9 ms·

Patents: how and why to get them

145 points by dedalus 8y ago

jacques_chester 8y ago
So I filed and was (after nearly 5 years) granted a patent late last year. It cost me around fifty thousand dollars. I have mixed feelings about whether it was worth it. > Yet some lawyers actually recommend against it, since if you do find prior art, you're now willfully infringing on it, and should cease and desist. I am not a lawyer. The advice I have seen from actual lawyers is that this is essentially an urban legend based on a bloke-in-a-bar-told-me level of legal understanding. If you are going to file, why piss away tens of thousands of dollars on filing expenses when you can spend a few days (or pay a professional searcher $1500-2500) to see if it's worth bothering? The "never search, it triples your death-mo-trons!!1!" comes from an easy legal defence for megacorps. Being able to stand up in court and say "we didn't know about patent X because it is against company policy to search" is much easier than a protracted, expensive and chancy legal discovery process to try and determine who read what, when, and what they may or may not have understood. > Don't expect a patent lawyer to honestly tell you he doesn't know your domain. Actually, do expect a patent lawyer to honestly tell you their expertise. They have a fiduciary duty to clients. Turns out you can't charge $300 or $600 or $900 an hour if you've been disbarred. But do ask about their credentials and experience and do choose according to that expertise. The key is that, having told you their expertise, lawyers will still act on your instructions. I can ask my lawyer to do my laundry if I want. I will be advised that this is not their specialty and that it would be a poor use of my money. But I could insist and my lawyer will shrug and make the arrangements, for several hundred dollars per hour. I did a lot of the legwork on my patent myself -- I drafted a lot of it, carefully studied cited art and wrote my objections etc etc. I am, after all, the person in world who knows it best. But my lawyer could have done it too, it would've just taken longer and cost a lot more. One last piece of advice I got about law firms. The $800-$1000/hr places are big city firms. When you hire one, the USPTO examiners will assume you are a GigantoMegaGloboInc and examine accordingly. Sometimes they dislike the booming sound of heavy-gauge letterhead being fired across their bow. A smaller firm can typically give you closer attention and is less likely to seem as impersonal.
- danieltillett 8y ago
  What was your patent?
  - jacques_chester 8y ago
    Fraud-resistant, privacy-preserving scheme for tracking user visits to websites. It's since been cited against other applications, but for the specification, not the claims. I described what seemed to me like a fairly obvious scheme for feeding fraud patterns back to authentication servers (Fig. 5). https://patents.google.com/patent/US9853964B2 https://patents.google.com/patent/US9853964B2
    - uh_what 8y ago
      You should edit your comment to remove a certain word beginning with the letter "o". It could cost you big time in court if someone decides to infringe your patent.
      - jacques_chester 8y ago
        I like abundant caution. In any case, I refer curious infringers to the claims.
      - patentatt 8y ago
        Meh, obvious to him. He may be a super genius for whom many novel and otherwise non obvious things are obvious.
        jacques_chester 8y ago
        My genius mostly lies in concealing how dumb I actually am.
- ridgeguy 8y ago
  Mostly agree. Except for prior art search costs. Expect a good prior art search to cost more like $10K. It depends a little on the field (cold fusion prior art search would be lots less), but if you're in chip design, energy storage, diamond synthesis - $10K will be your starting point cost.
paulie_a 8y ago
I looked into getting a patent and realized they are basically useless. Why bother for the cost and enforcement?
- patentatt 8y ago
  This is more a critique of the legal system at large than the patent system in particular, isn’t it? And, truth is, if it’s really truly a slam dunk, no questions asked, clear cut infringement, just go pro se. But that’s not the case pretty much ever, so yeah, you need to pay the people who will help you.
- mchahn 8y ago
  > Why bother for the cost and enforcement? The cost is not a big deal. Spending 10's of thousands for a product earning millions is not a big deal. However enforcement is ridiculous. One of my patents was for a very unique product idea that no other sane person would come up with. One of our distributors announced an exact copy product. We called in lawyers and they agreed we had an excellent case. At the end of the meeting they said they'd need a million dollar retainer. It wasn't worth it. We checked and couldn't get a better price. All in all the experience has spoiled me on the idea of ever patenting anything again.
  - paulie_a 8y ago
    Exactly. honestly why even spend the ten grand if you can't reasonably enforce it. What's the point?
    - _rpd 8y ago
      For smaller concerns, it is one of the few mechanisms that larger competitors actually respect. A small patent portfolio can form a basis for negotiations of all kinds that simply wouldn't take place otherwise.
      - mchahn 8y ago
        Yes, the first thing VCs ask is whether you have patents.
viraptor 8y ago
Here's something I didn't know before it happened: a company can list you as an inventor on a patent application and file it even if, instead of signing the documents for the legal dept, you respond with a list of prior art. But that's probably only likely in large corps which file lots of research anyway.
- jacques_chester 8y ago
