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I don't see any reason that a firm like Theranos shouldn't have had all of it's patents struck down as void once it was obvious it was a scam. What incentive do

by neaden 7y ago

I don't see any reason that a firm like Theranos shouldn't have had all of it's patents struck down as void once it was obvious it was a scam. What incentive do we have as a society to allow con artists to patent things and inhibit real research?

drstewart 7y ago
Just because Theranos as a company was a scam doesn't mean literally all their patents are invalid?
- minitoar 7y ago
  The point of patents is to protect IP for a while. If the company was fraudulent, who are we protecting? Whoever now owns the IP, it’s as if they purchased stolen goods.
- sorokod 7y ago
  Can you point out one that is?
- mnm1 7y ago
  It was either a scam or it had valid, valuable patents (logically maybe not legally). You can't it have both ways. If the patent is valid, then it wasn't a scam. That means it developed something of value for all that investor money and they should be happy with it. The patent is clearly in the realm of what was promised. Of course, legally, who knows? There's nothing logical about our legal system, especially our patent system.
  - zentiggr 7y ago
    Regardless of the status of the patents, what they actually carried out was massive fraud. Misrepresentation of actual results and sliding the reports of internal progress until they couldn't withstand the total failure and physical impossibility of what they were doing is a straight up scam. Even if the overly broad, ridiculous patent was somehow 'invented', what Holmes and crew did was reprehensible all by itself.
  - jcranmer 7y ago
    Just because the primary effort of a company is fraudulent doesn't mean that everything it did is inherently so. As an (admittedly absurd) example, if I set up a company that sells cures via mana crystal magic, I could still end up with a novel, patentable process for crystallizing exotic compounds that would otherwise tend to explode during crystallization. I don't know much about the actual patent in question, but it sounds like it's a patent prohibited by Alice anyways.

by neaden 7y ago

drstewart 7y ago

Just because Theranos as a company was a scam doesn't mean literally all their patents are invalid?

minitoar 7y ago
The point of patents is to protect IP for a while. If the company was fraudulent, who are we protecting? Whoever now owns the IP, it’s as if they purchased stolen goods.
sorokod 7y ago
Can you point out one that is?
mnm1 7y ago
It was either a scam or it had valid, valuable patents (logically maybe not legally). You can't it have both ways. If the patent is valid, then it wasn't a scam. That means it developed something of value for all that investor money and they should be happy with it. The patent is clearly in the realm of what was promised. Of course, legally, who knows? There's nothing logical about our legal system, especially our patent system.
- zentiggr 7y ago
  Regardless of the status of the patents, what they actually carried out was massive fraud. Misrepresentation of actual results and sliding the reports of internal progress until they couldn't withstand the total failure and physical impossibility of what they were doing is a straight up scam. Even if the overly broad, ridiculous patent was somehow 'invented', what Holmes and crew did was reprehensible all by itself.
- jcranmer 7y ago
  Just because the primary effort of a company is fraudulent doesn't mean that everything it did is inherently so. As an (admittedly absurd) example, if I set up a company that sells cures via mana crystal magic, I could still end up with a novel, patentable process for crystallizing exotic compounds that would otherwise tend to explode during crystallization. I don't know much about the actual patent in question, but it sounds like it's a patent prohibited by Alice anyways.