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An IP Puzzle

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rowsdower

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Diddy and Dixie live on DK Island and eat bananas by peeling them. At first, the island has no patents and they both independently peel and eat their bananas.

One day, Cranky sets up himself as the government and declares that he will let islanders patent their ideas. He warns the islanders that if they violate a patent, they will spend a year in a barrel.

Scared of this prospect, Diddy and Dixie both rush to patent their method of eating bananas (by peeling them first).

Scenario 1:
Diddy arrives at the patent office first and gains the sole right to peel bananas. Dixie, unable to peel her bananas, chokes do death on a peel.

Scenario 2:
Diddy slips on one of the island's many banana peels and is delayed. Dixie patents peeling bananas. Diddy chokes to death.


Assuming that IP is based on rights, how does Diddy's lateness remove his right to peel bananas? How does Diddy's earliness remove Dixie's rights? Why are their rights a zero-sum game at all?

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Dixie, unable to peel her bananas, chokes do death on a peel.

This is fitting, as is your use of Donkey Kong for the metaphor.

Your scenario drops all kinds of context.

Edited by JASKN
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I'm not sure if that is moving the goal posts or blowing them up. 

 

Diddy and Dixie should obviously overthrow the  Government and establish a proper Communist system that allows them to own no ideas of but all ideas at the same time.  Then they can live in harmony with their means of picking and eat bananas. 

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Did nobody ever teach these two to peel the bananas? Even if nobody did, peeling bananas before eating them had long since been come up with by others even if those two didn't know it. The original banana-peeler lived and died waaaaaaay back, and was also likely not qualified for personhood and rights either being a more primitive form of animal that passed down the info to the future generations via literal "monkey see, monkey do". So, point being, the statute of limitations on patents for peeling bananas would have long since been surpassed and there wasn't really a point when there was somebody qualified to be the one patenting it either anyway. Banana peeling is not qualified for patenting. The same applies to chewing food. Breathing is automatic, no learning or inventing involved, so that one isn't qualified for patenting either.

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1: Banana peeling is too broad to patent, much like Diddy declaring he owns all of DK Island is too broad.

2: Even 1 is not true, Diddy might allow everyone to banana peel on very generous terms, perhaps with one limit of not training monkeys in banana peeling off of DK Island.

 

If you're just asking why "first come, first serve" is proper, it's because it is a sensible way to validate who in fact came up with a method/idea. Even without an IP position, I'd say whoever peeled the first banana came up with banana-peeling. While Dixie and Diddy may have came up with the idea at the same time, you can't prove that. Most of the time, people don't come up with ideas at the same time or ever, unless the creator explains how. Simultaneous creation is not common.

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If both particular methods of peeling were already known, the alleged inventions would be deemed anticipated and therefore unpatentable by the DKPTO.

 

If a specific method of peeling was not commonly known, Dixie or Diddy's method may be patentable, of course depending upon the correctness of the patent laws of DK i.e. all the other requirements for something to be patentable.

 

This of course means that any unpatentable methods of peeling would remain options for anyone to exercise.

Edited by StrictlyLogical
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Diddy made it to the patent office first and declared that he was man using man's mind to shape reality and anyone who peeled a banana like he did was a whim-worshiping looter and a concrete bound collectivist with the psycho-epistemological muscle-mysticism of a savage who was attempting to steal from him.

 

Dixie laughed so hard at this that she nearly choked on her banana.  She continues to this day to peel her bananas as she chooses, and has set up a small business selling peeled bananas.  Diddy has hired several lawyers and is deep in debt for their fees.  He continues to peel his own bananas as a result and insists to anyone willing to listen to him that he is a rational being. 

Edited by howardofski
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Later, Diddy decides to cut his losses and try to start his life again -- something bigger, better this time. An automated banana-peeling machine! This could easily support him for days, and maybe he could make enough to sell to the Alligator Tribe across the way. This will save so much time and energy, he could invent new machines and processes for food... Or maybe even clothes! So many possibilities, he could try a thousand of his ideas and hope a few of them work out. He'll have to hope for the best -- after all, it's his own skin on the line.