  If you contributed, you have to be named as an inventor. This is quite distinct from whether the submission is actually patentable. If you didn't think it was, you are able to file to bring the prior art to the attention of the examiner. (Again: I am not lawyer.) (Edit: I defer to the comment from patentatt)
- patentatt 8y ago
  An inventor has to sign a declaration stating that they attest to the patent application, the company can’t get a patent without it.[1] So if you don’t execute the dec, they can’t get the patent granted. They do have up until that time, however, so a company could hypothetically put your name on it through prosecution without your input, but they can’t get the patent issued. But by sending them prior art, they do have to forward that on to the patent office, to fail to do so would be a clear violation of their duty to disclose.[2] You could also anonymously submit the prior art, in the case that your company chooses to violate their legal duties but you also want to not get fired. If you believe that the patent may be valid, but you for some reason insist that you in fact are not the inventor, take it up with your attorney first. If for some weird reason the attorney still insists on listing you as the inventor, you could probably take some kind of legal action either at the PTO or in a federal court to assert that you’re not an inventor. Usually this happens in the case that someone is trying to assert that they are an inventor, however, for obvious reasons. But, if the company does get a patent for something even though you may disagree on the merits, you may be obligated under your employment agreement to be cooperative in signing the dec and assignment, but that’s a matter of contract and employment law, not patent law. [1] There are provisions for hostile, missing, or deceased inventors, but if your objection to the patent is only technical or prior art based, that’s probably not the appropriate way to handle it. [2] The duty to disclose is a BFD. If your middle management is oblivious or ignorant, run it up the flagpole to an attorney. Someone with an actual license to practice law and preferably admitted to the patent bar. They will listen to you, I guarantee it.
georgemcbay 8y ago
> Getting patents is a lot like branding. The trick is to call old things new names. This sad reality is why a lot of engineers look at patents like (to use the article's own analogy) cannibalism. Patents, IMO, would be fine if they were only granted for truly novel inventions. Jefferson's writings on patents make it quite clear he would be pretty aghast at the current state of the patent system and the prevalence of "X, but for Y" patents. See, for example: http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/thomas-jefferson/letters-of-thomas-jefferson/jefl220.php http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/thomas-jefferson/letter... "I assume it is a Lemma, that it is the invention of the machine itself, which is to give a patent right, and not the application of it to any particular purpose, of which it is susceptible. If one person invents a knife convenient for pointing our pens, another cannot have a patent right for the same knife to point our pencils. A compass was invented for navigating the sea; another could not have a patent right for using it to survey land. A machine for threshing wheat has been invented in Scotland; a second person cannot get a patent right for the same machine to thresh oats, a third rye, a fourth peas, a fifth clover, etc. A string of buckets is invented and used for raising water, ore, etc., can a second have a patent right to the same machine for raising wheat, a third oats, a fourth rye, a fifth peas, etc?" But today we have SO many patents that are just "X, but on a computer". The need for true novelty has been completely lost, and with that the system has become a nightmare.
- jacques_chester 8y ago
  > But today we have SO many patents that are just "X, but on a computer". This is a lot less common than it used to be: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Corp._v._CLS_Bank_International https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Corp._v._CLS_Bank_Intern...
  - Nomentatus 8y ago
    Less common meaning more frequently overturned.
- mnm1 8y ago
  Too bad they couldn't get this type of language, details, and examples into the constitution itself. Our patent system might not have been the giant piece of oppressive shit it has become if they had. That would apply to other areas of the constitution as well. If the founders had provided more details and examples, it would give judges and legislators a much clearer idea of their intentions and hopefully make it much harder for them to intentionally misinterpret words, even to the point of redefining meanings of words and phrases to absurd values that no one agrees to but the judges themselves.
transitivebs 8y ago
I initially read this as "Parents: how and why to get them" and I was like oh damn, you can do that after being born?! lmaooooooooooo
- tialaramex 8y ago
  Adoption. It's legal not only at birth but even into adulthood. And Japan used to be (maybe still is?) really into adopting a smart young adult to take over a family business. So you've got some 200 year old family business, but each generation didn't miraculously inherit the business acumen and speciality skills needed for that business, they just adopted someone who had them into the family. Clever.
- sbhn 8y ago
  I keep reading ‘patients’, why would I need any patients? I’m not a doctor, strange article.
dosshell 8y ago
The article forget to mention that patents is per country. This means that you have to choose which countries you want to protect yourself in. You also have to translate the application to the language to those countries and file it there. Just because you get a patent in US does not mean that you will be granted one in Germany for example. My experience is that it is harder to get a patent in EU (better prior art check etc). The countries you choose not to patent in are free to use your claims and specifications as much as they want. (but they can not sell, marketing etc in the protected ones) What can be patented can also slightly differ, specially in SW.
