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How to Become a Patent Millionaire
An anonymous reader writes "SF Gate has an article about people who patent ideas for things they have no intentions of building, hoping to license technology or block competitors from doing something similar. As if the patent system weren't screwed up enough already."
Somebody patent that!
Heh wonder if you could file a patent on patent blocking... then sue everyone for royalties when they try to do it....
WOOT.
sig. "I didn't do it."
We need a department that has the power to review and revoke a patent. If you're not going to produce what you patent, or if your patent is overly broad (or just plain stupid) it should be revoked.
Amazon and Microsoft announced joint patents of a new concept: "A grant made by a government that confers upon the creator of an invention the sole right to make, use, and sell that invention for a set period of time."
They're expected to make billions off the royalties.
I'm patenting the process of obtaining patents on patenting the idea of patents being used to become wealthy without actually doing any work.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This just chaps my hide. Why do people have to be such fuckwads. If you have a idea that you want to market then by all means patent it, but to patent it and have someone else all the legwork is just not cool.
This is a sig, there are many like it, but this is mine.
What's wrong with that?
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
This is the definition of an inventor. There are many patents which require large amounts of capital to produce. What some inventors will do is patent the idea then pitch it to companies hoping they will purchase the rights to the patent and produce the product.
The entire design of patents is to prevent someone from bulding something you claim as yours. This article just points out the obvious.
What's wrong with inventing something and then charging someone else to develop and market it? Think of it as being an independent R&D department.
What's wrong with the patent system is people getting patents for things that should not be patented, not that you don't have to build the item yourself to enjoy royalties from its invention.
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
There are quite a number of companies that perpetuate fantasies that the ordinary person can make a lot of money by getting a patent on an idea, and then marketing it to companies. Things go so bad that Congress passed a law to control these invention promotion firms. A form for reporting abusive forms of these services can be found at http://www.uspto.gov/web/forms/2048.pdf
(It is sad to see people who paid $10,000 to have a really bad idea for a dishwasher written up in 10 pages of form paragraphs, and the promotion activity be limited to being told that GE and Whirlpool make dishwashers.)
The reason for the reporting that is required is that many of these companies had never had a patent issue and be licensed to anyone.
Sure, there are the rare exceptions, I know of a couple personally, but for each of those there are 100 people who shelled out $10,000 for pretty much nothing.
1) Start Lord Slepnir beverages. I'll need to scrounge around for startup capital, get a factory, distribution, find a way to market it, etc. If I fail, I have to declare bankrupcy, and wind up having my house and car repoed. If I end up making a lot of money off of it, I have about 7 years to grow enough to compete with Coke and Pepsi, who will push their own knockoff of this flavor as soon as the patent runs out.
2) I contact coke or pepsi and tell them I have a new flavor. They give me a lump of cash, they take all the risk (I'm not ruined if it fails), they market it, and I get a small royality check to live off.
SF Gate has an article about people who patent ideas for things they have no intentions of building, hoping to license technology or block competitors from doing something similar
How about people who buy land they have no intention of building on, hoping to sell it to others while blocking other people from building on this land?
He cited the standards of Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity) technology, in which transmission speeds have been rapidly advancing during the past three years from 11 megabits per second in 1999 to more than 50.
I was aware that the "fi" in "hi-fi" stands for "fidelity", but I don't think the same can be assumed here . . .
Lemelson did not invent the bar code. In fact he engaged in practices very similar to the ones described in the article. His patent was an extremely generic one for machine vision applications, which according to his interpretation covered bar code readers. He was one of the people who never implemented any of their ideas, preferring to wait for other people to reinvent them and then ask for royalties.
Soemone should give them both a head shot - 45 cal. or better. Or maybe a "head shot" the same way PeeWee Herman did when he was arrested for stroking off in a theater - virtual chat room my ass! As if there's any other type of chat room. Fucking idiot.
Can I patent something that is going to make some huge corporations tons of money and then release it to the public? Basically that would mean that now no one has an exclusive patent on it and everyone benefits. When Salk invented the polio vaccine I think he either refused to patent it or he patented it and then gave it away so everyone could manufacture it. He didn't want to profit off of the pain and suffering of others. Cool guy.
