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Ask HN: Elizabeth Holmes has 200 patents – if tech didn't work, why not noticed?

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Re: Ask HN: Elizabeth Holmes has 200 patents – if tech didn't work, why not noticed?

#41

Post by owenversteeg »

_rpd wrote: post #8
cimmanom wrote: post #2

Furthermore, if she's got patents on these processes, can she wield them against anyone who tries to implement them successfully ?

She could try, but the patents might be found to be 'non-enabling' and thus invalid. Patents are supposed to teach a reader how to make the invention. In particular, it seems that the microfluidics stuff needs new inventions to make it work in practice. So presumably those aren't described in the patents. Although it wouldn't be the first time that management overlooked solutions provided by their own researchers.

Are patents _required_ to teach a reader how to make the invention? That seems like an interesting requirement that I hadn't heard of before, and I've got a patent with my name on it myself.

Re: Ask HN: Elizabeth Holmes has 200 patents – if tech didn't work, why not noticed?

#42

Post by Sharlin »

jdietrich wrote: post #33
trebligdivad wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not required to proof anything; you can (and people often do) patent things that just seem good ideas at the time. If you work for big companies you're strongly encouraged to patent lots, and generally all you have to do is persuade some of your colleagues that it makes sense before then convincing the patent examiners it's new.

There are thousands of patents for perpetual motion machines. An invention must be novel, useful and non-obvious to be patentable, but it doesn't actually have to work. https://patents.google.com/?q="perpetual+motion"

It can’t be very useful if it cannot work even in principle though.

Re: Ask HN: Elizabeth Holmes has 200 patents – if tech didn't work, why not noticed?

#43

Post by logicallee »

Yoric wrote: post #31
pjc50 wrote: post #10

1) Competing engineers are often advised not to read patents, because it can result in treble damages in infringement claims: https://www.essentialpatentblog.com/2016/06/supreme-court-ru... 2) Patents are really hard to read 3) The difference between something that looks plausibly like it might work when written down and something that actually works can be hundreds of millions of dollars of bugfixing.

> 2) Patents are really hard to read I second that. In a previous life, I had to read and understand a few dozens of patents. Imagine page after page of buzzwords, unjustified claims, approximate logic, vague and meaningless sentences, clearly designed to be write-only. In my experience, reading cutting-edge research papers in domains with which I'm barely familiar is so much easier.

There is a structural reason for this. What's the easiest patent to read? Show an object, name it clearly, describe what it does and how it's new. Easy!

But that is a poorly-written patent. As a competitor you can just read it, do the same thing but substitute something equivalent for one part, and you've just stolen the research investment that led to it.

A good patent has to describe the broad category (the innovation). And suddenly you go from clearly describing an example to using weird high-level vocabulary.

Re: Ask HN: Elizabeth Holmes has 200 patents – if tech didn't work, why not noticed?

#44

Post by [deleted] »

narrator wrote: post #29
mchannon wrote: post #3

Thomas Edison freely admitted most of his 1,093 US patents were for inventions that would never have worked. Patenting a completely ridiculous and impossible idea is quite straightforward if you know the system and have the money and reputation. Journalists are notoriously bad at technical due diligence, but the fact is even trained scientists and engineers can be duped, particularly when access is limited. Having be…

Patenting inventions that don't work is a great way to waste a lot of money on patent attorneys and patent office fees. Worldwide patenting can get even more ridiculously expensive. There are some really nutty patents out there.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Elizabeth Holmes has 200 patents – if tech didn't work, why not noticed?

#45

Post by zxcmx »

lordnacho wrote: post #23

This will sound cynical but many patents are not for IP protection as much as for showing other people that you're a real tech company. Investors and customers are both groups that might be impressed by your having a patent.

This is the major reason I have seen startups apply for patents. Pure signalling value.

Lots of companies patent complete bunk, and I’ve never seen anyone get called on it. It seems like investors don’t really read them.

I have also seen companies patent things that won’t work and that they have no intention of working on - with the rationale that it will confuse competitors.

Given what we know about Theranos it’s entirely plausible that some of their patents were intended as “smokescreens”.

Re: Ask HN: Elizabeth Holmes has 200 patents – if tech didn't work, why not noticed?

#47

Post by pjdemers »

jdietrich wrote: post #33
trebligdivad wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not required to proof anything; you can (and people often do) patent things that just seem good ideas at the time. If you work for big companies you're strongly encouraged to patent lots, and generally all you have to do is persuade some of your colleagues that it makes sense before then convincing the patent examiners it's new.

There are thousands of patents for perpetual motion machines. An invention must be novel, useful and non-obvious to be patentable, but it doesn't actually have to work. https://patents.google.com/?q="perpetual+motion"

I thought perpetual motion machines claims were automatically denied. I know they were back in the 1970s when my dad worked at the patent office.

Re: Ask HN: Elizabeth Holmes has 200 patents – if tech didn't work, why not noticed?

#48

Post by rajacombinator »

You’ve got to consider who has incentives to do the research. This basically breaks down into a few categories:

1) entrenched competitors that want to protect market share. 2) hedge funds that start OTC trading and are shorting. 3) insiders that want to vaporize the company as part of a bizarre money laundering scheme. (Most likely, although very bizarre, option imo.) 4) the rare journalist that does investigative research. 5) the rare VC that does dd.

So something changed to interest one of these groups. Prominent physicists and biologists couldn’t care less what private companies are doing.

Re: Ask HN: Elizabeth Holmes has 200 patents – if tech didn't work, why not noticed?

#49

Post by abecedarius »

kens wrote: post #40
pjc50 wrote: post #10

1) Competing engineers are often advised not to read patents, because it can result in treble damages in infringement claims: https://www.essentialpatentblog.com/2016/06/supreme-court-ru... 2) Patents are really hard to read 3) The difference between something that looks plausibly like it might work when written down and something that actually works can be hundreds of millions of dollars of bugfixing.

> Patents are really hard to read There are a few patents that I've found informative and useful to read: Texas Instruments' calculator patents from the 1970s, the ENIAC patent, Astrolite, and Autotune. These are the rare patents where they actually explain things in detail, it reads like it was mostly written by an engineer rather than lawyers, and I know more after reading the patent than before. (Just want to give…

Eric Drexler's solar-sail patent was the only actually-educational patent I've ever seen, myself. https://patents.google.com/patent/US4614319 (Hm, I remember it as more detailed -- maybe I was remembering a tech report instead. But still this looks like reasonable English.)

Re: Ask HN: Elizabeth Holmes has 200 patents – if tech didn't work, why not noticed?

#50

Post by rbobby »

herodotus wrote: post #9

The numbers game is a part of the modern Patent system. It is almost certainly impossible for a patent officer to asses the scientific or technical merit of a patent application. At best, they can throw out the nutbar submissions. The submitting companies often want patents partly (or mostly completely) for marketing reasons: "Our technology is protected by N patents!". Even Steve Jobs said this when he introduced th…

> The submitting companies often want patents partly (or mostly completely) for marketing reasons

For startups marketing to investors can be a key goal of patents.

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