Posts by ScottY
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"I'm not prepared to send people to a destination that I'm not prepared to come myself."
Which is an interesting pledge to make, especially since Key keeps saying his Government is tough on crime and will send more crims to jail.
I always knew he'd go bad.
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So long as the sanctity of justice is upheld, means should be found to ease such judges out, swiftly, before they cause much damage.
How do you get rid of people swiftly without threatening the independence of the judiciary? If it's too easy to get rid of "bad" or "incompetent" judges, how do you stop a government from getting rid of an inconvenient one?
It's not meant to be easy to get rid of judges. That's the price we pay for an independent judiciary.
I don't understand; what if a judge was in fact drunk or incompetent, or dishonest? What does one do then?
Contact the Judicial Conduct Commissioner.
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Good news. Well done.
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Or what about the Trekka?
My parents had one for a while. What a total piece of shit. But it was ours.
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We had far too many glorious failures in World War One. What about Chunik Bair? Or Passchendaele?
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In NZ they don't put money into R&D at all, as we've seen.
They don't invest enough into R&D, sure. But it's wrong to say they don't put money into R&D at all.
There are all sorts of reasons why businesses don't invest in R&D. That's an entirely different discussion. But I'm pretty certain there would be even less investment without a good patents system.
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Does the system still encourage innovation
If a patent system didn't exist to reward investment in innovation, there'd be much less investment in R&D. That seems obvious. Businesspeople don't generally put money into R&D out of altruism.
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You must acknowledge that the only people that make real money out of patents... are Lawyers, Shriley?
Happily no. I'll give you just a couple of examples I've been involved in recently. I have an NZ client who about a month ago got paid a seven figure sum on the strength of its patent portfolio.
I have another NZ SME client who is about to sign a licensing deal that will probably net it several million bucks in royalties over the next few years, if all goes to plan. If the client hadn't patented its invention it would not have anything of value to license.
There are plenty of patent success stories. All praise the great patent god!
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Patents can protect processes as well as products. But it is quite common to treat a manufacturing process as a trade secret, rather than seek patent protection for it.
A granted patent over the process would prevent competitors from exploiting it (assuming you enforce your rights - though don't underestimate the deterrent effect a patent or patent application has on potential infringers). But the trade-off is that details of your process get published.
In some cases, where you think you can keep the process a secret, it makes sense to rely on trade secret protection. An obvious example is the Coca Cola formulation. If they'd patented it back in the day everyone would have known how to make it decades ago, and there would have been no protection for it once the patent expired.
So trade secrets are often a good strategy - but only if you can prevent leaks, and if others can't figure out what you've done.
If there's a risk competitors will work out how the process works, then patent protection may be the way to go. As I said, don't underestimate the deterrent effect of a patent or patent application. And as I said in my earlier comment, many venture capital investors won't put money into an invention that isn't properly protected.
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To be granted a patent you have to divulge your process which allows others, with more power than you will ever have, access to your work. If they infringe your patent you are fucked. If, on the other hand you just keep it a secret then you are a lot less likely to have your process nicked. You are better off developing your "Brand" in terms of reliability, quality and uniqueness rather than trying to be protected by law.
I've moved on from the whole software patent good/bad thing, but I do need to make some effort to defend the patent system as a whole.
I agree that in some cases trade secret protection is the better way to go. Unfortunately, there are some inventions that you just can't usefully keep secret - the moment you release them to the public your competitors can easily work out how to copy them. This goes for the majority of mechanical inventions.
It can be expensive if you're a small business trying to enforce your patents. On the other hand, if you're trying to attract venture capital fundng to expand your business and your main asset is IP, and if you haven't properly protected your IP, you may struggle to attract VC cash.
That doesn't mean I or other IP lawyers think patents are the be-all and end-all. But I wouldn't dismiss them out of hand. I have plenty of clients making money off their patent portfolios, and they're not just the big corporates.
I know of a few IP lawyers who don't practice in the area of patents, and who don't understand their potential value. This is because patent law is highly specialised, and there aren't many outside the specialist IP firms who understand patents or patent law. A good IP lawyer or patent attorney will understand all the options available and will be able to work out the best way to protect and exploit someone's innovation. Sometimes patents are the answer. Sometimes it's copyright, or a registered design, or trade secret protection. Sometimes it's a combination.
I agree with you that branding is always important, and if you're thinking globally and haven't got trade mark protection for you brand then you'll probably always struggle.