[DRAFT] Int'l Recognition of Patents

[Auralia]

International Recognition of Patents
A resolution to reduce barriers to free trade and commerce.

Category: Free Trade | Strength: Mild | Proposed by: Auralia

Recognizing that many World Assembly member states use patents to encourage scientific and technological innovation,

Believing that the international recognition of patents will incentivize the creation of new inventions throughout all member states while providing inventors with a fair reward for their labours,

The General Assembly,

1. Defines, for the purposes of this resolution:
   
   1. "invention" as a device, method, composition or process that is useful, novel and non-obvious, even to others skilled in the same field,
   2. "patent rights" as the following exclusive rights with respect to a particular invention:
      
      1. to use, manufacture, offer for sale and import or export the invention,
      2. to sell or license any of these rights to others,
      3. to seek an injunction and fair damages against any entity that infringes upon these rights, and
      4. to extinguish any of these rights,
   3. "patent" as the set of patent rights granted to the creator of an invention, conditioned on the public disclosure of the design of the invention, and
   4. "foreign patent" as any patent granted by another member state;
2. Mandates that each member state recognize the exclusive rights associated with foreign patents for the lesser of the following: ten years after the date on which the patent was granted, or the period used by the member state that granted the patent;
   
3. Encourages member states to extend patent terms for inventions which are subject to lengthy regulatory approval processes and other delays that reduce the effective period of protection for such inventions, such as pharmaceuticals;
   
4. Authorizes member states to create reasonable limitations and exceptions to the exclusive rights associated with certain foreign patents when:
   
   1. a substantially similar invention to the invention that is the subject of the foreign patent has been patented by a different inventor in a member state, and the date on which the substantially similar invention was first granted a patent by a member state is prior to the date on which the invention that is the subject of the foreign patent was first granted a patent by a member state,
   2. the invention that is the subject of the foreign patent is not currently being exploited in that member state, and the inventor has no good faith plans to exploit the invention in that member state in the near future, and
   3. such limitations and exceptions are necessary to enforce any additional reasonable and appropriate patent regulations created by that member state, including but not limited to regulations regarding the interpretation of clauses 1 and 2 of this resolution, so long as such regulations remain consistent with the object and purpose of this resolution;
5. Clarifies that nothing in this resolution should be interpreted as requiring member nations to recognize any patents other than foreign patents, nor any patent in respect of an invention that is itself in violation of regulations unrelated to patent law, such as health and safety standards for manufactured goods.

[Auralia]

((OOC: I'll be posting a dissection of the repeal arguments later. Suffice it to say that I didn't think much of them, given that I'm proposing the same resolution with only minor changes.))

[Tinfect]

OOC:
Okay, I guess we're going through this debacle again. Mate, here's a hint, maybe you'll get more support if your legislation doesn't fuck over Ideologies that don't align to Free-Market Capitalism.

[Sciongrad]

"Sciongrad intends to vote aye. This is an important issue that the WA needs to address. The recent repeal was based on misunderstandings and fearmongering, anyway."

[Sierra Lyricalia]

OOC:
Okay, I guess we're going through this debacle again. Mate, here's a hint, maybe you'll get more support if your legislation doesn't fuck over Ideologies that don't align to Free-Market Capitalism.

OOC: My concerns here don't seem to have been addressed. Mainly,

"[Patents run] [f]or ten years. This is not an industry-choking hurdle; after a mere decade it's fair game! It's one thing if you're advocating a total communism where nobody needs patents because everyone shares everything in common for free, or a medieval guild system where (say) the Guild of Car-Builders has total control over everything to do with automobiles and any innovation necessarily comes from them because in order to even tinker with a jalopy in your backyard you have to join them for life; I know no other system where limited-term patents fail to spur innovation and growth on the macro scale."