He tries everything, for weeks, months... into years. Finally, he discovers a simple yet un-obvious way to rig the trees to do what he needs. Soon he could implement it in a new business! He spends months further rigging up many trees on his side of the beach, in preparation for the huge anticipated demand from the Alligators. One day, he spots Dixie strolling next to the water. He looks the other way, throwing her out of his mind and getting back to work.

The next week he visits the Alligators to convince them to buy his bananas. He wanted to offer peeled bananas at a cheaper price than the Alligator Tribe currently purchased fully un-peeled bananas! To his dismay, they laugh him out of their meeting hut. "The girl monkey showed us how to do this last week. Hahahahahaha! Get out before we eat you!"

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Assuming that IP is based on rights, how does Diddy's lateness remove his right to peel bananas?

It didn't; that aspect of the scenario stems from the contextuality of knowledge.

When Dixie applied for a patent, she was telling Kranky (the government) that the entire thing was her idea.  Since it knows that the idea was hers, the government then deduces that it cannot also be Diddy's; therefore he learned it from Dixie, and therefore that he never had any right to act on it.

It's analogous to wrongful conviction or collateral damage in war; an error of ignorance. 

 

But take another look at the cognitive steps between Dixie's application and Diddy's demise.

 

The implicit premise is that two people cannot both arrive at the same idea.  And since multiple people cannot independently have the same idea, they cannot share the ownership of any idea.

Now, since it has become painfully obvious that the causal premise therein contradicts reality, why would someone fail to realize or act on the legal ramifications?

 

Why are their rights a zero-sum game at all?

Why, because it provides incentive for people to invent stuff, of course.

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Assuming that IP is based on rights, how does Diddy's lateness remove his right to peel bananas? How does Diddy's earliness remove Dixie's rights? Why are their rights a zero-sum game at all?

 

. . . . . 

This is fitting, as is your use of Donkey Kong for the metaphor.

Your scenario drops all kinds of context.

Diddy and Dixie should obviously overthrow the  Government and establish a proper Communist system that allows them to own no ideas of but all ideas at the same time.  Then they can live in harmony with their means of picking and eat bananas. 

Imagine if whatevershisname instead just declares that he owns the island, and everything on it. And then everyone starves and drowns to death.

That's why the concept of property is evil. Abolish it now.

Just juxtaposing the OP with some of the responses to it. 

No further comment, except to thank Louie for thinking in essentials (burden of proof).

. . . . .

 

For the record, I think the issue of proof is somewhat endemic to IP (at least until we have the technology to scan people's memories), but that's not important.

 

The question to ask is why learning something from someone else gives them the de facto right to dispose of that knowledge, regardless of how or even if that right is recognized.

And that is the question to ask because the concept of intellectual property, itself, is predicated on a certain causal belief.

 

And anyone in favor of IP rights especially needs to know the answer to that question.

Edited by Harrison Danneskjold
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Diddy invents and patents dynamite.

 

Dixie duplicates dynamite, sells it at $10 per stick and pays Diddy the royalties.

 

Donkey duplicates dynamite without permission and gets caught.

 

Kranky convicts him and forces him to pay Dixie $10 (who pays Diddy the royalties).

 

Dixie uses dynamite to shower the island with Donkey's internal organs.

 

Kranky convicts Diddy of being an accessory to murder.

. . . . .

 

A kid shoots his school up and we blame the NRA.  Why is that?

 

Providing an incentive or even the life improving aspects of what a civilized division of labor society produces through trade are consequences not justifications.

Exactly.

And since individual rights are ultimately based on a specific concept of volition, which defines our views on responsibility and ownership, all we need to do is identify the causal premises beneath lassiez-faire and connect them to this.

 

Ask yourself whether or not gun manufacturers should be held responsible for what bad people do with their merchandise and try to work backwards from there.

Edited by Harrison Danneskjold
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  • 2 weeks later...

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