Copyright exists to create a temporary monopoly so the creator can recoup their creation costs and some profit on top

Creation costs like the cost of an advanced degree? You’re repeating talking points like nobody’s heard them before and contradicting yourself every other comment.

How many transition steps are needed

That was a rhetorical question, let me try rephrasing that. If A+B+C=D and D+E=F is A a requirement to get F? Or is it no longer relevant because it’s 2 steps removed?

Let’s say my company gets funding to disseminate OSHA information to employees

I wish I got paid to avoid fines. I understand that is how your deeply corrupt system works but you really can’t understand the financial incentives there can you? Imagine that illegal parking is a huge problem so instead of parking tickets they pay everyone who owns a car to sit through a parking information seminar. Do you honestly think that isn’t going to factor into your decision on whether you should own/drive a car? Is it unreasonable to say that the state is paying you to drive?

So, you fully and honestly believe that Microsoft has stolen Google’s and Amazon’s code?

Does a patent protect the concept or the specific code? You seemed pretty adamant that reverse engineering was theft previously, and assuming you haven’t changed your definition of theft then yes, according to your definition of theft I’m 100% certain that’s the case.

became Fortune 500 thanks to those protections

Thanks to those, or in spite of? You are focusing on outliers and expecting that to be a convincing argument to describe the typical.

these laws ALSO serve the smaller companies.

Just because they can, doesn’t mean it’s something to expect. There are orders of magnitude between how often they protect, and how often the destroy. You a big lottery fan or something?

This is what my reply was to

Fair, I was attempting to limit scope with only discussing patents and not getting into the rest of the weeds and didn’t properly communicate that. I had assumed there would be more than a single neuron between the two of us, but that was clearly presumptive of me.

To work on interesting problems

If that’s people’s main motivator then why does copyright exist in the first place?

If we get subsidies

If you’re a large enough institution to have as many patents as you claim to then I guarantee you do. I would encourage you to dig into that as well as the why.

that doesn’t mean the patents were produced as a direct result of public funding.

How many transition steps are needed for a precursor chemical to no longer be a required precursor for a product? Is a byproduct that is sold not a product because it’s not the primary intended production output?

The student applies for a graduate program to get a degree, not get rich

And what’s the big selling point behind why you would want to get a degree?

because it’s an outlier.

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.

If you go to the patent office and look at recent patents, I doubt a significant number are the result of government funding.

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.

Did Nintendo get government funding for its patents?

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.

Microsoft or Apple just copy-pasting

Microsoft did copy and paste though: Yammer, Bing and Azure respectively. Apple tried with Ping/eWorld, Safari/Spotlight but didn’t really get into the web host space. Also worth mentioning the duopoly nature of those 2 specifically.

they give smaller companies SOME form of defence against the corps.

Rather telling that all your examples are Fortune 500 companies?

Do you also believe that OSHA was created to control the poor employee into submission by their great corporate overlord?

That’s a rather impressive hay golem you’ve built there.

WITHOUT ANY COPYRIGHT LAWS

We’re not talking copyright laws, we’re talking patent laws and you have yet to explain why it would be insane without changing scope or inventing fanciful scenarios.

imagine you make an innovative product. I don’t know, automatic fence painter

Do you know why there doesn’t exist automated fencepost painters? As bad as this sort of stuff is in software world it’s soooo much worse in hardware world. The licensing fees for every single little piece of IP that go into it would nickel and dime even large businesses out of building anything like that. Sure there’s also technical difficulties with building one, but those are surmountable. However, a business model that could survive the constant threats of litigation, licensing fees and turn even a mild profit does not exist.

Is this xenophobia to you?

Yes, because you just described what businesses throughout the Western world do to your mythical small business and projected it onto some mythical far east.

someone stealing your product and killing your business?

You do realize that is the point of IP right? To allow legalized theft in this exact manner? In the exact article this comment chain is discussing palworld did their due diligence to verify they weren’t violating any of Nintendo’s IP and then Nintendo modified their patent filing so that they were with the express goal of stealing their product.

the student will get hired to follow up on that research.

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.

I think that’s a bit extreme,

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”?

The COVID example, however, is an outlier

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.

every good, innovative US or EU product die immediately due to China/India making a 1:1 copy and flooding the markets with it?

If it’s a perfect 1:1 copy why does it matter? Can you explain how this isn’t just a stance rooted in xenophobia?

Enjoy innovative products that startups create? How about not having any of that because as soon as a startup makes something, a big corp comes in with their money, steals the idea, and floods the market?

You just described the dream of most startups. The goal of the vast majority is to be acquired by a big corp so that their idea/product can continue growing, because without acquisition growth is severely limited.

The main alternative is offering them a subsidy on a silver platter, but then you’re making everyone pay for that R&D

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.

Oh I agree, but that one didn’t seem to bad to me due to the clocks depicting an in-game time that were everywhere. The ones that I almost rage quit on were:

Some I really appreciate that I’m not seeing on this list:

I’m currently enjoying Blue Prince which is a fairly new rogue-like puzzle/mystery game it’s hard to explain without spoiling but it’s worth looking up.

Portals of Phereon is one of my absolute favorites. It’s a fairly deep tactical RPG thing with loads of replayability. It’s kind of like a Pokemon x FF Tactics but with monstergirls and it’s also currently free while it’s in development. Be aware it’s extremely NSFW and horny, which I suspect is the main reason it’s not as popular as some of the others listed (IE rimworld, stardew valley, etc.) however the horny is such a key point to it’s original gameplay and world-building that it wouldn’t be the same without it.

Thea: the awakening is a decent tactical RPG. I love it for it’s original battle mini game, crafting system and world-building. It unfortunately has some balance issues and jankiness that prevents it from being an all time favorite, but it’s definitely one I would encourage at least trying.

Thought of a few others:

• Reus (2nd one’s alright, first one’s excellent)
• Library of Runia
• Book of Hours
• Kenshi (saw it listed one other time, but it deserves a lot more love)

Since Nixon vs. Humphrey vs. Wallace back in 1968.

In 2024 pproximately 59.0% of voting age population voted, which is 63.9% of voting eligible population.

2020 was the only year to surpass with 62.8% VAP/65.3% VEP.

3rd place is 2008 with 58.3% 61.6%.