Thanks for the thoughtful comment Xen. In one sense, I’m glad that this rings true to you given your experience. On the other hand, this is a frustrating situation, so in some respects it would be better to be wrong about it!

In any case, I’m glad that you found the post and made the comment.

Thanks – Tim

I am a patent examiner and i cannot stop nodding at all the post that i just read. This is my third year into the job and i must say that all the problems raised above regarding patents is so true especially as to how inventors tend to miss the whole point of patenting. I cannot agree enough with what the patent attorney said. People come into the office and enthusiastically ask “So how do i protect my patent?” After explaining the whole process they ask “So how do i get money out tof it?” (sigh).

In addition most often creators or inventors walk in with this great idea and when you tell them it part of a non-patentable subject matter, they object by saying “But this is my intellectual property”…explaining the idea behind patent registration with respect to having to really work that idea and the patentability test inplace puts most of them off and they often walk off un-satisfied.

So yeah, thank you so much everyone for all the post because it only confirms my thoughts about this profession that i have.

Regards,
Xen

I’d say that overall I’m in accord with all that you say here. I’m certainly not arguing against patents – but I do think that a lot of people have an over-reliance on them.

In my classes, if just ask people how they can profit from innovation, all they can think of is patents. But if I tell them a story first, like how Apple ended up with the Graphical User Interface from Xerox, then ask for ways that the idea could have been better used by Xerox, they come up with tons of ideas. So I spend a fair bit of time trying to think up creative ways to move people beyond thinking only of patents…

Beyond, that, though, the open source software movement has shown that voluntary liberal licensing can help foster profits, as in the business model of companies who provide free software but charge for maintaining the system using the software.

On the other hand, though not essential, patent can be very useful in the right situation. I find all too often that the aesthetic/philosophic debate about whether the government should grant exclusive rights to use a technology blurs the issue, as patent enforcement has worked a benefit for those whom the law grants those rights.

I’m deeply in favor of liberally licensed technology,
of companies which recognize that research placed in the public domain can minimize the business risk attached to a competitor’s potential patents, and of research freed from the constraints of a patent system. Here in the USA, I favor patents but want to see them issued only when a right is properly established. I favor a more limited copyright term without the artificial new extensions. I do not favor using trademark law as a patent surrogate.
That said, a patent license can be a very useful thing, and is one path to commercialization.

I’m delighted to see my image in use here. This is just the kind of post I hoped might use it.

My immediate question is: why in the hell did you patent something without understanding the answer to that question BEFORE you filed?

In the end, having an exclusive right to do (or in the case of patents, to prevent from doing)/have/use something is only worth $$ if someone has a reason to want to do that something. Educating the market and tapping into demand for an idea is where the heavy lifting happens.

Even if an inventor chooses not to run a company and build the product him/herself, I rarely see a “naked” patent license unless it is a result of expensive and wasteful litigation.

As a result, even inventors that want to work from home need to think about how to supplement any patent rights with practical advice/hands-on consulting on how to build and commercialize the patented idea. As a result, more than ever, inventors need collaboration partners to help fill the gaps between idea and execution. Without it, you may have a patent, but it may not protect anything of value.

Thanks for the post.

Kendall
@ideasurge