So why can't the Patent Office do something similar? Would it be so hard to ask, "Gee, how's that invention coming along? Have a prototype yet?" and after a certain amount of time, just revoke the patent because work hasn't been done on it yet. This might actually stimulate some growth once the patent is back up for grabs. Perhaps even offer it up at auction. Then companies could be compelled to make good on the patent application because of the captial investment to get it at auction.
Let's see now... if I register a domain name with the intent of selling it to someone else instead of using it myself, I'm "cybersquating" and ICANN will forcibly take the domain name aways from me. However, if I register an idea with the intent of selling to someone else instead of using it myself, the US Patent Office will assist me in extorting money out of anyone who wishes to sell a product based on a simular idea? I find this curiously inconsistent.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Something similar is already happening in healthcare - doctors cannot afford to do their job while paying the "lawyer tax" to protect themselves against being sued for malpractice. If a powerful lobby like healthcare can't fight the lawyers - what hope do a bunch of geeks have when their beef is even less-easily articulated to the general public?
The patent system is rapidly achieving the exact opposite of what it is intended to achieve. It is providing strong disincentives to true innovation while lining the pockets of those whose only innovative ideas consist of new ways to exploit the patent system.
The solution? I propose a non-profit organization to which patents can be donated, which will use those patents to defend anyone sued for infringement of a software patent. email me if you are interested in helping me to make it happen.
I'm an aspiring inventor. I've thought up some fairly useful ideas some having a market share so large the potential is inconceivable. However I have enough of a hard time taking care of my family much less hiring a patent lawyer. I've taken advice from everyone in the book including several /. articles in the past. So it really infuriates me to see people abusing the system. The idea that someone can patent a hypothetical concept infuriates me. I say if you do not have the technical capability to show a working model of sound theory in detail there should be no patent award. I remember doing research on patents done in the 17 hundreds and was impressed with how many models, and drawings there are. On the flip side I recently saw the patent for the guy who claims he invented online auctions. The patents basically stated a system to use computers to manage a bidding process. Thatâ(TM)s it. I say if you cant' at least come up with a flowchart showing the details of your concept you should not waist peoples type making the patent office a glutinous waste of paper.
Still, the tactic underscores the growing importance of patents as a competitive weapon in the technology industry
I was under the impression the technology industry was about innovation to improve humanity, not clog up the legal system with "I thought of this first, even though I have no intentions of doing anything with it." I was also under the impression patents were designed to protect, not attack.
Silly me.
Sounds to me like this tactic is a weapon to make Joe Thinksalot rich overnight, while at the same time stiffling innovation by limiting potential advancements to Megacorps who can flip the bill for pre-ordained patents.
At the same time, why don't I put a patent on an idea to make cars float. I'll call it a "hovercraft." Fifteen years down the road, when Developer comes up with the technical specs of how to do it, I get a pay check for having thought of the idea "first."
Whatever claims people had that the current copyright and patent system work are refuted by this.
Companies could make their entire business collecting royalties from patents they will never use. The company would never need to produce a product to profit, relying instead on revenues from lawsuits and royalties. The company would probably only consist of Marketing and legal departments with a few inventors to make it look vaguely legitimate.
Oddly enough, this report focused on small companies doing this. I would think that large companies with powerful market research divisions and possibly knowledge of industrial espionage would benefit more from this than a small corporation.
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musings on politics and technol
Here are some of the patents I have decided to file:
10. Time Travel. I've registered any method of moving through time. This includes moving into the future at the regular pace. If I have to sue, Johnny Cochrane will have a slogan for the courtroom: "If you live another day, then us you will have to pay".
9. Death. I should be able to collect through the funeral parlors on this one. Cochran zez: "If into the coffin you fall it will come from your wallet"
8. Space Travel. If I see you step one foot past Jupiter, buster, you're going to pay.
7. A patent on the drink dispension technique of spilling hot coffee on your own lap. I'll sue that lady who sued McDonald's.
