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Analogy with oil is excellent. Ad to this that at the higher level (the whole economy rather than individual companies) there is very little evidence that patents are all that good at doing what they are supposed to: i.e. encourage people to spend on R & D. Software R & D spend did not rise suddenly when a court decided software was patentable. Pharmaceutical companies spend more on marketing than R & D and only a small proportion of the higher price they charge for patented drugs is spent on R & D – pharmaceutical aptents work but are an inefficent way of getting money into research.

Best idea I have heard from my friends with Indian connections is to go into surveillance via internet-enabled security cameras. Has the advantage of finding benefit in both cheap labor and timezone differences. I expect some competitors will develop, but you could even find an obvious-but-patentable angle to patent if you decide IP is necessary.

I’ve always wanted a complex machine printer. Send it some drawings, and have a built to spec prototype on it’s way to my door in a couple weeks. I now imagine it as an industrial facility with metal working (forge, spin, stamp, punch, cut, roll, machine) capabilities, electronic technicians (solder, board construction, mechatronic expertise), and with the engineering talent to back it up by checking the design, sourcing parts, coordinating the one off construction, etc. My own maquiladora…

Offer the service to small companies everywhere. Affording that level of infrastructure might be possible in Shanghai, and cheap enough to cover the shipping costs back to the USA.

As far as the tutoring idea goes, how would you ensure you aren’t doubling the public schools efforts and actually extending what the child learns? Also I can hear kids now saying: “Great, more school.” Maybe video-conferenced home schooling, instead of a tutoring service.

Does your friend like it that you are working to “exploit this resource?” What do they want to do/suggest?

Re the photography IP, I think you’re wrong, Philip. My sister’s boyfriend is a very successful photographer who is over 50 now. He used to do all kinds of assignment work for ABC, National Geographic, Life, Outdoor you name it, when he was young enough to hack the physical work. (he’s still very fit, but you start to slow down when your work was olymic and youy’re now over 50) Back then selling his photos after the assignment (as stock or copyrighter material) was less than 5% of his business. Now it’s more than 60%, and he’s still very busy doing assignment work (he’s still on assignment 100+ days a year).

Write consumer software, and loads of it.

There are loads of small one-man software writers that make good money on almost trivial software that solves real world problems, selling them for $10-25 a license.

If you have almost unlimitted code monkeys, why not keep writing? One in 10 products will prove to be popular and your portfolio will just keep growing and growing.

This discussion reminds me of an idea from one of Philip’s old books:

> Internet commerce appeals deceptives to a particularly male fantasy.
> Guys like the idea that after a short initial period of programming,
> a computer will tirelessly slave away for them, making them money
> 24 hours a day. Set up the site, walk away, and watch the money pile
> up in your bank account.

I think in some ways companies based on intellectual property are similarly appealing.

Big companies that don’t own IP like Exxon and Walmart seem to stay afloat on inertia. They have a big market share in a profitable industry, but they don’t own any ideas that really separate them from the opposition. On the other hand, Microsoft is clearly an IP company (despite the fact that most of the early R&D was done by purchasing startups). It’s hard to imagine how Microsoft could maintain their monopoly on desktop operating systems without owning all the IP in Windows and also keeping the source code closed.

It’s interesting that you mention intellectual property in connection with China. I’ve never visited any country where IP is treated with such complete disregard. I find it hard to believe that the Chinese government would enforce any private IP at all through their ‘legal system’.

The vast majority of professional photographers get very little benefit from copyright law and certainly none from patent law. Professionals occasionally make some money from selling an old image that without copyright law could have been used without a fee but we’re talking $50-$250 in most cases and you have the cost of dealing with the clients and they expect to be invoiced!

Most professional photographers are hired to take photos of something their client cares about, e.g., a wedding, illustrations for a magazine article, or pictures of a newsworthy event. In theory this group of people could get paid slightly less if there were no copyright law but in practice most magazines and newspapers already pay so little that their employees could not subsist on less than they are currently paid.

Good point on IP law, I went off on a bit of a rant about it:

http://www.tallent.us/blog/CommentView.aspx?guid=00cec4db-87c1-4335-81c6-446c8612b528

Philip, as a photographer, why would the same principle not be true of professional photography as an industry? I’m not suggesting that every photographer release their work as PD, but surely there are lessons to be learned in that community about balancing strict IP-based profit models with other modes of growth?