3 ms·

This is a neat idea - a notch filter. The underlying biology is that colours that excite mostly just one type of cone cells are perceived as pure. In colourbl

This is a neat idea - a notch filter. The underlying biology is that colours that excite mostly just one type of cone cells are perceived as pure. In colourblind people the absorption spectra of the red and green cones overlap to a greater degree, so if you can cut out the overlap their vision more closely approaches that of a normal-sighted person - except for the part that is filtered out. But with the recent Amazon flap, should this be patented? It's in essence a neat idea, and physics supply shops will sell you stock dichroic filters for USD 150 each, custom ones are more but not excessive - development cannot have been more than USD 100000 total. That's a programmer's salary and benefits. Software patents are universally considered abusive because it is cheap to develop - much cheaper than an industrial process, the thing that patents were invented to cover. With this logic the producers shouldn't be allowed to take out a patent.

alok-g 13y ago
This is why I always bring up the consideration that the issue is not exactly software vs. hardware whenever I see that discussion.
joshvm 13y ago
You couldn't patent a notch filter for obvious reasons. On the other hand the coating isn't a notch filter, it's a series of bandpass/notch/dichroic/whatever filters which are optimised for colour blindness. If you look at the transmission graphs at least for the UV450 there's varying transmission over the entire visible range. So the patent would be for filters at X, Y and Z nm in a product designed for eyewear. The problem with software patents is that they're extremely broad - e.g. things that are obvious and well documented in the literature like sorting. There are also obvious hardware patents like rounded corners. A good example of a design patent is Blackberry's keyboard. They didn't patent keyboards, but they _were_ able to patent the little bumps that help you navigate. As someone who works in hardware, sure in raw materials it cost <100k, but when you start charging for people's time, stuff gets a whole lot more expensive. Not everyone can live off ramen and sleep in the office. This probably took a few years to properly develop. The patents (applied for) are below: http://www.sumobrain.com/patents/wipo/Multi-band-color-vision-filters/WO2012119158.html http://www.sumobrain.com/patents/wipo/Multi-band-color-visio... https://www.google.com/patents/WO2012119158A1?cl=en&dq=inassignee:%22ENCHROMA+INC.%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=W2luU6fRAe-g7Ab8koHQDg&ved=0CEgQ6AEwAg https://www.google.com/patents/WO2012119158A1?cl=en&dq=inass...

alok-g 13y ago

This is why I always bring up the consideration that the issue is not exactly software vs. hardware whenever I see that discussion.

joshvm 13y ago

You couldn't patent a notch filter for obvious reasons. On the other hand the coating isn't a notch filter, it's a series of bandpass/notch/dichroic/whatever filters which are optimised for colour blindness. If you look at the transmission graphs at least for the UV450 there's varying transmission over the entire visible range. So the patent would be for filters at X, Y and Z nm in a product designed for eyewear. The problem with software patents is that they're extremely broad - e.g. things that are obvious and well documented in the literature like sorting. There are also obvious hardware patents like rounded corners. A good example of a design patent is Blackberry's keyboard. They didn't patent keyboards, but they _were_ able to patent the little bumps that help you navigate. As someone who works in hardware, sure in raw materials it cost <100k, but when you start charging for people's time, stuff gets a whole lot more expensive. Not everyone can live off ramen and sleep in the office. This probably took a few years to properly develop. The patents (applied for) are below: http://www.sumobrain.com/patents/wipo/Multi-band-color-vision-filters/WO2012119158.html http://www.sumobrain.com/patents/wipo/Multi-band-color-visio... https://www.google.com/patents/WO2012119158A1?cl=en&dq=inassignee:%22ENCHROMA+INC.%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=W2luU6fRAe-g7Ab8koHQDg&ved=0CEgQ6AEwAg https://www.google.com/patents/WO2012119158A1?cl=en&dq=inass...