- Nomentatus 8y ago
  But make sure you patent in your own country: "At least one applicant (either a physical or legal person) must be a national or resident of a contracting state to the PCT; otherwise, no PCT filing date is accorded.[14]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_Cooperation_Treaty#Filing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_Cooperation_Treaty#Fili...
fern12 8y ago
>When you submit a patent application, it becomes public forever, even if it's rejected. You will have paid legal fees with the end result of granting competitors access to your ideas. Not entirely true. If you don't want an application to publish, there are options available. Under certain circumstances (i.e., you are 100% certain that you do not want to file for foreign patent protection in other countries), you can file with a non-publication request, and the application will not become public until it proceeds to issuance as a patent. If it never proceeds to issuance as a patent, then filing it with a non-pub request will at least make it harder to find. It will then only become publicly available (in this case, in the USPTO's Public PAIR database) if it's referenced as a priority app in another published application or issued patent. If it's abandoned and never referred to again in any application, then you have to file a petition to gain access to the file wrapper contents.
JepZ 8y ago
> Because searching prior art is hard. One of the points why software patents are so problematic. If there would be a search engine, where you could enter your function (concrete implementation) and it would come back with the patent fees you would have to pay for the next 5 years on a monthly basis and a checkout button, there would be a lot less resistance against the system. Not because anybody would like the idea of patents any more, but because there would be an easy way of getting around a lot of legal uncertainty. Btw. If the patent system will not change, that will be a cool idea for an AI startup in 2060 ;-)
xstartup 8y ago
As someone who has multiple startups. Here are the main benefits of patents: 1. Helps in IPR negotiations. When multiple startups are competing in same space and poaching same employees, highly likely your tech will end up being similar to your competitor. Maybe some of the processes are exact copies. Then if you've no patents and you get sued, good luck defending yourself. We solve it by creating landmines of patents around our actual application. So, that if we end up infringing someone else's patent, we'll be able to find some of their infringement then negotiate the settlement. If you've nothing, you can't defend and your settlement will not be something in your favor. Conversation with competitor: Mate! you violated my patent X and I violated your patent Y, we'll get nothing out of the legal battle, the damage is of the same amount. Why not stay quiet and keep the lights on? Who doesn't love peace? 2. Patents in employee's name often boost their confidence (if not their wealth). So, you get some productivity boost from their motivation. Sometimes, it's like keeping a score for them and we payout enough to host a memorable dinner with their family. Conversation with Self: You know like I've 15 patents under my belt already and 5 more pending. I am an expert already I think. Everyone will be proud of me. 3. Keeping new entrants out. Conversation with Self: Oh, it will be expensive to navigate this patent landmine, so let's choose some other niche/industry for my new startup idea.
- jwildeboer 8y ago
  Thank you for summing up all the problems patents cause in a market. You just made the point why we must get rid of patents ASAP :)
  - ss2003 8y ago
    I doubt they will every go away. You have to make peace with that.
  - jeffreyrogers 8y ago
    You can't get rid of patents by arguing that they distort markets. That's the entire point of them in the first place. To incentive people to create new things by restricting competition for a limited period of time.
neverartful 8y ago
I have an idea that I believe is patentable that I've been sitting on for several years. I came up with the idea while working for a previous employer, but not in the context of my job (I was thinking how to solve a need in my personal life). I have never pursued patents (on this idea, nor any other). Would there be any benefit to me to disclose this idea to my current employer as a potentially patentable idea? I have no intention of pursuing a patent on my own. I may intend to actually implement the idea on my own (to solve my own needs), not in context of a business.
- makewavesnotwar 8y ago
  I would say that there's no benefit to disclosing it to your employer based on your explanation. Patents are for protecting the inventor while time and money is invested in seeing an invention through to market. If your employer is the ideal producer for your concept and you want to limit their competition, then I suppose you could. But if you wanted to change jobs or were laid off, etc you would theoretically lose a bargaining chip and would have made any potential employer worse off by limiting their ability to also implement your idea. If it's something that you want to protect for your own use, you could put basic substance of the patent application in a YouTube video or something and release it as public domain. (IANAL so YouTube may be ill-advised) Also, life is unpredictable and you can sell/license a patented idea. Having more safety nets is better than less.

