to develop competitive products.
Open source is a viable business model
Without intellectual property protection, people can still make profits. For example, large companies make money by using open source software and providing additional services.
Red Hat is an open source software company with revenues of more than $2 billion. IBM is using Hyperledger Fabric (an open source program from the Linux Foundation) to develop blockchain solutions for many multinational companies including Maersk and Walmart. The question is, if the three disruptive technologies of the Internet, the World Wide Web and the current blockchain are all thriving without legal protection, are our existing intellectual property laws in line with the original intention?
This part is worthy of in-depth exploration and is left for further discussion on subsequent topics.