4 ms·
> Compare making it freely available to anyone The original idea of a patent is that it must reveal the "secrets" behind an invention, in return for a "tempora
by yobbo 4y ago
> Compare making it freely available to anyone
The original idea of a patent is that it must reveal the "secrets" behind an invention, in return for a "temporary monopoly". It's supposed to help diffusion of technology by publishing trade secrets, not to "incentivise" research.
I think what is actually happening is that patents are made obtuse/opaque containing little meaningful information. They are then used as playing cards in patent licensing deals between big corporations.
There is no longer any hope for patent clerks to do meaningful inspection of patents to determine if they are legitimate. Instead, it's left to lawyers/attorneys to play something out in court.
- pclmulqdq 4y agoPatents have always been written in precise but vague terms. If you take that as the language and understand the structure of them, they can be quite readable, although you will often need to use outside knowledge and critical thinking to determine how to actually replicate the invention.
- Moissanite 4y agoI lost a lot of faith in scientific research when I had to spend time reviewing patents in an early job. The fact that I was looking into battery materials (a notoriously over-hyped sector) certainly didn't help, but some of the approved parents were laughable. They included core materials which had been historically known to be useful in batteries (and hence shouldn't qualify for protection), but then also every possible element-wise substitution of the same structure - many of the resulting materials would not even have been stable, never mind viable as a battery component. There were also instances of multiple patents covering the same material, suggesting that any prior-art searches were not being done rigorously.