145 points by dedalus 8y ago

So I filed and was (after nearly 5 years) granted a patent late last year. It cost me around fifty thousand dollars. I have mixed feelings about whether it was worth it. > Yet some lawyers actually recommend against it, since if you do find prior art, you're now willfully infringing on it, and should cease and desist. I am not a lawyer. The advice I have seen from actual lawyers is that this is essentially an urban legend based on a bloke-in-a-bar-told-me level of legal understanding. If you are going to file, why piss away tens of thousands of dollars on filing expenses when you can spend a few days (or pay a professional searcher $1500-2500) to see if it's worth bothering? The "never search, it triples your death-mo-trons!!1!" comes from an easy legal defence for megacorps. Being able to stand up in court and say "we didn't know about patent X because it is against company policy to search" is much easier than a protracted, expensive and chancy legal discovery process to try and determine who read what, when, and what they may or may not have understood. > Don't expect a patent lawyer to honestly tell you he doesn't know your domain. Actually, do expect a patent lawyer to honestly tell you their expertise. They have a fiduciary duty to clients. Turns out you can't charge $300 or $600 or $900 an hour if you've been disbarred. But do ask about their credentials and experience and do choose according to that expertise. The key is that, having told you their expertise, lawyers will still act on your instructions. I can ask my lawyer to do my laundry if I want. I will be advised that this is not their specialty and that it would be a poor use of my money. But I could insist and my lawyer will shrug and make the arrangements, for several hundred dollars per hour. I did a lot of the legwork on my patent myself -- I drafted a lot of it, carefully studied cited art and wrote my objections etc etc. I am, after all, the person in world who knows it best. But my lawyer could have done it too, it would've just taken longer and cost a lot more. One last piece of advice I got about law firms. The $800-$1000/hr places are big city firms. When you hire one, the USPTO examiners will assume you are a GigantoMegaGloboInc and examine accordingly. Sometimes they dislike the booming sound of heavy-gauge letterhead being fired across their bow. A smaller firm can typically give you closer attention and is less likely to seem as impersonal.