The universe of ideologies that do not fall under total communism or medieval guild control, encompasses a number of ideologies besides Free-Market Capitalism. Opposition to patents per se is therefore based on fundamental misunderstandings and/or reflexive panic at economic actions outside the public sector sphere.

[Tinfect]

OOC:
Okay, I guess we're going through this debacle again. Mate, here's a hint, maybe you'll get more support if your legislation doesn't fuck over Ideologies that don't align to Free-Market Capitalism.

OOC: My concerns here don't seem to have been addressed. Mainly,

"[Patents run] [f]or ten years. This is not an industry-choking hurdle; after a mere decade it's fair game! It's one thing if you're advocating a total communism where nobody needs patents because everyone shares everything in common for free, or a medieval guild system where (say) the Guild of Car-Builders has total control over everything to do with automobiles and any innovation necessarily comes from them because in order to even tinker with a jalopy in your backyard you have to join them for life; I know no other system where limited-term patents fail to spur innovation and growth on the macro scale."

The universe of ideologies that do not fall under total communism or medieval guild control, encompasses a number of ideologies besides Free-Market Capitalism. Opposition to patents per se is therefore based on fundamental misunderstandings and/or reflexive panic at economic actions outside the public sector sphere.

OOC:
As much as I'd love to tear apart every point you've made there, I've done it a dozen times in the past, and I'm getting damn tired of debating the merits of patents with people that refuse to acknowledge that perhaps economic systems that don't have patents might be horribly damaged by the enforcement of them. Given the absolute nonsense that is that quote of yours, I especially don't see any ground to be gained here, the fact that you've outright stated that anyone who disagrees with patents is either an idiot, or a reactionary, makes that quite obvious.

I'd very much like to level some of my other criticisms, like this one, the one that everyone likes to pretend isn't there. The fact that there are nearly 24,000 Member-States at this time, and the fact that each and every one of them is going to have a widely disparate system of patents, technological level, or economic status. This resolution would allow for technological monopolies within similar tech levels, by giving States with slightly higher technological levels the ability to create technological monopolies on emerging technologies within their general tech-level. And for the love of whatever god(s) you do or don't believe in, don't give me the 'Ten Years Isn't All That Long' bit, I really shouldn't have to explain why that statement is wrong on every goddamn level in a world where 15-20* years can mean the difference between DOS, and early quantum computers; the rate of advancement only gets faster as you go up the scale, 10 years may not mean much in the Bronze Age, but 10 years from now is going to be very different in terms of technology.
*Depending on what you consider to be early quantum computing.

Next up, is the problem of Patent-less States. Despite the drivel SL has quoted up there, there are more systems than Full-Communism, or guild... ism, that have full justification for aversion to patents. Socialism, for example, has little use for Patents, as Technology is controlled by the State, not private entities, and the State has no need or desire (usually) to make money off of the Technologies. The issue here, is that the resolution is utterly irrespective of Economic Ideologies that don't conform to the author's beliefs, all it takes is for one Nation with particularly loose (Or, tight, depending on your perspective) patent laws to damage the market on emerging technologies for everyone involved, we are seeing a similar thing here in reality, where companies it is possible to get patents for things that look a bit like product X, or some particular shade of Brown, and the existence of companies that exist solely to exploit such laws. Since this resolution is written by, and supported by, members of the Free Trade crowd, its safe to assume that protectionist measures on their markets are fairly low, and, ironically, this can harm you the most, because trivial patents now carry the weight of WA Law, and you can't throw them out for being insane because of this and other resolutions, entitling the insane-patent-having-people to an expensive legal battle, probably hosted by the WA. Blame Resolving Trade Disputes for that, by the way. Oh, and of course, there is the fact that it locks Member-States with fragile economies, or highly central/collectivist economies from participating in International Trade if they want to protect their economies from collapse, or to protect themselves from legal battles over nonsense, or their technologies being labelled off-limits to them because some foreigner got their sticker on it first. You can thank the combination of this and World Assembly Trading Rights for that.

