6 ms·

Petens where invented so that the big companies wouln't steal your ideas and outcompete you in the market. I know that many of the people in this community is a

• epicureanideal 2y ago
  Seems like they’re mostly accomplishing the opposite these days.
• bawolff 2y ago
  Road to hell is paved with good intentions.
• drannex 2y ago
  Originally intended, not the way they are used now, especially with the costs involved.
• szundi 2y ago
  [dead]
• TheDong 2y ago
  I really like the tool for the little guys which requires a $100/hour+ lawyer both to create, and to enforce, and to gain any other benefit out of. Patents were created not to protect the little man, but with the intent of creating a vibrant commons of knowledge. Not that the original intent matters at all at this point, we're so far from that that it's only really of interest to historians.
  • hgomersall 2y ago
    Where does one find a $100/hour lawyer?
    • jamiek88 2y ago
      1998
      • silexia 2y ago
        I regularly work with attorneys. The lowest price per hour I've seen in years is $500 per hour. Abolish the patent system and let the free market work again. This is just theft by the elite.
• pjc50 2y ago
  Since the system was changed from first-to-invent to first-to-file, it's now completely possible for a big corp to copy someone's invention, overtake them in the patent process, and lock them out of being able to patent or use their own invention.
  • tzs 2y ago
    That's not how it works. First-to-file (FTF) did not change the requirements for patentability. You still have to have invented the thing you want to patent, and in your scenario Big Corp did not invent the thing. All FTF changes is what happens when multiple inventors invent the same thing. Under first-to-invent (FTI) your priority date was the date you conceived the invention if you then worked diligently toward reducing the idea to practice up until you filed your patent application. If you stopped working diligently on reducing the idea to practice and then resumed it, the date you resumed became your new priority date. What counts as a break in working toward reduction to practice sufficient to reset your priority date? How much documentation do you need to prove you were working continuously on it from your claimed priority date? Figuring all that out can be expensive and time consuming and often gives results that seem wrong. It's almost random whether the priority date by this method actually matches who seems to morally most deserve the patent. FTF gives priority to whoever files first. It doesn't produce any worse outcome than FTI and saves a lot of time and money for both the patent office and applicants.
• nmstoker 2y ago
  This is entirely inaccurate (patently so!) A couple of 30 second Google searches would show how their invention pre-dated the prevalence of big companies by centuries.
• jjk166 2y ago
  Patents were invented as a way for governments (and really at the time monarchs) to regulate commercial activity and attract skilled craftspeople. Modern patents were a reform of this to stop monarchs from abusing this power as effectively a tax. This starts in Venice in 1474. By the time the US patent system was created, the goal was to promote publication of technical information, rather than it being kept secret. This was a few decades before the first industrial corporations in the US.