danieltillett 8y ago
What was your patent?
- jacques_chester 8y ago
  Fraud-resistant, privacy-preserving scheme for tracking user visits to websites. It's since been cited against other applications, but for the specification, not the claims. I described what seemed to me like a fairly obvious scheme for feeding fraud patterns back to authentication servers (Fig. 5). https://patents.google.com/patent/US9853964B2 https://patents.google.com/patent/US9853964B2
  - uh_what 8y ago
    You should edit your comment to remove a certain word beginning with the letter "o". It could cost you big time in court if someone decides to infringe your patent.
    - jacques_chester 8y ago
      I like abundant caution. In any case, I refer curious infringers to the claims.
    - patentatt 8y ago
      Meh, obvious to him. He may be a super genius for whom many novel and otherwise non obvious things are obvious.
      - jacques_chester 8y ago
        My genius mostly lies in concealing how dumb I actually am.
ridgeguy 8y ago
Mostly agree. Except for prior art search costs. Expect a good prior art search to cost more like $10K. It depends a little on the field (cold fusion prior art search would be lots less), but if you're in chip design, energy storage, diamond synthesis - $10K will be your starting point cost.

paulie_a 8y ago

I looked into getting a patent and realized they are basically useless. Why bother for the cost and enforcement?

patentatt 8y ago
This is more a critique of the legal system at large than the patent system in particular, isn’t it? And, truth is, if it’s really truly a slam dunk, no questions asked, clear cut infringement, just go pro se. But that’s not the case pretty much ever, so yeah, you need to pay the people who will help you.
mchahn 8y ago
> Why bother for the cost and enforcement? The cost is not a big deal. Spending 10's of thousands for a product earning millions is not a big deal. However enforcement is ridiculous. One of my patents was for a very unique product idea that no other sane person would come up with. One of our distributors announced an exact copy product. We called in lawyers and they agreed we had an excellent case. At the end of the meeting they said they'd need a million dollar retainer. It wasn't worth it. We checked and couldn't get a better price. All in all the experience has spoiled me on the idea of ever patenting anything again.
- paulie_a 8y ago
  Exactly. honestly why even spend the ten grand if you can't reasonably enforce it. What's the point?
  - _rpd 8y ago
    For smaller concerns, it is one of the few mechanisms that larger competitors actually respect. A small patent portfolio can form a basis for negotiations of all kinds that simply wouldn't take place otherwise.
    - mchahn 8y ago
      Yes, the first thing VCs ask is whether you have patents.

viraptor 8y ago

Here's something I didn't know before it happened: a company can list you as an inventor on a patent application and file it even if, instead of signing the documents for the legal dept, you respond with a list of prior art. But that's probably only likely in large corps which file lots of research anyway.

jacques_chester 8y ago
If you contributed, you have to be named as an inventor. This is quite distinct from whether the submission is actually patentable. If you didn't think it was, you are able to file to bring the prior art to the attention of the examiner. (Again: I am not lawyer.) (Edit: I defer to the comment from patentatt)
patentatt 8y ago
An inventor has to sign a declaration stating that they attest to the patent application, the company can’t get a patent without it.[1] So if you don’t execute the dec, they can’t get the patent granted. They do have up until that time, however, so a company could hypothetically put your name on it through prosecution without your input, but they can’t get the patent issued. But by sending them prior art, they do have to forward that on to the patent office, to fail to do so would be a clear violation of their duty to disclose.[2] You could also anonymously submit the prior art, in the case that your company chooses to violate their legal duties but you also want to not get fired. If you believe that the patent may be valid, but you for some reason insist that you in fact are not the inventor, take it up with your attorney first. If for some weird reason the attorney still insists on listing you as the inventor, you could probably take some kind of legal action either at the PTO or in a federal court to assert that you’re not an inventor. Usually this happens in the case that someone is trying to assert that they are an inventor, however, for obvious reasons. But, if the company does get a patent for something even though you may disagree on the merits, you may be obligated under your employment agreement to be cooperative in signing the dec and assignment, but that’s a matter of contract and employment law, not patent law. [1] There are provisions for hostile, missing, or deceased inventors, but if your objection to the patent is only technical or prior art based, that’s probably not the appropriate way to handle it. [2] The duty to disclose is a BFD. If your middle management is oblivious or ignorant, run it up the flagpole to an attorney. Someone with an actual license to practice law and preferably admitted to the patent bar. They will listen to you, I guarantee it.