And, of course, as often as this has been thrown out, I'd like to point out that mandating that a Member-State acknowledge and enforce patents, especially foreign patents, is an incredible violation of their ideological rights, and the fact that many of you seem to think its okay to dance on the grave of the Ideological Ban rule as long as it supports your ideologies is starting to get annoying.

[Sciongrad]

-snip

I'm sorry, but this is getting really tiresome. I understand you're only roleplaying your nation, but you have demonstrated that you either misunderstand how foreign patents work or that you're simply so ideologically opposed to them in general that you don't really care how they work. SL is absolutely correct on their core point - that patents are compatible with basically every ideological system besides a corporate guild system or full communism. Countries from China to Denmark to the U.S. protect intellectual property rights because a failure to do so would certainly be detrimental to innovation. So you're wrong on that point. But you make the repeatedly debunked claim that wildly broad categories of technology will be patented. As several people have explained to you before, because of the sheer number of member nations, it is statistically impossible that radio will be patented. It simply cannot be done unless you would seriously argue that some reasonable FT nation with a patent system has yet to patent it. That's obviously incorrect. As several players have already noted, any foreign patent regime that includes as broad a range of technological achievement as the WA will only affect truly innovative technology. So perhaps a very specific application of radio technology that satisfies some niche demand, but not radio itself. Or flight, or nanobot technology, or steel. That is a blatant misunderstanding of how patents work. So you're also wrong on that point. And finally, you're argument regarding societies that lack patent regimes or intellectual property rights is criminally overstated. The WA has a long history of embracing free trade and is not accommodating of systems that reject is entirely, so to argue that there is some huge crowd of patentless, isolationist nations that are still hanging around anyway is illogical. You may object because you don't believe in the idea of foreign patents, but to the countless nations that actually do believe in property rights, universal recognition of foreign patents is essential in allowing those patent holders to remain competitive in foreign markets. You might not like that, but on balance, your position disadvantages more nations than it helps (believe it or not, most nations conduct trade with others) and actually impedes progress in those nations. You whine a lot about how a foreign patent regime hurts isolationist nations, but the lack of a foreign patent regime equally hurts nations that do trade with one another, and they are undoubtedly the majority in the WA.

So you're free to object to patents all you want IC, but how dare you brand SL's argument as "drivel" when you yourself are unwilling to offer anything but rhetoric and debunked arguments.

[Ryanimus]

OOC: Let's stop the bashing here. Tinfect, you cannot attack Auralia on this forum just because you dislike their views. You don't know the guy personally, so you don't have that right. You can't do much more than agrue against the proposal itself with constructive criticism, regardless of the quantity or duration of discussions and debates. Sciongrad, if you have personal beef with Tinfect, please take it to telegrams. Auralia's thread is not a stage for your Out Of Character quips with another player, despite the context.

Auralia, regardless of my views I wish you luck in your campaign for this proposal. Give it your best.

[Tinfect]

Let's stop the bashing here. Tinfect, you cannot attack Auralia on this forum just because you dislike their views.

OOC:
I've done nothing of the sort.

You can't do much more than argue against the proposal itself with constructive criticism, regardless of the quantity or duration of discussions and debates.

Fair enough, problem is, last time we had someone propose recently repealed legislation with absolutely no substantive changes, the author refused to change any, accept any argumentation that didn't align with their beliefs, outright ignored argumentation they couldn't respond to, and in general wasted everyone's time and effort. Auralia has several resolutions on the books that clearly damage Socialist/Collectivist States, and he's repeatedly made clear that he doesn't particularly care about that fact. So, excuse me if I'm a bit mad at how we are seeing damaging legislation being proposed again, without any substantive changes, and no clear intentions to make any.

Do this again, and I'll file a report to the mods myself.

If you think I'm flaming, you'd damn well better report it. I'm sure as hell not going to stop you.

I'm sorry, but this is getting really tiresome.

