From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@www.aeiveos.com)
Date: Tue Dec 21 1999 - 10:19:55 MST
On Mon, 20 Dec 1999, Eugene Leitl wrote:
>
> > MMB
> >
> > PS: if you can patent gizmos that run off muscles even though the
> > technology/power budget isn't viable today, that's one more sign of how
> > broken even the physical-artifact patent system is...
>
> Yeah, patents are quite ridiculous.
>
Not so. While I agree that in some cases patents have gone overboard
because the examiners are allowing patents on things that anyone in the
field thinks are obvious, patents on future tech *are* very useful.
(Now lets think about this -- "Isn't it obvious and useful we should make
the user enter "two-clicks" instead of "one-click" to purchase this book???
Really!!)
The patent law simply says that it should be "non-obvious" and "useful".
It doesn't say that it has to be cost effective or sellable at the time
the patent claims are filed.
In fact Eric Drexler and Keith Henson have patents on space devices
that will probably expire before we have affordable access to space
that might make them valuable. But when they filed the patents they
had no way of knowing whether they might be useful in 3 years or 30.
I'm considering all kinds of ideas with regard to Biobots for which
the technology is just about available. I wouldn't even think of
starting something like this without a fair hope of getting patent
protection on a chunk of the technology or process. Why? Because
a big Pharma company could come along and pour 10x the money at
it and unless I had patent protection I'd be standing in the street
with a tin cup.
Patent protection is critical to enabling visionary people to get
financial backing to test innovative ideas. You can't build
a company fast enough to keep the wolves away from your markets
unless you have legal means of protecting those innovations.
If you could develop "physical" innovations and build markets
and customer loyalty as fast as you can write software, then
I'd probably take a dimmer view of patents, but I don't see
an easy way to do that with the world as it stands today.
Robert
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