3 ms·
But presumably the big companies have patents that read on other parts of the device, so that they can just prevent any devices from being made altogether. It s
by ssp 17y ago
But presumably the big companies have patents that read on other parts of the device, so that they can just prevent any devices from being made altogether. It seems this would give them all the advantages in a negotiation.
- wtallis 17y agoActually, in this case, I don't think there are any major looming patent threats. Part of this is because this industry is much slower-moving than software (so that 20 years isn't forever), but part of it is because what we've done is sufficiently different that no reasonable patent for an existing device could cover the core of our invention. (As I said above, conventional wisdom was that this was impossible, right up until we made it work.) One way of describing our research would be to say that this technology has been evolving down a certain path for 50 years, and we backed up a ways and went off in a different direction. (It's not quite that revolutionary, but it isn't that active a field.)