Oh, hey, now you know how I feel whenever this topic comes up.

SL is absolutely correct on their core point - that patents are compatible with basically every ideological system besides a corporate guild system or full communism. Countries from China to Denmark to the U.S. protect intellectual property rights because a failure to do so would certainly be detrimental to innovation.

I'm getting really fucking tired of arguing the merits of patents, so I won't, but I'll note that I've argued against the idea that a lack of patents is inherently detrimental to innovation on several occasions.

So you're wrong on that point. But you make the repeatedly debunked claim that wildly broad categories of technology will be patented. As several people have explained to you before, because of the sheer number of member nations, it is statistically impossible that radio will be patented. It simply cannot be done unless you would seriously argue that some reasonable FT nation with a patent system has yet to patent it.

First of all, I never mentioned radio in this thread, second, if you've decided that because some FT Nation has patented in the past, then that means that literally nothing can be patented unless you're the single highest FFT Member-State of the World Assembly, and that any patents in Member-States below that are completely void, as they were patented by ExistingForeverIstan 100 Billion years ago. At which point this legislation destroys itself.

Besides that, it's not quite that broad categories will be patented, it's that there are so many Member-States with so widely disparate levels of Technological Achievement that it's entirely possible that there will be so many goddamn patents in the same general field across member-states. If 1000 different people, in 1000 different have patents on 1000 different types of Radio Transmitters, there's a problem.

As several players have already noted, any foreign patent regime that includes as broad a range of technological achievement as the WA will only affect truly innovative technology. So perhaps a very specific application of radio technology that satisfies some niche demand, but not radio itself. Or flight, or nanobot technology, or steel.

Again, that depends solely on the Patent Laws of the Member-State in question, and whether or not they are enforced properly.

nAnd finally, you're argument regarding societies that lack patent regimes or intellectual property rights is criminally overstated. The WA has a long history of embracing free trade and is not accommodating of systems that reject is entirely, so to argue that there is some huge crowd of patentless, isolationist nations that are still hanging around anyway is illogical.

The Imperium is actually a World Assembly Member-State, despite what you may believe. And, quite frankly, I don't think that the 'We've already forced out most the Nations that don't follow our ideology, so it's okay to cripple those that stayed' is even remotely acceptable. There's a difference between Reasonable Nation Theory, and Fuck the Minority theory. It's not Slavery we're talking about, it's International Trade, and operating on a policy of 'Get with program or get out' is pretty damn odd, coming from someone who RPs the Nation that's so worried about Self-Determination that they're willing to force entire States to dissolve.

You may object because you don't believe in the idea of foreign patents, but to the countless nations that actually do believe in property rights, universal recognition of foreign patents is essential in allowing those patent holders to remain competitive in foreign markets. You might not like that, but on balance, your position disadvantages more nations than it helps (believe it or not, most nations conduct trade with others) and actually impedes progress in those nations. You whine a lot about how a foreign patent regime hurts isolationist nations, but the lack of a foreign patent regime equally hurts nations that do trade with one another, and they are undoubtedly the majority in the WA.

Now, I'm not even going to argue with you here, because I agree with you on this. I've said it before that this is something the World Assembly needs to cover, and if you've noticed, I've backed off on my 'Free Trade Category needs to go' bit, as its rather inconsistent with that. The problem here is, that Legislation that only screws over the minority of Member-States, is still legislation that screws over a significant minority of Member-States. I'm all for some way to allow the Free-Trade crowed to keep their property rights nonsense, as long as it doesn't screw over those States that want nothing to do with it. I've even made my own attempt at it, but noone bothered to help work that out, so it never went beyond the skeleton of a proposal.

This is a theme I've noticed in a lot of Legislation, even some of your own, like the Self-Determination Accord, or, whatever that Mandatory Border-Negotiations nonsense of yours was. You don't seem to have any problem trampling on Ideologies that you don't agree with, rather than attempting to work out a way for them to coexist.

