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Razors and Intellectual Property (Patents)

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Renegade:
This is a rather interesting essay on IP and patents.

http://makkai.com/2012/04/how-intellectual-property-destroyed-mens-shaving/

How Intellectual Property Destroyed Men’s Shaving
BY CALLUM | PUBLISHED APRIL 23, 2012
Well over a century ago, a salesman named King Gillette patented the design for his safety razor and went on to found the Gillette Safety Razor Company. His invention made him wealthy as American men rushed to buy his razor blades.

Gillette did not invent the safety razor itself, but rather found a way to manufacture disposable blades that were cheap yet held an edge well. In so doing, Gillette challenged at least two professions: the barber with his straight razor and the blade sharpener with his strop.

It’s a classic example of the principle outlined in Andy Kessler’s book, Eat People. Gillette eliminated the cost and hassle of going to the barber or maintaining one’s razor by providing American men with disposable blades. Now they could shave themselves cheaply and effectively at home.

But that success set the stage for a pattern that would repeat itself over and over again through the twentieth century. See, patents expire after two decades or so, and as they did the Gillette company and its competitors sought new patents in order to protect the lucrative disposable razor business.

This drive for new “patentable” razor technology gave us some minor improvements in the classic double-edged safety razor, and after WWII, it gave us the Schick single-bladed injector razor. By the 1970s most patents for the double-edged safety razor and the single-edged injector razor had expired.
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More at the link, and it does get more interesting.

Later in the article it gets into implications for technology today.

TaoPhoenix:

I dunno, of all the awful chaos of IntProp, somehow shaving is the least of the fallout that I care about! I treat electric shavers as a total commodity of the type that everyone makes a commodity when a primary patent runs out.

Renegade:
I dunno, of all the awful chaos of IntProp, somehow shaving is the least of the fallout that I care about! I treat electric shavers as a total commodity of the type that everyone makes a commodity when a primary patent runs out.
-TaoPhoenix (October 17, 2013, 06:10 AM)
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I think you're missing what he's getting at there. And I don't think the author would disagree with you:

This lesson is a dire warning about the threat of intellectual property to our quality of life. The razor business is an old-fashioned one, not nearly as important to the lifeblood of the economy as high-tech enterprises such as Apple and Google.

The “Gillette effect” is already starting to distort the process of innovation in high-tech sectors. Witness the on-going patent wars over mobile technology.

These developments are harbingers of what lies ahead if we continue our self-destructive obsession with intellectual property. The end result is clear: crappy, expensive technology which is a pain in the follicle.

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The article is isn't about razors at all. However, razors are about the best example you can find out there to demonstrate some of the concepts that he's gone over in the article. Gillette developed a new business model, and he's walking through that and how the business model affects us. (The model depends on patents.)

The latter part of the article is where he brings high-tech into the mix. You're kind of left on your own to make those inferences prior to that though.

Vurbal:
It's been firmly established in study after study that patents don't promote progress. They don't even precede it. They follow it because people don't want competition. Gillette's original razor is a perfect example. If you're making the best product and you need a government crutch to succeed that just means you suck at business.

SeraphimLabs:
It's been firmly established in study after study that patents don't promote progress. They don't even precede it. They follow it because people don't want competition. Gillette's original razor is a perfect example. If you're making the best product and you need a government crutch to succeed that just means you suck at business.
-Vurbal (October 17, 2013, 09:01 AM)
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Or you haven't yet mastered the economy of scale.

Patents are meant for individual and small businesses to protect their products early on when a larger competitor could easily produce the same product far more efficiently. Once the product has allowed a company to go bigtime, they no longer need that protection as they have the resources to defend themselves from other startups or other companies with similar products.

But right now the entire patent system is so messed up that Apple is busily suing the pants off people for using rounded rectangles in their mobile device products, while an inventor working alone on a project can't even afford the patent fees let alone actually enforcing a patent in court if it was issued.

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