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IP's Next Big Wave - Taste & Smell Patents
Magnavox writes "Futurist Thomas Frey has written an article about Monday's Nobel Prize in medicine opening the door for taste & smell patents. Dr. Richard Axel and Dr. Linda B. Buck won the prize for scientifically describing how odor-sensing proteins in the nose translate specific tastes and smells into information in the brain. Patenting smells in the past was limited to describing the chemical composition of the substance. Receptor patterning opens the door for a variety of new patenting possibilities... Perhaps more important will be the decision as to whether smells can be trademarked as symbols of the products or services they represent. Sounds and colors are commonly trademarked today because of the commercial impression they leave on consumers. Smells cannot be far behind. Now I'm wondering if we can patent the smell of money."
The patent for the smell of teen spirit is going to make me rich once the 90's become fashionable again!
Seal it up somewhere, for prior art on New Car Smell. ;-)
...so I can profit when the people revolt against the insane corporate-controlled government!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
...will hasten patent reforms ;)
this comment is provided "as is" and without any express or implied legibility or congruity [...]
1. In one sentence Frey refers to trademarks of smells, and then in the next sentence wonders if smell patents can be close behind. For the last f'ing time, patents != trademarks.
Patent: protects an invention (but not an idea itself)
Trademark: identifies a source of goods or services (usually through a name or logo)
Patents and trademark are quite different, so please stop confusing them- especially people writing scholarly articles.
2. There are not "many" color or sound trademarks. There are very few sound trademarks- the NBC chime comes to mind, and Harley Davidson recently lost their attempt to trademark the Harley engine sound. As for colors, you can get your trademark in a specific color (to distinguish it from similar marks, but there are very few color only trademarks. The only one I know of is Orange, which gets the color orange for cell phones. Using colors for trademarks is more of a European thing, as the US only within the last year began accepting color drawings in trademark applications.
3. I think Frey is going too far. Sure patent attorneys like to stretch the limits of the law for their clients (like all attorneys), but there needs to be something codified in the law to allow patenting of a smell. Currently a smell by itself does not reach the minimum definition of patentable subject matter. To have something that is patentable, you need a physical invention that does something useful, and I don't see how a smell in itself provides this usefulness. I can see smell as part of an invention, such as a fire alarm system or adding smells to movies. Throwing out wild hypotheticals, I guess you could patent a smell that makes the person inhaling it do a specific reaction- but then that raises ethical questions that the patent office might use as a rejection.
There is something called a design patent, which protects the ornamental features of an invention (like the propeller people put on their trailer hitches). With a design patent, you do not have claim any useful features, you just show drawings. This could logically be extended to smells, but you need to have a change in the laws.
Next thing you know they will be patenting plants...
Oh....wait...
McDonald's patents the smell of grease! (+1 Insightful)
Microsoft patents the smell of money! (+1 Funny)
Your local movie theatre patents the smell of urine! (+1 Informative)
SCO patents the smell of shit! (-1 redundant)
Bah... I won't quit my day job.. Wait! I don't have one!
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
Its weird how, in reaction to this article, everyone wants to patent stuff that goes out their own rear end.
God, nature, what have you, will already have all the prior art claims he/she/it wants.
From TFA:
Besides... how can you patent my nose and its functions?
Get your Unix fortune now!
I, for one, will be searching the stars tonight using my smelloscope to find new odors to patent.
The patenting of smells doesn't worry me so much since patents expire quickly (14 years IIRC). Trademarks on the other hand are perpetual and pose another intellectual property land mine. I'm sure we are all familiar with the International Olympic Committee being totally evil in "protecting" their trademarks. It would be most unfortunate to have Starbucks swing a huge legal hammer at small coffee vendors whose coffee smells similar.
Imagine receiving a smell bomb in your email, or a printer that print a type of scent.
Will be good to smell homecook food 1000 miles away, over the internet.
The most objectionable software patents are so dumb because they seem to fail the "obviousness" test. To be patented, a thing (it used to be a device) had to be useful, novel, and non-obvious. Online shopping carts and one-click shopping strike everybody here as obvious; the ones with the patent aren't the first ones with the idea but merely the first ones with the money to put together a patent.
