This IBM patent is practical and viable: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5588199
Show HN: Explore ideas whose patent protection expires today
71–80 of 148 posts
Re: Show HN: Explore ideas whose patent protection expires today
#72The majority [1] of patents are never commercially exploited or licensed - I wanted a way to browse recently expired patents to find hidden gems and get inspired by existing inventions. The site uses the recently released USPTO-API [2] to fetch newly expired patents each day. NB: The reason the most recent patents displayed are from 12/31 is because no new patents were granted during the first few days of January 199…
I run Google Patents (patents.google.com) - we've thought about including a way to search by expired patents (we have the expiration indicators), but in my opinion it gives a false sense of security. There's also http://freeip.mtu.edu/home/index.php, which searches over only expired patents.
The patent in question could have been improved upon, and that improvement can still be in force. Say someone patents a widget A + B, and later files a continuation A + B + C (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuing_patent_application). The first patent could be expired, but while building your copy of A + B you might come to the same conclusion that the invention also needs to include C (which is still in force) to actually work.
Google Patents focuses on improving patent quality. There's still uncertainty if a granted patent is actually valid. If we can improve the prior art finding process for inventors and examiners, then fewer overly-broad patents will be granted, and it will be easier to tell if an invention actually infringes a patent.
Then we can start to think about making patent information more useful for part of the original purpose - as a transfer of knowledge to the public domain in exchange for a temporary exclusive right.
Re: Show HN: Explore ideas whose patent protection expires today
#73Re: Show HN: Explore ideas whose patent protection expires today
#74The majority [1] of patents are never commercially exploited or licensed - I wanted a way to browse recently expired patents to find hidden gems and get inspired by existing inventions. The site uses the recently released USPTO-API [2] to fetch newly expired patents each day. NB: The reason the most recent patents displayed are from 12/31 is because no new patents were granted during the first few days of January 199…
This would be even more helpful if you could do X days in advance of expiration rather than day of expiration.
Re: Show HN: Explore ideas whose patent protection expires today
#75Does anyone think there are viable/profitable business ideas in there? If the original inventors didn't bother to build something out of it, I wonder if it's because the patents themselves are "good thought experiments" or if the inventors lacked the business wherewithal to make it happen.
Re: Show HN: Explore ideas whose patent protection expires today
#76Does anyone think there are viable/profitable business ideas in there? If the original inventors didn't bother to build something out of it, I wonder if it's because the patents themselves are "good thought experiments" or if the inventors lacked the business wherewithal to make it happen.
Most definitely. In my experience ideas are rarely valuable by themselves. Rather an idea is valuable when implemented by someone who have what it takes to see it through.
Simply put, not a lot of people have what it takes just because they filed a patent.
Re: Show HN: Explore ideas whose patent protection expires today
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
"So no one can re-patent the expired patents?" Correct. To get a new patent, your invention by novel and unobvious. If it has been patented before, it will not be novel when attempting to "re-patent" it. Therefore, re-patenting is not possible.
Furthermore, lots of things are considered "not novel" or "obvious" by nearly every expert in the field, but not by patent examiners. But one specific area which patent examiners are VERY good at reviewing is old patents. So re-patenting old patented inventions becomes impossible, not only in theory but in practice also.
It's not that they are very good at it - it's that this is typically all they are going to be looking at. They're also better (and have better tools) at searching patent databases than nearly anyone who doesn't do this daily.
Re: Show HN: Explore ideas whose patent protection expires today
#78This IBM patent is practical and viable: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5588199
It also expired at the end of 2000
https://fees.uspto.gov/MaintenanceFees/fees/details?applicat...
Re: Show HN: Explore ideas whose patent protection expires today
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
They seem trivial now, 20 some odd years after the fact.
I once wanted to build a system, and decided to browse through patents. I realized that my system would easily infringe 100+ of patents. Many of them were actually very recent.
Ok? That doesn't really disagree with my point.
Re: Show HN: Explore ideas whose patent protection expires today
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing about a lot of inventions is that they do sometimes look "trivial" after the fact; in other words, things look really simple once its been done! 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…
I once designed a system that, I latter realized, would infringe over 100 patents. Am I supposed to make my design worse just because other people thought of these things first?
Or you license it from the patent holders