Patents are about sharing information – don't shroud them in secrecy
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Re: Patents are about sharing information – don't shroud them in secrecy
#2Unless you have a war chest behind you getting a patent is a huge gamble especially when your invention becomes successful. When it does those with a war chest jump in and use the PTAB to invalid your patent. You can even hear judges on Shark Tank like Damon John say/ponder on the show is a patent worth getting as he notes the PTAB issue.
Further, Google and it's ilk changed the game in their favor when they lined the pockets of congressmen/women to change the law from first to invent(those with money) to first to file(the true inventors with little resources/power).
Re: Patents are about sharing information – don't shroud them in secrecy
#3Unless you have a war chest behind you getting a patent is a huge gamble especially when your invention becomes successful. When it does those with a war chest jump in and use the PTAB to invalid your patent. You can even hear judges on Shark Tank like Damon John say/ponder on the show is a patent worth getting as he notes the PTAB issue. Further, Google and it's ilk changed the game in their favor when they lined th…
If your goal is to exit early through (acquisition by a company with pre-existing complimentary war chest) then it's in your best interest to file for a patent as they can acquire and defend.
Re: Patents are about sharing information – don't shroud them in secrecy
#4Patents are primarily about getting a limited time monopoly. Publicly disclosing the invention is just a direct consequence and not a virtue of the patent system. So please stop marketing it like that. In many cases it is completely irrelevant because the invention is sold and can be reverse engineered.
Also: > Encouraging people to share information so that others can use it to make further advances is the whole point of the patent system.
This is meant as a joke, right? Is locking down a field of engineering for 20 years promoting further progress? Maybe it promotes the invention of sub-optimal solutions to work around the patent but that's about it. The latest example I can think of is all-in-one liquid cooling designs: https://www.gamersnexus.net/hwreviews/3517-swiftech-h360x3-d...
Re: Patents are about sharing information – don't shroud them in secrecy
#5I do research in computer science and in the last few years, lots of trivial and dumb patents in my field appeared out of nowhere. However, I can only assume that they really are trivial because they are written in a way to claim a lot without actually describing how any of it works. These patents have 0% information in them. What's more, they all read like a rewrite of papers that were published years ago (before the date filed) into lawyer speak with no amount of information. I have no idea how any of these were ever granted since there is prior art all over the place.
Edit: Okay to be fair, there is maybe not 0% but 10% information in these patents, but it's encoded into unintelligible lawyer/patent talk that is not at all fit to convey technical information. They are written in a way to get a monoply on results without disclosing how these results are obtained.
Re: Patents are about sharing information – don't shroud them in secrecy
#6Patents are primarily about getting a limited time monopoly. Publicly disclosing the invention is just a direct consequence and not a virtue of the patent system. So please stop marketing it like that. In many cases it is completely irrelevant because the invention is sold and can be reverse engineered. Also: > Encouraging people to share information so that others can use it to make further advances is the whole poi…
> Publicly disclosing the invention is just a direct consequence and not a virtue of the patent system.
Umm, no.
That was the whole idea behind the system -- to make your information public in exchange for a limited time monopoly on your invention.
Before this people just kept things secret and tried to enforce a monopoly through things like guild memberships and whatnot.
Re: Patents are about sharing information – don't shroud them in secrecy
#7(patent application) = (original science/engineering document) + (lawyer)
In my experience, the (lawyer) part of this fucks the document up so much that it's too depressing to contemplate, and I just let whatever meaningless bastardization of the original go the patent office.
Re: Patents are about sharing information – don't shroud them in secrecy
#8Patents are primarily about getting a limited time monopoly. Publicly disclosing the invention is just a direct consequence and not a virtue of the patent system. So please stop marketing it like that. In many cases it is completely irrelevant because the invention is sold and can be reverse engineered. Also: > Encouraging people to share information so that others can use it to make further advances is the whole poi…
The whole original idea behind the patent system is that you would be granted a time-limited monopoly in exchange for making your idea “patent” (frequently pronounced “pay-tent”, and meaning “obvious”), rather than trying to maintain it as a trade secret (in the formal, legal sense).
You can argue that the monopoly term is too long, or that patents are being granted on things that are already obvious, or that you don’t like the whole idea of it; but the fact is that the monopoly vs. disclosure trade-off, and its public utility, was and is the intention behind the patent system.
Re: Patents are about sharing information – don't shroud them in secrecy
#9Patents are primarily about getting a limited time monopoly. Publicly disclosing the invention is just a direct consequence and not a virtue of the patent system. So please stop marketing it like that. In many cases it is completely irrelevant because the invention is sold and can be reverse engineered. Also: > Encouraging people to share information so that others can use it to make further advances is the whole poi…
Before patents, businesses depended fully on trade secret, meaning developments would be made and lost over and over, and progress on a particular technology would be a lot slower because nobody could ever build off of eachother's work.
The patent system today is not really what it was meant to be, but the original patent system I think was an improvement over the status quo of the day.
Re: Patents are about sharing information – don't shroud them in secrecy
#10Unless you have a war chest behind you getting a patent is a huge gamble especially when your invention becomes successful. When it does those with a war chest jump in and use the PTAB to invalid your patent. You can even hear judges on Shark Tank like Damon John say/ponder on the show is a patent worth getting as he notes the PTAB issue. Further, Google and it's ilk changed the game in their favor when they lined th…
> Further, Google and it's ilk changed the game in their favor when they lined the pockets of congressmen/women to change the law from first to invent(those with money) to first to file(the true inventors with little resources/power).
But it seems like the vast majority of the world uses first-to-file.