<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>ardy42</author><text>&amp;gt; If the patent is protecting some business&amp;#x27;s hockey-stick growth, it&amp;#x27;s worth the fee, so it fulfills the original purpose of patents, that is, avoiding trade secrets while protecting cash-cow inventions for a limited time.&lt;p&gt;Wasn&amp;#x27;t the original purpose of patents &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; to protect big business&amp;#x27;s hockey-stick grown, but to allow small inventors to capitalize on their inventions (and not have them shamelessly ripped off by some big business).  I think the other original purpose was to make sure inventions would eventually become publicized and exploitable by all.&lt;p&gt;That exponential patents idea seems like it would render patent protection prohibitively expensive for all except maybe the rich or inventors unusually well-position to quickly capitalize on their invention.  The little guy who takes ten years to get his business off the ground is out of luck.</text><parent_chain><item><author>nine_k</author><text>Again I remind about the idea of exponential patents: the holder has to pay every year twice as much as last year.&lt;p&gt;If the patent is protecting some business&amp;#x27;s hockey-stick growth, it&amp;#x27;s worth the fee, so it fulfills the original purpose of patents, that is, avoiding trade secrets while protecting cash-cow inventions for a limited time.&lt;p&gt;But sitting on a patent becomes prohibitively expensive soon enough even for a large company.</text></item><item><author>ohazi</author><text>E Ink is a great example of how the patent system stifles innovation.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;One company&lt;/i&gt; developed a small, expensive, newspaper-quality electrophoretic display with a refresh rate so terrible it was only suitable for books, decided that that was good enough, and 15 years later every comment in this thread is looking forward to finally seeing some innovation in this space &amp;quot;once the patents expire.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;That is some first class bullshit. We could have had large form, glossy brochure quality displays with video refresh rates by now, but nobody outside of China wanted to get anywhere near this patent minefield.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Dasung just released a 25 inch eInk monitor</title><url>https://www.reddit.com/r/eink/comments/kjvsoj/dasung_just_released_a_25_inch_eink_monitor/</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>fossuser</author><text>I think this would just move people back to trade secrets.&lt;p&gt;That said, I think patents could be given out less often when the operation of the device is clear or can easily be discovered by the public without a patent.&lt;p&gt;E-Ink screens released without a patent kept under &amp;#x27;trade secret&amp;#x27; wouldn&amp;#x27;t have mattered, the idea would have been implemented elsewhere.&lt;p&gt;I suppose you could argue that without exclusive rights the original inventor wouldn&amp;#x27;t have bothered to create it at all - in that case there&amp;#x27;s probably a better middle ground of something less than 20yrs. 5yrs? 2yrs? First $1million in profit?</text><parent_chain><item><author>nine_k</author><text>Again I remind about the idea of exponential patents: the holder has to pay every year twice as much as last year.&lt;p&gt;If the patent is protecting some business&amp;#x27;s hockey-stick growth, it&amp;#x27;s worth the fee, so it fulfills the original purpose of patents, that is, avoiding trade secrets while protecting cash-cow inventions for a limited time.&lt;p&gt;But sitting on a patent becomes prohibitively expensive soon enough even for a large company.</text></item><item><author>ohazi</author><text>E Ink is a great example of how the patent system stifles innovation.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;One company&lt;/i&gt; developed a small, expensive, newspaper-quality electrophoretic display with a refresh rate so terrible it was only suitable for books, decided that that was good enough, and 15 years later every comment in this thread is looking forward to finally seeing some innovation in this space &amp;quot;once the patents expire.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;That is some first class bullshit. We could have had large form, glossy brochure quality displays with video refresh rates by now, but nobody outside of China wanted to get anywhere near this patent minefield.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Dasung just released a 25 inch eInk monitor</title><url>https://www.reddit.com/r/eink/comments/kjvsoj/dasung_just_released_a_25_inch_eink_monitor/</url></story>