'Patently Ridiculous' - What's Wrong With The PTO

PhxBlue writes "The St. Petersburg (FL) Times wrote an editorial this morning lambasting a patent system which allows patents for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and swinging sideways. It has some background on how the patent system became as FUBARed as it is, citing rulings by the Supreme Court in 1980 and by the federal patent appeals court in 1998; but more importantly, it brings the faults with the US patent process to a more public eye."

Comments

Keeping Anything from Happening

[anubi]

I view the patent system much as I view the domain naming registry which allows one to tie up domain names and squat on them until someone will meet their price.. like quickly running to the internet registrar and registering the name of popular pizzerias, knowing they will one day branch to internet ordering, and tie up their domain names, so you can exact an exhorbitant fee from them to use their own name, as you registered it first. To start off, you don't even make pizza, you are a "businessman" who sees and "opportunity" to hold some pizza retailer hostage for his own name.

I see the patent system being to ideas much the same as I see the domain name registrar being a party to one set of people who tie up the works so nobody else can do anything until they get paid. An anology is having the kids race to the playground during recess, only to claim the various objects of play and charge a fee for their use. Although this paradigm doesn't really work in school, it works very profitably in the corporate world.

Say, I had a design for a solar powered air conditioner using an Absorption Process using Lithium Bromide as a refrigerant. Now, by dropping the pressure, I can get LiBr to boil at 90 deg. F , separate the water from the brine, cool both using the swimming pool water as a heat sink, then recombine both streams in the house so as to put the condenser at around 40 deg F. This will allow me to cool the house to about 70 deg F on a hot day. Now, if I actually released this design, do you think I will have problems?

Of course I will.

I think there is even a way I can do it with Ammonium Nitrate with a little less efficiency. The neat thing about Ammonium Nitrate is that it is also useful as fertilizer, so that if there is any reason to ever have to purge the refrigerant, the grass would love it.

Ever seen those cold packs that consist of two pouches of liquid which get very cold when you mix them... and are typically used in first aid kits for injured athletes? Probably Ammonium Nitrate. If you have access to a fertilizer store, buy some and try it. Put some ammonium nitrate in a bucket, add water. See how cold it gets. Now imagine if you were pulling a vacuum on it and imagine what it would be like if you could boil it back apart at about 90 deg F or so, and endlessly recombine it in your house. You get the idea.

Don,t worry about the stuff after you've done your experiment... its great fertilizer. Your lawn will love you. Just don't put too much in one place.

But am I free to actually pursue this curiosity as a commmercial endeavor to share with the world?

I would quickly lose all my capital in litigation. I can not afford that.

So my research is just for me, not for the world.

We are not in a position yet to where such research, conducted by individuals, is of such importance as to threaten corporate holdings, where such distribution of technology outside their control, could economically harm them.

They have the money it takes to control Law, and that, quite simply, is the bottom line.