Archive for June 14th, 2003

2003.06.14

2003.06.14

there is a strange disease out there afflicting the greedy folk (and turning a few normal people into greedy folk). it deals with intellectual property. i’ve talked about copyright before, but i don’t think i’ve dealt with patents. sfgate recently had an article about it. the article tries to remain neutral on the subject, but i was disgusted.

the problem is that any whacko can patent anything, or at least try to patent it. often these are items like a device that will automatically peel potatoes (quite a boon for GIs at bootcamp) or for a gadget that alerts you when your water is boiling so you can put your pasta in it. these are often innocuous and innocent, and sometimes profitable for the person who invents the thing.

however, these days you can patent anything. there are companies that hold patents for ways to conduct business, which is bullshit because people have been doing business for thousands of years. yet these people have been granted patents for their ideas and therefore if you conduct a business transaction in the manner their patent describes they can charge you, sue you, or stop you.

there is a whole movement, according to the article, of businesses and lawyers who do nothing but look at what competitors may or may not try to do, or what the competitor may or may not need to continue with their current process of research and development. these lawyers then patent the idea before the competitor in order to stymy or shut down their development and/or make a lot of money.

there is a whole movement, according to the article, of businesses and lawyers who try to predict what another business will need in order to continue their research and development and patent that thing first. the motives for doing this are varied, from eliminating (or at least making it difficult) for a competitor to continue developing a technology, to forcing the competitor to license your patent, to simply being greedy and wanting their money.

what gets me is these patents do not even have to be real or potentially real. you can think up a technology that will convert lead to gold, draw a diagram, and attempt to patent it. likely, if someone hasn’t already acquired that patent, you will then hold the patent to turning lead into gold. this seems ridiculous to a rational person. you do not have to actually change lead into gold, or (if a device of some sort) build the thing and prove it works. all you need is a piece of paper with a drawing and a description.

imagine someone trying to patent the way you think. laugh if you will, but biotech companies are already patenting DNA, present in every life form on the planet (that i’m aware of)… why not thought processes, too? i should try to patent this: “the process of thought that when anything sexual is sensed (sight, sound, taste, touch, smell, etc) by an individual, along with an individuals resonse to said sensory input (the result of which may or may not be sexual arousal).” i’ll submit an application to the patent office with some vague drawing of this process along with the fee. within a certain amount of time i am certain i’ll be awarded the patent.

woohoo! now i can go after everyone and demand that they pay me for having sexual thoughts *if* there is something sexual that stimulates that thought (or even if they don’t have a sexual thought). i can walk up to anybody on the street, show them a picture of two people having sex and that person would have to pay me. the only way out of paying me is to sense nothing sexual in the world at all which we all know is impossible.

i know you’re laughing at my idea, but it really isn’t so far fetched. things we take for granted everyday are being patented by some bozo somewhere who will eventually decide to get rich by enforcing their ridiculous rights.

hyperlinks (those things on webpages that you click to get to another web page or another site on the internet) are patented. i suppose everytime i click on a link a penny should fall into the coffers of the patent holder… actually, the patent was thrown out of court when british telecom tried to sue prodigy (an ISP) and get them to pay some amount of money. read the whole history here.

ever wonder why we don’t see pizza shaped like an icecream cone? probably because this guy owns the patent. that would explain why innovation in the pizza industry is crawling at a snail’s pace; someone is patenting all the great ideas for pizza!

do you like to swing on… swings? be careful, you might have to pay up.

want to make the girls tolerate going down on you at all? have an idea for a way to make your lower expiation “tasty”? patent it! oh, whoops, too late. (found this one on the presurfer).

the us patent office says applications for patent must be new, cannot be obvious, and that there cannot be evidence of “prior art” (meaning there can’t be any examples of this thing or method already in existence). it seems to me that i should patent this, then:

“a system by which patents are issued fairly; with regard to common sense; with regard to novelty, prior art; with regard to due process, with a means of checks and balances. items to be patented must be built or demonstratable at the time of application. exclusive rights to patents will be for 10 years for physical items, and 5 years for non-physical (process based or methods) patent. after the exclusivity period the patent falls into the public domain.”

the day i am granted that patent will be the day the universe ends.

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for further quick reading if you are interested, i also found the origin of patents:

When Henry VI founded Eton college in the fifteenth century he also introduced something that doesn’t find its way into the history books quite so often: the patent. This particular patent was granted to John of Utynam in 1449 who was making stained glass for the windows using a method he’d brought with him from the continent. Henry’s august family continued with this new -fangled idea, giving rise to the world’s longest-running patent system. By the reign of Elizabeth I some fifty patents were granted each year.