• sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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    5 hours ago

    20 years ago some people in developing countries still used DOS.

    I don’t see your point. I’ve seen DOS used in inventory systems in developed countries, and any patents related to DOS expired 25 years ago. Patents aren’t why developing countries use old tech, in fact most don’t enforce or even recognise US patents (or any IP law, for that matter).

    What you seem to be talking about is copyright law, which is a completely different topic.

    Simpler things are harder to abuse.

    If patents are too simple, they’ll be ineffective at actually solving valid business concerns and companies will just lobby for longer protections. Pharmaceuticals, for example, often need longer than 5 years to get a product to market, and creating a generic drug from a patent can take much less time and can piggyback off the studies the original company went through and get fast-tracked through the regulatory process. If they’re able to reset the clock when they go to market, they may be okay with a shorter duration.

    Any policy change needs to balance the very real concerns of all interested parties.

    They are components of the same system.

    Only in the very abstract sense of trying to sell more stuff.

    But patents have nothing to do with the main areas of planned obsolescence people are annoyed at, like TVs, laptops/phones, software, etc. Nor do they have anything to do with privacy issues people are concerned about, like Microsoft Recall, data breaches, or data brokers. It’s a completely separate system from any of those concerns.

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      I mean normal people for daily stuff still used DOS sometimes. As an idea of how long 20 years is. OK. 20 years ago people were renting VHS tapes. 20 years ago Revenge of the Sith came out.

      It’s not a different topic, it’s about patents expiring fast enough to not allow an entrenched oligopoly, but not fast enough to make innovation not worth it.

      5 years after market entry, OK.

      Yes and no, balance of concerns leads to something like politics, with no principle at all, just power games. It’s what we have now.

      Reducing competitiveness is pretty directly connected to planned obsolescence. It’s possible because of oligopoly and because of a few companies making the fashion of what one can use in year 2024 and what is from year 2004 and isn’t normal.