[Imperium Anglorum]

PARSONS: We will support if there can be provided a distinct name.

Let's stop the bashing here. Tinfect, you cannot attack Auralia on this forum just because you dislike their views. You don't know the guy personally, so you don't have that right. You can't do much more than agrue against the proposal itself with constructive criticism, regardless of the quantity or duration of discussions and debates. Sciongrad, if you have personal beef with Tinfect, please take it to telegrams. Auralia's thread is not a stage for your Out Of Character quips with another player, despite the context.

Thank you for moderating the General Assembly. I didn't know your nation's name was red. Leaves cookies.

[Umeria]

I'm all for some way to allow the Free-Trade crowed to keep their property rights nonsense, as long as it doesn't screw over those States that want nothing to do with it.

Why not just add a clause which says nations that don't use a patent system are not required to recognize patents?

[Sierra Lyricalia]

Yep, that's me - an inveterate laissez-faire free-trader.

Any society that does not have perfect or near-perfect supercomputer-calculated cybernetic (i.e. responsive) planning mechanisms and truly just rationing; OR a bona-fide post-scarcity economy; is going to use a market to set prices for things. Yes, even a "cost the limit of price" socialist state is going to use some form of market economy, even if it's well-restrained and exists only at the whim of and to the extent that it's useful to the broad swath of the people.

Innovation outside of a post-scarcity society is impossible without funding. Governments can fund it with tax money, or private actors can fund it with investments tied to potential profits. Private funding relies on the market to survive. If the market is susceptible to flooding by cheap knock-offs, profits are impossible and therefore funding will dry up, stifling private innovation. Since every government is too busy governing to allocate tax dollars to every promising trail of invention, private funding of innovation is important to all societies still under the thumb of scarcity. The best method of ensuring private funding mechanisms will continue to flourish is using a limited-term, well-regulated system of patents. Failing to do this leaves small- and medium-sized innovators at the mercy of massive outfits that can produce infringing items cheaper due to economies of scale, even if all concerned faithfully follow the same labor/environmental/marketing/etc. regulations. That means the investors will get no return and thus never again be so dumb as to fund any innovation.

Therefore, my original point stands: only a pure as the driven snow communism, a guild-based economy, and a post-scarcity society have no need for patents; and none of these is truly harmed by them. The only thing it means is they have to either pay licensing fees, import the goods directly from the country they were invented in, or just wait a few years. Talk of ideological bans is hysterical, and I don't mean funny.

Nothing in the proposal prevents reasonable regulation of the patent system, or requires humoring patent trolls, or means you must allow patent pooling, or stops you from (say) prohibiting employment contracts that cede all rights to employee inventions to the employer, or makes you recognize "patents" derived from exploiting indigenous people or obscure flora/fauna or goddamn pieces of genomes. Just because the real-world patent system is administered for shit doesn't mean the very idea is garbage.

[Tinfect]

Yep, that's me - an inveterate laissez-faire free-trader.

OOC:
Okay, I'll just uh, preface this whole deal with an apology; I've come across as rather hostile, especially in my original responses, it's been a series of progressively longer days for me this week, and things are just not going well across the board. Not much can be achieved by alienating you people because I can't be asked to keep things under control.

Any society that does not have perfect or near-perfect supercomputer-calculated cybernetic (i.e. responsive) planning mechanisms and truly just rationing; OR a bona-fide post-scarcity economy; is going to use a market to set prices for things. Yes, even a "cost the limit of price" socialist state is going to use some form of market economy, even if it's well-restrained and exists only at the whim of and to the extent that it's useful to the broad swath of the people.

That's a fair point, if, dependent on the idea that the item is being sold, but I'm not sure how that's relevant.

Innovation outside of a post-scarcity society is impossible without funding. Governments can fund it with tax money, or private actors can fund it with investments tied to potential profits. Private funding relies on the market to survive. If the market is susceptible to flooding by cheap knock-offs, profits are impossible and therefore funding will dry up, stifling private innovation.

