Friday, March 1, 2013
10. Ideas and Reality
I came across this phrase "a patent application is no guarantee that a technology will ever make it into a real product" while reading an article and it really struck me. Often, people blur the lines between the patent and product, assuming that the product is in existent because there is a patent for it. In this article, Google is said to patent an application which allows users to control the tablet with one hand. Buttons will adjust according to where the hand is on the screen. It is a brilliant idea, but whether it is possible to be done is another matter. This leads to me thinking that some people can use patents to prevent innovation, contrary to popular beliefs that it encourages people to innovate. Since almost anything can be patent, one party might just apply for a patent without following through to the implementation and development stage, and no others will want to take over to develop and implement the idea because the patent is already approved to the original inventor, unless they buy the patent over.
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i agree! relevant organizations / parties must follow up on the patent app – to see if people are actually making an effort to make this happen. but im guessing this means an additional monitoring / enforcing costs -> higher fee in patent application -> hinder this whole safeguard innovative idea process?
ReplyDeleteYou bring up a good point. At the same time, I think the all of the 'legal language' that we talked about last class may 'help' the situation. I still don't completely understand how the details under the claims section work, but it seemed like it was relatively easy to tweak those and file a patent. For someone who actually implements something new, he/she may be able to use that to patent the invention, even if some other vague patent already exists. Although, I could be completely wrong about this.
ReplyDeleteI find this kind of cool. It seems like a given that the patent filed will be used as a monopoly to benefit society as a whole. In a more extreme hypothetical situation, if a company invented a vaccine for AIDS, patented it, but did not produce the drug, what kind of effect will this have on innovation? The economy? or society? That's a good question that is always bothering me.
ReplyDelete-James Maa
The ability to file patents without actually building the product that the patent details is what allows patent trolls to earn millions of dollars without manufacturing anything. I think that it is important to allow patents to be filed without the need to find a market for it initially, as a variety of patents have been able to be incorporated into products after their filing as technology has improved, the world has become more globalized, and the cost of manufacturing has gone down. However, in an ideal world, patent trolls would not be able to abuse the patent system through this feature.
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