georgemcbay 8y ago

> Getting patents is a lot like branding. The trick is to call old things new names. This sad reality is why a lot of engineers look at patents like (to use the article's own analogy) cannibalism. Patents, IMO, would be fine if they were only granted for truly novel inventions. Jefferson's writings on patents make it quite clear he would be pretty aghast at the current state of the patent system and the prevalence of "X, but for Y" patents. See, for example: http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/thomas-jefferson/letters-of-thomas-jefferson/jefl220.php http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/thomas-jefferson/letter... "I assume it is a Lemma, that it is the invention of the machine itself, which is to give a patent right, and not the application of it to any particular purpose, of which it is susceptible. If one person invents a knife convenient for pointing our pens, another cannot have a patent right for the same knife to point our pencils. A compass was invented for navigating the sea; another could not have a patent right for using it to survey land. A machine for threshing wheat has been invented in Scotland; a second person cannot get a patent right for the same machine to thresh oats, a third rye, a fourth peas, a fifth clover, etc. A string of buckets is invented and used for raising water, ore, etc., can a second have a patent right to the same machine for raising wheat, a third oats, a fourth rye, a fifth peas, etc?" But today we have SO many patents that are just "X, but on a computer". The need for true novelty has been completely lost, and with that the system has become a nightmare.

jacques_chester 8y ago
> But today we have SO many patents that are just "X, but on a computer". This is a lot less common than it used to be: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Corp._v._CLS_Bank_International https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Corp._v._CLS_Bank_Intern...
- Nomentatus 8y ago
  Less common meaning more frequently overturned.
mnm1 8y ago
Too bad they couldn't get this type of language, details, and examples into the constitution itself. Our patent system might not have been the giant piece of oppressive shit it has become if they had. That would apply to other areas of the constitution as well. If the founders had provided more details and examples, it would give judges and legislators a much clearer idea of their intentions and hopefully make it much harder for them to intentionally misinterpret words, even to the point of redefining meanings of words and phrases to absurd values that no one agrees to but the judges themselves.

transitivebs 8y ago

I initially read this as "Parents: how and why to get them" and I was like oh damn, you can do that after being born?! lmaooooooooooo

tialaramex 8y ago
Adoption. It's legal not only at birth but even into adulthood. And Japan used to be (maybe still is?) really into adopting a smart young adult to take over a family business. So you've got some 200 year old family business, but each generation didn't miraculously inherit the business acumen and speciality skills needed for that business, they just adopted someone who had them into the family. Clever.
sbhn 8y ago
I keep reading ‘patients’, why would I need any patients? I’m not a doctor, strange article.

dosshell 8y ago

The article forget to mention that patents is per country. This means that you have to choose which countries you want to protect yourself in. You also have to translate the application to the language to those countries and file it there. Just because you get a patent in US does not mean that you will be granted one in Germany for example. My experience is that it is harder to get a patent in EU (better prior art check etc). The countries you choose not to patent in are free to use your claims and specifications as much as they want. (but they can not sell, marketing etc in the protected ones) What can be patented can also slightly differ, specially in SW.