6. The Internet itself. Al Gore may have invented it, but I'm the one who patents it.
5. Pop-up ads. I'll charge those who do this without permission so much they will never do it again.
4. I've patented the monopoly. Not only does Milton-Bradley owe me money, so does Microsoft, Cisco, etc etc etc.
3. I've patented "Item # 3"
2. Top 10 Lists. Letterman, you will get a letter from my attorney, man.
1. The Knife-Spoon-Fork icon. If you use such an icon anywhere, such as a News for Nerds site, you need to pay me.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The problem is: A jury is made of 12 people of average intelligence. Such people are not always capable of detecting bogus patents.
We would have less legal problems in this country if they only allowed the top 2% (130+ IQ) to participate in jury duty (and paid them at least $400/day for their time).
My wife came up with an idea a while back for a product, and we're still trying to get a prototype built. When we went to do an online patent search, we discovered at least 8 or 9 potentially troublesome patents already in place for similar devices to ours. Upon closer inspection though, they all appeared to be filed by people who never sold a product based on any of them. In most of the cases, it looked like they were written up by other people like us, trying to piece something together from parts lying around the house. (One guy described how his unit functioned using such things as an aquarium water pump and a tire inner-tube, for example.)
I can understand why the people wanted to patent their ideas, but as others pointed out - it seems like these unimplemented patents should automatically expire after a period of time. (Perhaps 2 years is enough of a time-frame to say "Show evidence of progress, or the patent gets removed."?)
As it stands now, all of these existing patents place artifical limits on the ways we can opt to accomplish specific goals inside our final product. I'd prefer not to disclose exactly what we're trying to do, but just for example - if we want to heat and distill some water in our product, we might have to use a peltier device instead of a heating coil. Even if the heating coil is the superior solutuon, it might put our device into questionable patent territory, since another (fairly broadly worded) patent already describes a device not too different than ours, using a heating coil for this function.
The purpose of patents is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. . ."
The practice of pre-emptive patenting does not "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts."
Therefore, if current law permits this practice, then Congress has a clear responsibility to change the laws.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
It's part of a legal tactic called "offensive blocking patents" in which businesses or individual entrepreneurs use patents not so much as tools to build new products, but as legal roadblocks or bargaining chips against competitors or corporate giants.
I think the use of "Offensive" was quite appropriate.
Somewhat like what people did with doamin names? Great. Maybe I should start filing for those 1Gazillion combinations of DNA tomorrow. Got to be in it to win it right?
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
Yeah, that's bad. And admittedly, I'm not saying there aren't problems with the patent system - but requiring someone to have full production capacity for an idea (or capability thereof) before granting a patent isn't the answer, and as far as I can tell, that's the only obvious solution to the problem of the "sleazy lawyer" syndrome. In other words, I'm not against solving the problem, but I don't want to lose my rights as a potential inventor in the process.
The problem is that we are no longer at the point where virtually any invention required less than a few thousand dollars worth of tools to make. However, that doesn't mean, necessarily, that someone is incapable of coming up with a kickass new design for a widget, or whatever. Bottom line is I still want the possibility of doing that without having a fabrication facility.
As I've said, I would be certainly in favor of tightening the "nonobvious" clause for things not reduced to practive (ie, made). Or whatever. But I don't want to lose the right to get a patent based effectively off of a blueprint.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
No doubt. My take on it is this : the intent of the patent system was to protect methods of doing things, not ideas of what to do. The different between patenting the design of a loom, and patenting the idea of a loom is huge. The patent office is at fault for granting these overly broad patents. The government is also at fault for treating patents as a source of revenue. Personally, I don't think this problem will be fixed, or even repaired, in the least. The "broken" patent system gives everyone exactly what it wants, an extortion tool.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
There are two problems here....
1. These guys are patenting trivial, obvious shit that absolutely does NOT deserve a patent... and if the patent examiners had any modicum of technical competency, most of this shit would get rejected.
and
2. It costs so much to file a patent now, that it's damn near impossible for a private inventor to patent anything, unless he / she is already independently wealthy.
The idea of patents has (had?) some merit, but abuses like this make me think we should just scrap the entire idea of patents, and have an IP free-for-all... put all the existing patents in the public domain, and quit issuing new ones, permanently.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
The sad thing is, I don't think that's just your take - as I understand it, that's supposed to be the very definition of a patent. It's supposed to be an implementation. Sadly, these days, it's not. Blah.
