4 ms·

It seems kind of pointless to take a patent on something even /you/ think will only become big in 15-20 years...

• sp332 16y ago
  The small chance of licensing the patent later is all the incentive Kodak had for putting money into this project.
  • zeteo 16y ago
    You just seem better off keeping your research secret for 10-15 years, and /then/ taking the patent.
    • sp332 16y ago
      The point of the patent system is to encourage inventors to publish their inventions without fear of having the idea stolen.
      • mcknz 16y ago
        Odd. I always thought it was litigation.
        • brazzy 16y ago
          Well, you thought wrong. Patents were intended (and, for the longest time, worked quite well) as a trade between inventors and society: the inventor gets a legal 20 year monopoly on using his invention, and the rest of the world learns how exactly it works so that they can use it freely afterwards.
          • mcknz 16y ago
            sorry, forgot the sarcasm tags.
      • zeteo 16y ago
        But the whole idea of my comment was that patents expire in 20 years!
        • mcknz 16y ago
          Then again you run the risk of someone else beating you to the patent. I love those stories about how the famous creator/inventor of [some idea or device] published the discovery an hour/day/week before someone else.
    • ars 16y ago
      That's correct, but you run the risk of someone else patenting the idea first. So it's risky - but could pay off if you invent something far ahead of its time.
  • jerf 16y ago
    Since a patent lasts 17 years (give or take various exceptions), I think the point is that taking one out 17+ years in advance is sort of silly, specifically because of the time lag. I'd suggest that it's still worthwhile just to make sure that someone else doesn't file it; it's better to have something like this publicly available so nobody can sue you, even without the monopoly, rather than run the risk of getting it patented by someone else and then have to litigate the prior art.
    • 10ren 16y ago
      But if you have developed something truly ahead of the state-of-the-art, disclosing it gives your competitors a leg-up. Another problem with patenting it is that it gets more expensive to maintain each year (there are increasing annual fees), so by the end, the total expense would be enormous; hard to justify if there is zero revenue coming in. [I'm going by Australian law here, assuming US is the same] Hmmm..... I wonder if this means that many patents "on the books" have actually expired for this reason, before the full 17/20 years?
• JacobAldridge 16y ago
  Good rule of thumb for any tech development (including startups) - if you're working on an idea, someone else is also working on exactly that idea. Of course, that won't be true in many cases. The patent is there for the times that it is.
  • zeteo 16y ago
    That doesn't matter if the technology is very unlikely to be commercialized within the lifetime of a patent, does it? Even if the other party takes the time and expense to file the patent, you both still end up with zero.
  • jrockway 16y ago
    A legal framework for invalidating other people's independent discoveries? Sounds like a great idea.
    • JacobAldridge 16y ago
      "Ay, there's the rub" - Hamlet Act III Scene i
      • deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]