Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter (now X) and Square (now Block), sparked a weekend’s worth of debate around intellectual property, patents, and

Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter (now X) and Square (now Block), sparked a weekend’s worth of debate around intellectual property, patents, and copyright, with a characteristically terse post declaring, “delete all IP law.”

X’s current owner Elon Musk quickly replied, “I agree.”

  • frezik@midwest.socialEnglish
    12·
    6 days ago

    In the manufacturing space, people are questioning if patents help them at all. There is no stopping China from copying your design and selling it on Aliexpress. In fact, since you’re almost certainly getting your product manufactured in China in the first place, there is no stopping the very manufacturing plant you’re using from producing extras and undercutting you.

    Consider this old EEVblog vid about bringing a product to market, and the #1 tip is “don’t bother with a patent”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7BL1O0xCcY

    Patents have evolved to be useful to patent trolls. That’s it.

    That’s not what Dorsey and Musk are after, though. They want to kill copyright law because it’s inconvenient for AI training data.