With the implementation of Patch v0.5.5 this week, we must make yet another compromise. From this patch onward, gliding will be performed using a glider rather than with Pals. Pals in the player’s team will still provide passive buffs to gliding, but players will now need to have a glider in their inventory in order to glide.
How lame. Japan needs to fix its patent laws, it’s ridiculous Nintendo owns the simple concept of using an animal to fly.
Why is there nothing in place to punish Ninendo for doing shit like this?
Patent law is rigged. Legal monopolies shouldn’t exist.
I agree IP law is messed up, but that doesn’t mean the idea doesn’t have merit.
Having a temporary, legal monopoly on something that requires a lot of R&D and not much production cost (say, a novel or new kind of asphalt) allows the creator to make back their R&D costs before competitors come out with cheaper alternatives. Without that protection, companies would be less likely to invest in R&D.
We need shorter durations and more scrutiny on scope. Also, patents should generally not apply to software.
As an incentive structure for corporations and “people” purely motivated by avarice, sure.
Most people naturally want to create and contribute as long as their needs and most basic wants are met. A monopoly as an incentive is not necessary.
There are many ways to motivate corporations to do R&D outside of offering them a monopoly on a silver platter. Incentives are only one half of the equation. Its really all about leverage.
The main alternative is offering them a subsidy on a silver platter, but then you’re making everyone pay for that R&D, not just the customers who want whatever that product is, and there’s no protection against IP theft unless the government owns and enforces the patents or something abroad.
I personally prefer the IP law approach, but I think it needs significant reforms, both in duration and the approval process.
R&D for many companies is taking the research done by underpaid graduate and PhD students and using that to create some sort of product or buying out the startups those students created and building from that.
We already live in a system where the majority of costs are publicly subsidized (and that’s not mentioning the myriad of direct subsidies these companies receive, for an especially egregious example look at the amount Pfizer got paid to develop the Covid vaccine) and then the result is patented and privatized.
They usually get grants, and frequently the student will get hired to follow up on that research. A lot of the research ends up unusable to the company as well, at least on its own.
I think that’s a bit extreme, but I’ll give you that a lot of R&D is subsidized. The COVID example, however, is an outlier, since the funding was to accelerate ending the pandemic, which was critical for the economy as a whole.
You’re right that that’s an aspect I forgot about, however If the patent system worked as you envision it then those students would own the parent which they would then lease to those companies. The actual situation is quite legally messy because it’s usually the universities which own the IP produced, (which is then leased out via partnerships, grants etc ) and when those individuals lease themselves with the promise of producing more valuable IP they have to take cautions to not infringe on their previous work.
Not really, using Covid as an example this paper details the pre and post-epidemic funding sources that went into the discovery, testing and production of the COVID vaccine. Do you have any other examples you’d like to use to demonstrate how it’s “extreme”?
Yes and no, but it is well publicized and documented which is what I was trying to communicate with that specific one as an example.
Which is totally reasonable. The student applies for a graduate program to get a degree, not get rich off a patent. Theoretically, any patent royalties retained by the university would go toward funding university activities. I don’t know how much this happens in practice though.
That said, there should be limits here. If a patent makes over a certain amount, the rest should go to the student.
Right, because it’s an outlier.
If you go to the patent office and look at recent patents, I doubt a significant number are the result of government funding. Most patents are mundane and created as part of private work to prevent competitors from profiting from their work. My company holds a ton of patents, and I highly doubt the government has any involvement in funding them.
Did Nintendo get government funding for its patents? I doubt it.
And what’s the big selling point behind why you would want to get a degree?
Pre-pandemic public funding wasn’t, which is why I linked a source that provided both so you could see how much of an outlier it was/wasn’t.
They all will be to some extent. The hard part is quantifying the extent for each individual patent. I can guarantee that you’re company received/has received some sort of public funding and so yes the government does have involvement directly funding them, even if it isn’t as explicit as with public health funding. Indirect funding is the much harder one to suss out but is likely significantly more.
Directly? Probably not, but the whole point of bringing up universities was to show one of the indirect paths. However I don’t speak Japanese in order to actually research but would be very curious to know what sort of subsidies/public assistance it receives, if there exists a thing similar to MEDIA/Creative Europe, etc.
With a monopoly, you may very well be making everyone pay for the increased price gouge that comes with monopolies. Not just the customer of that particular product. It depends on the nature of the product.
If it is a component of a more common device or product, basically everyone ends up paying more (HDMI comes to mind). If its an innovation relating to a basic need and gets integrated with the majority of services, basically everyone ends up paying more. If its something that has external implications on the market or wider world that creates inefficiencies, then people functionally make less money because effect people pay more and thus long term this harms spending on a variety of products. If people can’t afford the price gouge and continue using less effective products (assuming they are even available) they likely long term spend more money to make up for the inefficiencies from that.
Monopolies damage things beyond the product that gets monopolized and merely concentrates wealth.
Regardless a subsidy is not the only alternative. That’s still thinking in terms of carrot, and you are forgetting the stick. You can also legislate mandatory R&D in budgets for large corporations based on revenue/profits just as much as you with the punishment of potentially being fined/taxed more.
But outside of that, there is also government contracts. That is, a single payer, (monopsony) generally can get fantastic results out of competing firms. Its largely a major reason why the American Military has historically benefited from such significant technological advancements for nearly a century now.
Not all monopolies are created equal. We’re talking about IP protections, not general monopolies, meaning these are new products, not some existing necessity. IP law on its own can’t kill existing products.
An author having exclusive rights to a work doesn’t prevent other authors from making their own works. A pharmaceutical company having exclusive rights to a medication doesn’t prevent other pharmaceutical companies from making competing medications. Likewise for video games and whatnot.
The problems with Palworld have little to do with IP law as a concept but with how broad the protection of patents is. IMO, video game mechanics shouldn’t be patentable, and companies should be limited to copyright protections for their IP. But IP protection is still important as a concept so creators don’t get screwed and customers don’t get defrauded.
Yeah, that’s not going to be abused/scare away companies.
It’s also why the US pays an obscene amount for its military. Defense contractors absolutely fleece the government because they are generally not allowed to contract with other governments, so they expect a higher profit from their one contracted buyer.