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Show HN: Explore ideas whose patent protection expires today

patentsexpiringtoday.com

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Re: Show HN: Explore ideas whose patent protection expires today

#91

Post by amelius »

iplaw wrote: post #81
wetherbeei wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You run Google Patents? Where is the comment jar?

Yes, it would be great if patents could have user comments associated with them.

(The same can be said for publications in google scholar, perhaps you could pass it on to the appropriate team)

Re: Show HN: Explore ideas whose patent protection expires today

#92

Post by pbhjpbhj »

ska wrote: post #77
mcherm wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>this is typically all they are going to be looking at. //

Are you referring to the USPTO there, do you have a source?

Re: Show HN: Explore ideas whose patent protection expires today

#93

Post by coldpie »

wetherbeei wrote: post #72
niko001 wrote: post #2

The 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…

> 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.

This is a perfect example of why patents are harmful. The patent on C did not in any way help the person copying A + B, it was invented on its own. But now this new person can be punished simply for being equally as creative as the other guy. It's a huge disincentive on innovation. I understand the theory behind patents, but I have a really hard time believing anyone in history has ever actually used a patent to find out how a thing was made and then improved on it; or could not have done this equally as easy without patents. Even if you can point to one or two such examples, that still has to more than balance out the loss in innovation and increased legal costs created by uncertainty of IP legality.

Re: Show HN: Explore ideas whose patent protection expires today

#94

Post by BHSPitMonkey »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #88
wetherbeei wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Google Patents focuses on improving patent quality. // Could you go in to that a bit. There's been fulltext, full image databases with proximity searching and bespoke classifications and such for a while, how has Google Patents improved on that. How is it better than Espacenet for example? When I looked at patents a lot the biggest help would probably have been being able to get decent translations of Korean/Japanes…

I think they meant improving the quality of actual patents (by giving people tools to combat bogus patents), not necessarily improving on the patent browsing experience (though I'm sure they would argue that they try to do that too).

Re: Show HN: Explore ideas whose patent protection expires today

#95

Post by amelius »

atmosx wrote: post #21
swalsh wrote: post #4

Fellow hackers, a word of advice... always start with the marketing before building a product. I too think a power actuated toilet seat sounds like a fantastic foundation for a business, but it's what the market things... not what your gut thinks.

what the market (or anyone for the matter) thinks is not what drives the hacker mindset . The moment science, hackers and other kind of free thinkers start narrowing their ideas because of market or XYZ acceptance we're toasted. It's the entrepreneur mindset that you're talking about, which equally rare and valuable :-)

The entrepreneur is just a hacker/scientist/free thinker who deals with a few extra constraints.

Just like an artist is a free thinker who deals with a few less constraints.

Re: Show HN: Explore ideas whose patent protection expires today

#96

Post by blackflame7000 »

blizkreeg wrote: post #75

Does 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.

Sometimes the idea can be good, but the originator isn't capable of turning it into more. As just about any VC will tell you, the idea is just step 1.

Re: Show HN: Explore ideas whose patent protection expires today

#97

Post by agumonkey »

niko001 wrote: post #2

The 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 posted your site on reddit, someone is complaining that many patents are renewed and potentially not listed on your site.

https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/5lta71/patentse...

If you can do something about it it's cool otherwise well, still not bad.

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