The patent office is at fault for granting these overly broad patents. The government is also at fault for treating patents as a source of revenue.
Damn straight. Supposedly, the government got the idea that encouraging patents=encouraging ingenuity, when the misapplication of patents has the opposite effect. Morons.
The "broken" patent system gives everyone exactly what it wants, an extortion tool.
Well, if not everyone, at least everyone's lawyer. ;P
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Somebody with 40 billion dollar could make a lot of offensive patents. From zero to ifninity. And then due to the sheer volume use it as a leverage. Not that I am citing the favorite nemesis of slashdot... But think of it. 20 K offensive patents (300 million $) would not even cost a % of their treasure trove. And afterward they would have a big leverage even if 1% of the patents hit home.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Case in point. My father was an engineer in the 30's and early 40's. He patented the first working variable pitch propellor. The first two patents were for designs that couldn't handle the stresses involved - he figured out how to solve both problems simultaneously. Chances are you've flown on a plane that used a variant of his invention. He tried to peddle the design but the company he was dealing with didn't like his terms so they just took the idea. The contingency lawyers he talked to wanted such a big slice of any payout that he didn't figure it was worth pursuing that avenue. My father didn't have enough money to fund a lawsuit and that was that. He did a bit more work after that - designed the landing gear for the DC-3 among other things.
It's worth noting that the article is talking about a lawyer patenting his own ideas. That perfectly illustrates who the patent system is set up to benefit.
There is one thing I learned some time ago about the french law on patents, and that times it is good news : according to these laws, if some organization buys a patent and has not begun to commercialize something in a given lapse of time after that (two years, if I remember well), the patent author gets his rights back :-)
That forbids a corporation to buy a patent just to bury it; the legislator here estimated that such a thing did not go in the way of public interest.
I do not know how it is in other countries, european or not.
Not having patents on software or algorithms is a good thing for mankind as a whole, I am pretty sure of that, but probably not for the inventors themselves. Don't you think abnormal that the inventors of the Fast Fourier Transform never got a cent for their invention (which was a bright one) from the people who use it daily, and even sell devices using their algorithms ? Did not Boyer and Moore deserve something from the community for their clever string-search algorithm? And what about Quicksort?
I guess that if software and algorithm patents are forbidden, something should be put into place so the human community recognizes contributions of great value, and rewards them accordingly. As there are perhaps not more than one or two VERY bright ideas (like Boyer-Moore's) each year, or at most a score of them, this should be a manageable thing.
Signature omitted in order to save space. Thanks for your understanding.
IANAL (YET!)
So, first of all, a patent can easily cost $15K. Patent a few things that nobody wants and pretty soon, you've got through a lot of cash. Even if you do actually get a worthwhile patent, enforcing it is completely another manner -- your target company can tie you up in court for YEARS (costing tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars), at the end of which you may lose.
Secondly, you can't patent obvious or already existing technologies -- it's one of the reasons people can lose patent fights -- they patented something that somebody else invented or that anybody reasonably knowledgeable in the field would predict.
Finally, though, you can't just patent an idea -- it needs to be "reduced to practice." In other words, Wilbur and Orville couldn't just say "We have this great idea -- a flying machine. Please give us a patent on it." Part of the patent describes exactly how it works. Just patenting an idea while lying to the patent office that you've reduced it to practice is considered fraud.
Now, the problem with all this is that people regularly patent already existing ideas, they regularly patent obvious things and they regularly patent things that don't (or can't) exist. The patent office does not have the ability to make sure that every patent is good (cost, manpower, cost, speed of technology, cost, etc....) Instead, the USPTO effectively relies on patent litigation as a method of getting rid of crummy patents. Very inefficient and leads to people licensing technologies rather than spending the money to litigate obviously bad patents.
How about simply enforcing existing rules about things like harassing litigation? If judges slapped contempt of court fines on every lawyer who tried to drain his opponents funding (and at punitive levels) then we'd see these tactics disappearing. Big corporate industry group goes after small guy who states online that they bought the product and it didn't work? See if they do that again after getting a $50 million contempt of court fine. Big companies can afford to just throw $50k at a trial knowing that the little guy will sign anything to make it go away.
