hm, didn't see this. Yeah, I do believe that patents tend to undermine innovation pretty much everywhere, and yes, I do acknowledge that that was not the intent

hm, didn't see this. Yeah, I do believe that patents tend to undermine innovation pretty much everywhere, and yes, I do acknowledge that that was not the intent. The intent was to grant a temporary monopoly on an invention, to give an inventor time to 'cash-in'. Unfortunately that means it's effectively 'closed-source': no one else can make improvements to it w/o permission, and so I think a lot of innovation happens when a patent lapses. If that hasn't happened with e-ink displays, cool, then I must've misread something. It's hard to imagine e-ink displays being patent-free however.