Nomentatus 8y ago
But make sure you patent in your own country: "At least one applicant (either a physical or legal person) must be a national or resident of a contracting state to the PCT; otherwise, no PCT filing date is accorded.[14]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_Cooperation_Treaty#Filing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_Cooperation_Treaty#Fili...

fern12 8y ago

>When you submit a patent application, it becomes public forever, even if it's rejected. You will have paid legal fees with the end result of granting competitors access to your ideas. Not entirely true. If you don't want an application to publish, there are options available. Under certain circumstances (i.e., you are 100% certain that you do not want to file for foreign patent protection in other countries), you can file with a non-publication request, and the application will not become public until it proceeds to issuance as a patent. If it never proceeds to issuance as a patent, then filing it with a non-pub request will at least make it harder to find. It will then only become publicly available (in this case, in the USPTO's Public PAIR database) if it's referenced as a priority app in another published application or issued patent. If it's abandoned and never referred to again in any application, then you have to file a petition to gain access to the file wrapper contents.

JepZ 8y ago

> Because searching prior art is hard. One of the points why software patents are so problematic. If there would be a search engine, where you could enter your function (concrete implementation) and it would come back with the patent fees you would have to pay for the next 5 years on a monthly basis and a checkout button, there would be a lot less resistance against the system. Not because anybody would like the idea of patents any more, but because there would be an easy way of getting around a lot of legal uncertainty. Btw. If the patent system will not change, that will be a cool idea for an AI startup in 2060 ;-)

xstartup 8y ago

As someone who has multiple startups. Here are the main benefits of patents: 1. Helps in IPR negotiations. When multiple startups are competing in same space and poaching same employees, highly likely your tech will end up being similar to your competitor. Maybe some of the processes are exact copies. Then if you've no patents and you get sued, good luck defending yourself. We solve it by creating landmines of patents around our actual application. So, that if we end up infringing someone else's patent, we'll be able to find some of their infringement then negotiate the settlement. If you've nothing, you can't defend and your settlement will not be something in your favor. Conversation with competitor: Mate! you violated my patent X and I violated your patent Y, we'll get nothing out of the legal battle, the damage is of the same amount. Why not stay quiet and keep the lights on? Who doesn't love peace? 2. Patents in employee's name often boost their confidence (if not their wealth). So, you get some productivity boost from their motivation. Sometimes, it's like keeping a score for them and we payout enough to host a memorable dinner with their family. Conversation with Self: You know like I've 15 patents under my belt already and 5 more pending. I am an expert already I think. Everyone will be proud of me. 3. Keeping new entrants out. Conversation with Self: Oh, it will be expensive to navigate this patent landmine, so let's choose some other niche/industry for my new startup idea.

jwildeboer 8y ago
Thank you for summing up all the problems patents cause in a market. You just made the point why we must get rid of patents ASAP :)
- ss2003 8y ago
  I doubt they will every go away. You have to make peace with that.
- jeffreyrogers 8y ago
  You can't get rid of patents by arguing that they distort markets. That's the entire point of them in the first place. To incentive people to create new things by restricting competition for a limited period of time.

neverartful 8y ago

I have an idea that I believe is patentable that I've been sitting on for several years. I came up with the idea while working for a previous employer, but not in the context of my job (I was thinking how to solve a need in my personal life). I have never pursued patents (on this idea, nor any other). Would there be any benefit to me to disclose this idea to my current employer as a potentially patentable idea? I have no intention of pursuing a patent on my own. I may intend to actually implement the idea on my own (to solve my own needs), not in context of a business.

makewavesnotwar 8y ago
I would say that there's no benefit to disclosing it to your employer based on your explanation. Patents are for protecting the inventor while time and money is invested in seeing an invention through to market. If your employer is the ideal producer for your concept and you want to limit their competition, then I suppose you could. But if you wanted to change jobs or were laid off, etc you would theoretically lose a bargaining chip and would have made any potential employer worse off by limiting their ability to also implement your idea. If it's something that you want to protect for your own use, you could put basic substance of the patent application in a YouTube video or something and release it as public domain. (IANAL so YouTube may be ill-advised) Also, life is unpredictable and you can sell/license a patented idea. Having more safety nets is better than less.