When you decide to construct a building and file for a site plan and building permit, they both have limitations in them, such as "significant construction must commence within 12 months of the granting of this application". There are fairly rigid definitions of what that means. If we had something like that for patents, then in some number of months after granting a blocking patent, it would be pulled and would have to be re-applied for. Meanwhile, other parties could make progress on the subject.
Edison said invention is something like 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. The patent system wasn't set up to provide a means for one-percenters to stake a claim on the future hard work of the 99-percenters.
When you get a permit to build a house you generally have 2 years to complete the work, then if the work isn't done you have to get a new permit. Patent applications should expire like that. Otherwise we will have an idea-squatting industry akin to domain name squatting.
Patent examiners generally start at the GS-7/9 grades making roughly 50-60k a year. Promtion can be rapid, and it is possible to make 90k a year before bonuses/overtime. There was a pay increase several years ago to keep examiners from quiting to work in the private sector as patent agents.
http://www.popa.org/newsletters/julaug00.shtml
Patent examiners are paid on GS scale with specailly 1224, it tops out around 120k for a gs15/10. Attorneys generally make around 100k to start and go up to around 400k.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
I wouldn't let any wanna-be patents get in the way of something that's going to make you money. Your company, Widgets-R-Us should start cranking out as many Whizzy-Wigs(TM) as possible (first mover advantage is your friend). It will take a while for those patent holders to figure out that you are infringing on them. Then they'll have spend some real money to sue you. Your counter move is to use the court system in the way it works best. That is: delay, delay, delay. With only minimal attorney's costs, you should be able to get continuance, upon continuance. When two years down the road your court date arrives, you have a choice to make: either Widgets-R-Us is a highly sucessful enterprise which can afford to fight in court (or possibly license the patent), or Widgets-R-Us files for bankruptcy, in which case the trial will be put on hold. Then, by sheer coincidence, Widget-Factory, Inc. decides to hire you as President/CEO and gives you 100% ownership in the company as an incentive. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Journal: Beyond irrational numbers (continued fractions)
IANAL but IWAPE (I was a Patent Examiner (Damn, there goes any credibility I might have had)) but I think most patent infringment/validity trials are (or, at least, were) held in front of a US District Court Judge without a jury who makes rulings on both law and facts. A trial before a jury, however, is an option available to the accused infringer (defendant).
..as I understand it, is that the PTO gets more money if it actually grants the patent then if it refuses it.
Considering that it gets squat for federal money these days, you can see how this situation leads to the patenting of crap-on-a-stick and so forth.
So to fix this, do it the other way around. Charge slightly more should the patent examiner determine the invention is "obvious" and a lot more should it be determined that there is prior art.
I'd even be willing to give the examiners a direct incentive should they find prior art. (But set up an appeals process if you do that) This would discourage companies and individuals from patenting utter crap, and strongly encourage patent applicants to do a good search of the prior art, rather then (as now) choosing to avoid looking (because if you don't see it, you can say you didn't know)
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
I had an idea for a web site I like to call my technology wish list. Basically everyone can enter their ideas for products they would like to see, like "a wi-fi access point in a cell phone that my pda, laptop, and my car's on-board computer can use to connect to the internet" and then cross our fingers and hope someone decides to make it. Others could comment on and improve the ideas or tell the person that it already exists and where to find it.
If there is a patent case comes up involving one of the wishes then the postings might serve as prior art.
(If this web site already exists somewhere please post a link to it.)
Coding Blog
"You don't have to build it," Ferrell said. "You just have to conceive it. By filing a couple of patents, you essentially have co-opted the standards road map. Anybody who wants to go from G to X has to get through your toll road."
That quote, from a patent Attorney, says all anyone needs to know about why patents on non-tangible things are bad. If you're going to patent something, I think you should have to build it before you're allowed to apply for a patent. If it can't be physically built, then it can't be patented.
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
The reason an individual should get a patent he doesn't intend to build is to sell it. The purchasing company is then paying for the time and effort he took to develop a sound idea. This would be in place of paying their own people to do it.
