Show HN: Explore ideas whose patent protection expires today

It also allows larger companies to sit back, and wait out small inventors to "give up" on a patent (due to it becoming too expensive to renew) that they are trying to sell to these same companies.

You might ask, though, why would somebody invent something that they didn't then market and manufacture themselves? Well - it happens, more often than not: Some inventions are created by hard work, sometimes at a large expense to a lone inventor, sometimes not, or a prototype or model can be made to illustrate the invention (which I don't think is a requirement anymore (?), but used to be) - but a full-scale implementation is beyond the inventor's finances or capabilities.

So they try to shop the patent around to companies or investors to get it to market. Sometimes, they succeed - and they sell it or otherwise license it out - and make a lot of money in the process. But often, these other parties just elect to "wait it out" - for the whole 20 years of the potential patent life if needed. In other words, rather than help someone else gain from their hard work and idea(s), and bring something to fill a possible need to market, they would rather "save that money" and wait it out - then when it expires, suddenly "bring a new device" to the market (perhaps even with their own extra patented bits attached to foil others!). All of this is legal, of course - nothing says these companies -must- purchase or license patents - but I personally find it a distasteful side-effect.

I posted another comment earlier on this - about something which happened in a similar manner to my brother-in-law. In his case, his up-front costs consisted of not only creating prototypes, but also having to create them by having a company manufacture plastic injection-molding molds for these prototypes - this wasn't cheap then, and still isn't cheap today. Today, though, it would be easier and cheaper for him to just 3D print his prototypes - but that wasn't the case back in the 1970s when he was working on his invention.

Between those costs, and the costs to patent and renew the patent over its life, he only broke even (roughly) after settling out-of-court with Bell when we found them infringing on the patent by importing infringing devices from a Chinese-based company (we were in a Walmart one day, and saw them being sold in the store).

Most inventions (and patents reflect this) are actually small improvements to certain parts of other inventions, which improve the system in such a manner as to be considered a patentable item of their own. As such, they tend to be small things, which when you look at them after the fact, seem to be obvious.

Maybe they were - but only to a particular person, who may also be somewhat versed in the art, and also willing to spend the money and time doing the "invention", who also doesn't think (or is aware) that nobody else has done the invention before (often, sometimes you might see something, and go "hey - this could be improved if they did this" - then think "but somebody has probably already done it, it is so simple" - and you never follow up - which if you had, you would have found that nobody did! Because they all thought the same thing!).

We see this often in software (also, there is the correlating idea of software that - after it is made and is popular - seemed too stupid for it to succeed before it did - Twitter, anyone?) - that there is a need for something, but everything thinks that either it has already been done, or that a new version wouldn't be substantially different or better than what is already out there - and so it doesn't get developed.

...Until someone does develop it - then we look at it, and smack our foreheads thinking "It is so obvious!" or "It is so simple!" or "I thought of that years ago!"

Maybe you did, or maybe it is - but you weren't the guy who followed up on it (or in many cases, you might actually follow up on it - but the market doesn't care or want it at that point - only to find that a decade or more later, that's when the market wants it - and someone else does it, while you aren't looking).