Seeing as how I'd very much rather Innovation was driven with the best interests of society rather than by what will make the most money, I'm not sure that's entirely a bad thing, but I see your point. This still doesn't justify enforcing foreign Patent Laws in Nations that don't involve themselves in International Trade, or, even with the Nations/Individuals/Entities whose patents are being 'violated'.

Since every government is too busy governing to allocate tax dollars to every promising trail of invention, private funding of innovation is important to all societies still under the thumb of scarcity.

Not if you have a big enough Government with enough parts that are sufficiently independent so as to allow for such a thing. As for whether or not sufficient Tax Dollars are allocated, that's not so much of a concern for economically independent Socialist States, as they have full control of their own resources, and can allocate them as necessary without having to first acquire them from a foreign nation or company. I'll cede the point that private innovation can be useful in developing countries, and in countries with insufficient technological advancement/resources to do things properly. Even in Scarcity-level systems, however, it is entirely possible to do this, especially once the issue of private industries getting in the way has been eliminated.

The best method of ensuring private funding mechanisms will continue to flourish is using a limited-term, well-regulated system of patents. Failing to do this leaves small- and medium-sized innovators at the mercy of massive outfits that can produce infringing items cheaper due to economies of scale, even if all concerned faithfully follow the same labor/environmental/marketing/etc. regulations.

That means the investors will get no return and thus never again be so dumb as to fund any innovation.

Therefore, my original point stands: only a pure as the driven snow communism, a guild-based economy, and a post-scarcity society have no need for patents; and none of these is truly harmed by them.

Well organized socialist systems also have no need for patents; patents are the byproduct of relying on private industries for technological advancement, with such things eliminated, their utility is removed. And, for the record, yes, two of your examples are damaged by Patents, they violate pretty much the whole idea of Communism. In a Post-Scarcity environment, Patents can be used to create scarcity, by denying technological advancements and such things to the lower-classes, if only for a period of time until they expire and the next group of them show up. As for Guild-Based systems, I don't really know enough about those to say much.

The only thing it means is they have to either pay licensing fees,

Which is a problem if you want to have things like Universal Healthcare.

import the goods directly from the country they were invented in,

Which reduces the economic independence of the State importing, and I don't think that we should be encouraging 'Open your Markets to Foreign Interference or we will keep Technological Advancements from you' if we want to be encouraging peace and cooperation between member states.

or just wait a few years.

Which is unacceptably damaging to development and progress.

Nothing in the proposal prevents reasonable regulation of the patent system,

Mandates that each member state recognize the exclusive rights associated with foreign patents for the lesser of the following: ten years after the date on which the patent was granted, or the period used by the member state that granted the patent;
Authorizes member states to create reasonable limitations and exceptions to the exclusive rights associated with certain foreign patents when:
such limitations and exceptions are necessary to enforce any additional reasonable and appropriate patent regulations created by that member state, including but not limited to regulations regarding the interpretation of clauses 1 and 2 of this resolution, so long as such regulations remain consistent with the object and purpose of this resolution;

or requires humoring patent trolls,

Actually that's fair, that line appears to have been removed in this version.

or means you must allow patent pooling,

That's not really what I meant. While it isn't possible to patent Radio entirely, it is entirely possible that, given the huge amount of Nations in the WA, there are enough Nations running Patents on enough components so as to make any independent development on that front difficult, if not impossible. And please note that the use of Radio is a hypothetical, I am well aware that most Member-States wouldn't consider Radio an emerging technology, that's not the point.

On a completely unrelated note, this resolution basically requires that whichever Nation had the Patent first gets to retain it, even if the Nations involved had exactly zero contact with eachother, developed their technologies entirely separately, but both happened to come to the same conclusion about the most effective way to make a Radio Transmitter. The other nation is entirely screwed out of their property rights by some jackass in a Nation maybe a dozen people have ever heard of, simply because they happened to share Membership in the World Assembly.

obscure flora/fauna or goddamn pieces of genomes.

