3 ms·
The numbers game is a part of the modern Patent system. It is almost certainly impossible for a patent officer to asses the scientific or technical merit of a p
by herodotus 8y ago
The numbers game is a part of the modern Patent system. It is almost certainly impossible for a patent officer to asses the scientific or technical merit of a patent application. At best, they can throw out the nutbar submissions. The submitting companies often want patents partly (or mostly completely) for marketing reasons: "Our technology is protected by N patents!".
Even Steve Jobs said this when he introduced the iPhone: "We’ve been innovating like crazy for the last few years on this, and we filed for over 200 patents for all the inventions in iPhone, and we intend to protect them." I am sure many of them are great, but one of those 200 is mine, and, frankly, the idea in it was never used in the iPhone.
- sova 8y agoAny hints as to what that particular patent is about? =)
- herodotus 8y agoAll I am willing to say is that my colleague and I made the suggestion to the Patent committee before we knew anything about the actual design of the iPhone (or even that there really was going to be one). In essence, we imagined what would be needed to enable a click-wheel to function for text and numeric input, and proposed a solution. We were surprised that the committee accepted the proposal - and, when we finally were disclosed on the iPhone, there was no click-wheel! But the patent was granted.
- rbobby 8y ago> The submitting companies often want patents partly (or mostly completely) for marketing reasons For startups marketing to investors can be a key goal of patents.