But not everybody can create a new smell. Well, given the hygiene and dietary standards famous to Slashdotters I'm sure that new smells are created all the time, but I assure you nobody wants those smells. To create a new perfume requires a highly expert skill set. The same applies to food; blending the right chocolate, wine, or coffee is a job for an expert.
I assume that means coming up with a reproduceable smell. I can't imagine you could walk in with something you threw together and say, "I patent this! Nobody else can have it!" without at least being able to describe what it is and how you got it.
I don't know how they're going to judge "distance". In copyrights I imagine that they have some sort of measurement for when a new work is derivative of an old one. I can't pick up a copy of John Grisham's The Jury and change a few letters and copyright it. Similarly I hope nobody would be able to walk in with "This is just like Chanel No. 5 except I added some vanilla extract".
Actually, that would smell kind of nice. But there are getting to be some potentially stupid gray areas, where things are similar, but it's hard to quantify how similar because smells and tastes are a lot harder to examine than inventions and books.
And of course, the patents will go through regardless of prior art, because, honestly, how are those patent stampers supposed to know that the patent description in technical terms just happens to cover every sweet smell there is?
. o O {OMG... How long until people get sued for patent infringement for farting?}... Is it insightful or funny? Or neither? Dunno. It's too late at night to tell.
@Whee
...I guess that means while I won't spend much at the Taco Bell drive-thru, I'll get nailed on the royalty payments about 2-3 hours later!
*rimshot*
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
All this talk of IP frenzy makes me feel queazy!
Smell Trademark I remember reading about this a year or two ago.
My cats breath smells like cat food!
I'm not out of order! You're out of order! The whole freaking system's out of order!
One of my friends that works for a large multinational food company told me that the nice "fresh coffee" smell you get when you open up a brand new jar of instant coffee is actually sprayed on at the last stage of the production process.
Seems like that particular signature would be a likely candiate for a trademark.
There are thousands of years of prior art for the taste of saliva and the smell of all bodily functions.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Tastes like chicken, patent pending...
this isn't a sig. i type this (including the two dashes), every time i post, just to make it look like a sig.
I'd imagine that "hot cookies" constitute prior art. I can't imagine that any variant on the recipe is going to be considered sufficiently novel unless you wanted to start putting, I dunno, motor oil or anchovies in it. I'm perfectly content to permit you the patent on the smell of chocolate cookies with anchovies.
I think I'll go make some prior art right now.
And the problem many have with most software patents (and many in other fields too) is that they cover one of very few good ways of doing something, or the idea of doing some obvious thing itself, so others have no way around it no matter how good they are. Some people might find it fair, but many do not, and find it counterproductive.
For patents/trademarks on smells and tastes, the same thing applies --- I won't object much if and only if the smell/taste must be extremely special (but do we have such a good nose/tongue?), in other words, it must contain a large amount of information.
...doesn't smell, it talks. It may even sing and dance if you let it.
so my colleagues can be issued with a cease and desist
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
pull my finger
I'm planning on patenting a method of using moist surface membranes in an interior environment to transfer oxygen from a gaseous environment to a liquid medium which can transport the oxygen to widespread locations throughout a biological organisms. The trick is that waste gases will also be transferred in the same mechanism, so that the same mechanism can be used to bring in oxygen yet also expel waste products such as carbon dioxide.
All I need now is a name. Suggestions?
-- The reason it's called the right wing? Irony.
Here are some patents that have something to do with smell... But none are awarded to a smell itself. They are mostly devices that emit some smell.
Considering the US only produces a small fraction of the physical goods that it used to, the only thing businesses and our economy can compete with for actual generation of money in the global economy is IP (copyright, tradmark, patents etc). I see it as a big gamble or some type of last ditch attempt to give the US some type of advantage over the rest of the world as the manufactoring of real products is all but gone and not coming back. Can the US actually create and secure more IP then the rest of the world and sustain itself from the money that might flow in with it? I see the IP laws following this trend and I assume it will get much worse in the power grab. As I see it, IP can only support a much smaller crowd or group of people then real property does as you do not a large support structure to create it and maintain it.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Like my wife patenting the smell of my body odour and then suing me into the shower.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
This is a really bad idea. Simply because a taste or smell can be clearly defined doesn't make it patentable. You can't patent colors or sounds, which can both be clearly defined, so why should you be able to patent smells or tastes? Eventually, this may lead to the patenting of feelings or sensations, or, stretching it a bit, emotions or thoughts. Ridiculous. Just because something is quantifiable doesn't make it patentable. (ps: I also think gene patenting is a bad idea, but that's a whole other can of worms.)