Actually, it does, the proposal makes no distinction between a Patent on a Radio Transmitter, and a Patent on a piece of Engineered Genome.

[Bananaistan]

"Firstly, we do not believe that there is an extreme hazard to national populations demonstrated here which the WA must step in to mitigate.

"Secondly, I do not see how this proposal would increase the economic freedoms of anyone other than patent holders.

"Thirdly, one could be inclined to say "I told you so" to those who are ideologically opposed to the whole idea and who supported the repeal of the previous resolution. We had a perfectly disregardable resolution based on its unenforceable enforcement mechanism. I note that this unenforceable enforcement mechanism has been removed from this proposal."

- Ted Hornwood

[Umeria]

[snip]

There is an easy solution to all of those issues. That solution is, again, to add a clause stating that nations who don't recognize patents don't have to comply.

[Bananaistan]

So you're wrong on that point. But you make the repeatedly debunked claim that wildly broad categories of technology will be patented. As several people have explained to you before, because of the sheer number of member nations, it is statistically impossible that radio will be patented. It simply cannot be done unless you would seriously argue that some reasonable FT nation with a patent system has yet to patent it.

First of all, I never mentioned radio in this thread, second, if you've decided that because some FT Nation has patented in the past, then that means that literally nothing can be patented unless you're the single highest FFT Member-State of the World Assembly, and that any patents in Member-States below that are completely void, as they were patented by ExistingForeverIstan 100 Billion years ago. At which point this legislation destroys itself.

OOC: This is surely an issue worthy of further discussion. Only the most technologically advanced civilisation which recognises and enforces patents domestically, and those more technologically advanced but had not previously recognised either domestic or foreign patents, are going to get any benefit from this. All nations from just half a step down technologically from ExistingForeveristan to the most basic and primitive culture are going to get completely fucked over by this, as there's always going to be someone somewhere in one of the other member states who has already done whatever it is that one of our inventors might now invent.

The roleplay reality being what is, makes any WA exercise regarding patents ill advised.

[Hannasea]

OOC: This is surely an issue worthy of further discussion. Only the most technologically advanced civilisation which recognises and enforces patents domestically, and those more technologically advanced but had not previously recognised either domestic or foreign patents, are going to get any benefit from this. All nations from just half a step down technologically from ExistingForeveristan to the most basic and primitive culture are going to get completely fucked over by this, as there's always going to be someone somewhere in one of the other member states who has already done whatever it is that one of our inventors might now invent.

The roleplay reality being what is, makes any WA exercise regarding patents ill advised.

OOC: But, this is based on the assumption that "MT" players have to acknowledge the existence of "FT" players. Which, typically, they don't: in fact most MT players would ignore such claims. Just like there's no requirement that people acknowledge the existence of non-human sapients, or magic, or time travel.

[Wallenburg]

"Your title is too long, Ambassador."

[Bananaistan]

OOC: This is surely an issue worthy of further discussion. Only the most technologically advanced civilisation which recognises and enforces patents domestically, and those more technologically advanced but had not previously recognised either domestic or foreign patents, are going to get any benefit from this. All nations from just half a step down technologically from ExistingForeveristan to the most basic and primitive culture are going to get completely fucked over by this, as there's always going to be someone somewhere in one of the other member states who has already done whatever it is that one of our inventors might now invent.

The roleplay reality being what is, makes any WA exercise regarding patents ill advised.

OOC: But, this is based on the assumption that "MT" players have to acknowledge the existence of "FT" players. Which, typically, they don't: in fact most MT players would ignore such claims. Just like there's no requirement that people acknowledge the existence of non-human sapients, or magic, or time travel.