Trying to patent what a company will probably develop later is simply squatting. Just as cyber-squatting is being dealt with fairly well through an international organization (ICANN), a similar appeals process should be set up by the patent office.
The difficulty is in establishing regulations and standards that define what patent-squatting is and how to identify it. Once somebody figures that out, they could patent it and sell it to the US patent office.
From the article:
It's part of a legal tactic called "offensive blocking patents" in which businesses or individual entrepreneurs use patents not so much as tools to build new products, but as legal roadblocks or bargaining chips against competitors or corporate giants.
Patents are never tools to build new products. You don't need a patent to build your own product. And if your product partially infringes on somebody else's active patent - then a patent of your own wont give you any rights to build it at all.
The only use for a patent is to stop others from using your technology.
Personally, I am a bit of an inventor and I often come up with different ideas for business software. When I do, I ask myself if I can develop it myself as a stand-alone product. If I can, then I start develop it; and I don't necessarily file a patent.
But sometimes I find that my idea would be most useful as a part of a large existing piece of software. In that case I try to file a patent, and I can then approach a bigger company with my idea. I don't see anything wrong with this.
Tor
There is nothing wrong with obtaining a patent on something you have no intention of producing. The fact of the matter is that there are many great sources of legitimate innovation that operate exactly this way. Biotechnology companies that build a new drug and then sell it to pharmaceuticals to manufacture and market. Universities that obtain patents on technologies invented in their labs, and then sell the patents to industrials to realize their commercial potential. Research consortia set up to develop new technologies and then license them back to the companies who fund the consortia.
The list of these sorts of operations is long, and quite distinguished. There is a tremendous amount of legitimate innovation that results from companies and individuals being able to patent results of research and development, and license the patents to companies whose strength is manufacturing, not innovation.
The real issue with the 'inventions' described in the article is that they are really not inventions, but rather obvious combinations of technologies already released to the public. Most of these patents should have never been granted.
"Great article", he said. "Offensive blocking patents!! We need to be a lot more active ourselves. Need to start thinking about this."
He wasn't being sarcastic. Until the patent system gets a real shake up, people will abuse it.
No, I did not read the f***ing article!
We would have less legal problems in this country if they only allowed the top 2% (130+ IQ) to participate in jury duty (and paid them at least $400/day for their time). ..for your faith in the myth of IQ numbers, I declare you incompetent to sit on a jury.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
There are two issues here.
Firstly, on the point of obtaining patents for inventive ideas, there is nothing wrong with focusing just on that activity. Some people are very inventive, and if they can help advance society (and make a living for themselves at the same time) by coming up with patents then that's good for us all. It's better than them having their bright ideas stolen and used without any remmuneration in return. There are many other examples of industrial specialisation in society, and this is one of them: here the specialisation is on producing new technologies. If it turns out that many of these new technologies are not feasible or require further work to implement, well that just devalues that worth of the patent (potentially) and the collorary is that the incentive for the patent producers is to produce worthwhile patents (rather than waste money on unworkable ideas). If people are "lucky dipping" and "jackpotting" by creating realms of dubious patents, then so be it.
Secondly, there's always going to be some level of dodgy practice - but this goes two ways: you have peope filing "bogus" patents, but you also have companies and organisations that work around legitimate patents so as to avoid paying royalties. Everybody is playign the game - it used to be a gentleman's game, but society isn't so much like this anymore, and I don't think that's a per se issue in the patent system but it reflects an ethical and moral position that we all take. On the other hand, new technology is always going to cause problems with existing systems, so there's another problem of "good faith" dodgy patents simply where filer and examiner aren't aware that the patent doesn't reflect the situation with a new technology (and the kinds of people that read slashdot are very technologically savvy and can see these points straight away, but the rest of the world isn't quite there).
In fact, I say this because I'm one of these inventive people that has a lot of good ideas, but I'm quite useless at implementing them. I hate it when people criticise me for this, and in return I say that there are many people out there with bad ideas (or no ideas) but are very good implementors. The world requires people of all sorts to work together - and if there are structures and systems in the world that help facilitate this (and every sensible person accepts that all structures and systems have some degree of flaw) then that's to the benefit of us all.