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Can you expand on that thought? So if I receive a patent for something financial I should spend the next decade acquiring licenses in 50 states and multiple co

Can you expand on that thought? So if I receive a patent for something financial I should spend the next decade acquiring licenses in 50 states and multiple countries, some of which have multimillion dollar bond requirements, getting product market fit for my new financial service just to prove that the “locked down IP” has legs? Ignoring any other pursuit I might imagine in the mean time? Or just letting the market stay in its current unimproved state just in case maybe someone else independently comes up with the idea did you have something more practical in mind that fits your criteria which I didn’t consider? just disclosing the idea publicly as loud so others can build from it?

harryh 7y ago
Patents, at their best, are for IP that requires significant capital investment like drug development or wireless modem chips or things like that. You have to pay a bunch of talented and expensive people a bunch of money for a long time how to figure out how to make the thing. But once they figure it out, replicating the thing is fairly easy and cheap. In this case patent licensing is great because it allows for there to be some companies that do the invention and others that do the manufacturing. The patent license is the bridge between these two things. Patents are at their worst for IP that is just "I had an idea." Because, honestly, ideas are easy. Lots of people have ideas. Most ideas aren't original. When patents get issued for this sort of thing they mostly just cause problems. The lawsuit in the original link here is a good example of that. Someone had an idea to "provide an internet third party data channel" which is....kind of silly. A bunch of people had that idea. The idea had so little value it got sold for $1 but then it got turned into a series of annoying lawsuits that just cost a bunch of people a bunch of money with no good outcome for anyone. Based on your comments, it kinda sounds like the patent you have falls into the latter category and not the former which is why other commenters are skeptical of you. Maybe they're wrong though, but unless you are willing to talk about your patent (or link to it!) it's hard to really judge.
- bdowling 7y ago
  > The idea had so little value it got sold for $1 Public assignment records often state that a thing was sold for “$1 plus other good and valuable consideration” to keep the actual sale price confidential. The $1 is there to ensure the contract is enforceable and there’s no rule that says the other good and valuable consideration isn’t a whole lot of additional dollars.
  - harryh 7y ago
    Ah, interesting. I stand corrected on that subpoint. Thank you.
mcv 7y ago
If you're inventing something financial (remember: patents are for inventions, not mere ideas), then you're probably already working for a bank that is invested in using your invention. If you just had some idea and hope to lock it down so people have to pay you if they want to do something in that area, then you're not doing much to improve the market, are you? This is particularly an issue with many software patents, which often are really just a fairly obvious idea, and not the result of a serious investment in research and development.
- rolltiide 7y ago
  Bad assumptions. Patents are made more general by patent lawyers They do this because the market tries to circumvent ever paying patent licenses or anybody else’s IP This is more pronounced in software due to the short time span of relevancy coupled with the narrow outcome of the protocol ratification process (ie there is no market if you deviate from protocols like tcp/ip) People want to be compensated for their ideas in exchange for publicly disclosing them
  - mcv 7y ago
    Do they? Have you asked the people who created TCP/IP what they think about software patents? It's mostly companies who want to profit from other people's ideas.

harryh 7y ago

Patents, at their best, are for IP that requires significant capital investment like drug development or wireless modem chips or things like that. You have to pay a bunch of talented and expensive people a bunch of money for a long time how to figure out how to make the thing. But once they figure it out, replicating the thing is fairly easy and cheap. In this case patent licensing is great because it allows for there to be some companies that do the invention and others that do the manufacturing. The patent license is the bridge between these two things. Patents are at their worst for IP that is just "I had an idea." Because, honestly, ideas are easy. Lots of people have ideas. Most ideas aren't original. When patents get issued for this sort of thing they mostly just cause problems. The lawsuit in the original link here is a good example of that. Someone had an idea to "provide an internet third party data channel" which is....kind of silly. A bunch of people had that idea. The idea had so little value it got sold for $1 but then it got turned into a series of annoying lawsuits that just cost a bunch of people a bunch of money with no good outcome for anyone. Based on your comments, it kinda sounds like the patent you have falls into the latter category and not the former which is why other commenters are skeptical of you. Maybe they're wrong though, but unless you are willing to talk about your patent (or link to it!) it's hard to really judge.

bdowling 7y ago
> The idea had so little value it got sold for $1 Public assignment records often state that a thing was sold for “$1 plus other good and valuable consideration” to keep the actual sale price confidential. The $1 is there to ensure the contract is enforceable and there’s no rule that says the other good and valuable consideration isn’t a whole lot of additional dollars.
- harryh 7y ago
  Ah, interesting. I stand corrected on that subpoint. Thank you.

mcv 7y ago

If you're inventing something financial (remember: patents are for inventions, not mere ideas), then you're probably already working for a bank that is invested in using your invention. If you just had some idea and hope to lock it down so people have to pay you if they want to do something in that area, then you're not doing much to improve the market, are you? This is particularly an issue with many software patents, which often are really just a fairly obvious idea, and not the result of a serious investment in research and development.

rolltiide 7y ago
Bad assumptions. Patents are made more general by patent lawyers They do this because the market tries to circumvent ever paying patent licenses or anybody else’s IP This is more pronounced in software due to the short time span of relevancy coupled with the narrow outcome of the protocol ratification process (ie there is no market if you deviate from protocols like tcp/ip) People want to be compensated for their ideas in exchange for publicly disclosing them
- mcv 7y ago
  Do they? Have you asked the people who created TCP/IP what they think about software patents? It's mostly companies who want to profit from other people's ideas.