Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Explore ideas whose patent protection expires today

patentsexpiringtoday.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 148 posts

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

#131

Post by kuschku »

wlesieutre wrote: post #110
Retr0spectrum wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mechanism is massively overcomplicated. It almost looks like a joke.

It looks like the design goal was "How can I turn a traditional mousetrap into a humane mousetrap?" There would be more efficient ways to build the same product from scratch, but it's a fun thought experiment.

There’s far simpler, already existing humane mouse traps. Where you have a small cage with an opening at one side, the opening as door pulled up against a spring which would push it down, and then locked with a lever. If the mouse touches the cheese, the spring-release of that activates the lever of the door, and traps the mouse in.

https://www.knauber-freizeit.de/mam/celum/celum_assets/88041...

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

#132

Post by ajmurmann »

kevinwang wrote: post #127
ajmurmann wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patents and copyright work quite differently and patents aren't really appropriate for software. Patents allow you to be too granular in what you protect to make sense for software. I think a good comparison would be protecting combinations of two musical notes in music. This would dramatically impact creation of new songs because you are protecting something too trivial. The equivalent happened when software patents…

I feel like you're attacking our specific implementation of patents (and especially software patents) in America. I'm talking about the idea of copy protection. Is it an incorrect assertion that in a world without any copy protection, people would be free to copy any invention they wanted? Thus, the original inventors' version of the product (which would be exactly the same as the copied version) would have no differ…

Yes, that's a very different point that I mostly agree with. In addition the secrecy that also gets caused by rampant copying also would be/was a massive issue and was the driving force behind the introduction of patents. Of course patenting "XOR" and protecting the stupid mouse forever are a totally different issue as you pointed out.

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

#139

Post by icebraining »

jamesfisher wrote: post #87

Is there an analogous service for copyrighted works? "Explore books whose copyright expires today"?

Unfortunately, if you live in the US, the answer is nothing: https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2017/pre-197

"no published works will enter our public domain until 2019."

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

#140

Post by TeMPOraL »

kevinwang wrote: post #102
coldpie wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Without patents, inventing would not be profitable. All products would have exact copycats and ripoffs.

It could be, however, if you limited patent lifetime to reasonable market turnover rates. Say, a year or two. It's enough to establish the brand, and after that, competition is healthy.

Patents were meant to be a carrot - a way to enrich society with inventions by hacking the market to incentivize it. Instead, companies now are given a free carrot factory, so they can (and do) show middle finger to society and profit off inventions while keeping them away from people for a very long time.

Post reply on HN