OOC: Well it's more on the assumption that an MT player might acknowledge an FT player. If the MT player doesn't acknowledge the FT player than they won't have any issues, if they do, then they're into a whole world of hurt for their inventors. Almost to such an extent that to allow for any normal technological development in their own civilisation, they would be forced to explicitly deny the existence of any more technologically advanced civilisation.

[Tahkranul]

There is an easy solution to all of those issues. That solution is, again, to add a clause stating that nations who don't recognize patents don't have to comply.

"Unfortunately, darling, that would be a rather unreasonable clause to include, as it would permit nations claiming to be 'ideologically opposed' to patents to simply help themselves to whatever designs they see fit without appropriate compensation. They certainly shouldn't be required to start a domestic patent system if so opposed to such, but the dears likewise cannot be permitted to undermine the patent systems of any member nation they engage in international trade with."
Este shifts to more fully address the rest of the Assembly.
"It's all well and good to enforce whatever domestic policies a sovereign nation sees fit to, but if you're going to venture into commerce with radically different cultures and values, you're simply going to have to assume the responsibilities of the risks of economic upturns and downturns that arise from that. The sword of that argument simply cuts both ways. "Communists" cannot force their policies on "capitalists" while decrying the same being done to them.
"Furthermore, dears, it is also unreasonable that international trade within the World Assembly will somehow sort itself into some sort of strict layer cake of technology. The World Assembly is made up of myriad sapient species, of even more cultures, on even more worlds, with at least as much diversity of pursuit of either science or magic -- or both! When you have nations of fantastic technology trading with nations of fantastic magic, each populated by sapients of distinctly different species, it is impossible for them to not come up with innovations unknown to each other. Now these cultures may each have their own ways and means of safeguarding their trade, but that is exactly what necessitates a resolution that calls for Assembly members to recognize each other's protected works. Thus, compensation and commerce ensues more peaceably, as each can hold a more reasonable expectation that the other will not engage in intellectual theft in violation of such laws."

[Tinfect]

OOC: This is surely an issue worthy of further discussion. Only the most technologically advanced civilisation which recognises and enforces patents domestically, and those more technologically advanced but had not previously recognised either domestic or foreign patents, are going to get any benefit from this. All nations from just half a step down technologically from ExistingForeveristan to the most basic and primitive culture are going to get completely fucked over by this, as there's always going to be someone somewhere in one of the other member states who has already done whatever it is that one of our inventors might now invent.

The roleplay reality being what is, makes any WA exercise regarding patents ill advised.

OOC: But, this is based on the assumption that "MT" players have to acknowledge the existence of "FT" players. Which, typically, they don't: in fact most MT players would ignore such claims. Just like there's no requirement that people acknowledge the existence of non-human sapients, or magic, or time travel.

OOC:
As far as this legislation is concerned, and, if I remember Auralia's prIor statements correctly, all Member-States are aware of the existence of all other Member-States. They may not have made official or unofficial contact yet, but this legislation doesn't provide for anything of the sort. It simply states that all Member-States must recognize the patents of all other Member-States.

[Umeria]

"Unfortunately, darling, that would be a rather unreasonable clause to include, as it would permit nations claiming to be 'ideologically opposed' to patents to simply help themselves to whatever designs they see fit without appropriate compensation. They certainly shouldn't be required to start a domestic patent system if so opposed to such, but the dears likewise cannot be permitted to undermine the patent systems of any member nation they engage in international trade with."

They may not have made official or unofficial contact yet, but this legislation doesn't provide for anything of the sort. It simply states that all Member-States must recognize the patents of all other Member-States.

Okay, then why not have a clause that says it only applies to member nations who have officially contacted each other?

[Tahkranul]

Okay, then why not have a clause that says it only applies to member nations who have officially contacted each other?

"That seems workable to me. Perhaps not even a clause, but a clarification such as, 'In instances of international trade between members states?' Or would 'international relations' work better, as there are various ways for one culture to gain access to another beyond commerce?"