Eh?
It should be taken as an opportunity to just consider if it's better to let corporations patent smell or not to : I mean that if it doesn't prevent them from making money on smells, then why should they patent these ?
Because they're about to make smells 100% reproductible ?
In the latter case, though I do not agree with the whole patenting system, I might agree that some would like their "smell" to be protected from this 100% perfect-clonability... even though I guess there's a chemical involved from which the smell originates and which could be patented without changing a word in the patent office charter.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
How can you patent "put it on my tab" (one click shopping) or the division of labor (anything "client server")?
How can you patent parts of the human genome?
Simple, someone with money makse a "persuasive green folding argument" that they should be allowed to...
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
IP's Next Big Wave - Taste & Smell P.... eehh... nevermind.
who base their whole business model on patent, search and sue.
How about patenting the phrase F*CK YOU.
Maybe I should patent a rotten egg smell. Then every time someone farts, they will owe me $50 or I'll sue their ass, litterally.
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
because I claim Prior Fart.
Solomon
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
SCO announced today that it now holds the patent for the sweet smell of success. When asked if this meant they were going to bring a new product to market, using this, a spokesman was quoted as saying "Hell no - we just want to sue the pants off anybody who might be infringing on it."
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
If you improve upon something that is already patented, you can apply for a new patent...its called patent law.
... here come the "tastes like chicken" jokes..
The real bit is when someone takes that Nobel-winning work and patents the act of smelling things. Every unlicensed nasal inhalation, also known as a "sniff" will be a violation of their patent.
Mouth breathers will be exempt.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
Now that people have patented genes. Someone maght as well patent urine, and have us pay royalities everytime we make it.
I'll call it "Hobo Stink" and slap all those guys on street corners with IP infringement lawsuits, then I'll yank the bucket of change out of their hands and split, it'll rule. And I'll invest in cardboard signs before I start doing that too, oh and, money buckets.
Now the Professor can invent the smelloscope.
Instead of trying to create yet another kind of BS "intellectual property" in the form of taste & smell patents, we should be reevaluating our fucked up socio-economics. Everybody wants to feel useful and justify their existence I guess... whether you're a bogus patent peddler, a dead-weight manager, a yoga instructor, or a herbal supplement phony.
--
Power to the Peaceful
Since dogs have a sense of smell that is somewhere between 10k and 100k times better than our own, could you define your smell as significantly different than a pattented or trademarked smell based upon a dog's ability to tell the difference? I mean, couldn't you train a dog to recognize the difference between what us humans would regard as identical smells?
This raises the question - do our own limited senses define what is and isn't patent infringement, or is the truth more concrete?
.
These are breasts; this is source code.
Why do you have a problem with those two things belonging to one person?
I'm not a economy specialist or the lawyer, but such things which shows tad all IP is going to the extremes - coorporations want to be everything owned by someone. I personally thing they won't succeed - but it will be along fight before some sanity shows up in this situation. Before that, I give myself a half a laugh, half a shiver about all that. It is scary as it is funny to see how they try to run for money - oh, yes, it is needed for living, but not so much. Oh, ok, whatever...tired from all this.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Wrong...
Trademarks do expire and sometimes companies forget to reapply which causes plenty of trouble all around or they steal peoples work. It is far from perpetual.
Get your Unix fortune now!
For someone who holds themself out to be an IP attorney, I'm frightened at how little he understands of intellectual property.
First, while a patent does not technically protect the idea itself, it does prevent others from applying the ideas in the patent and using the applied ideas to make money. The line is a fuzzy, at best.
Next, color by itself can NEVER serve as a trademark. The "Qualitex" case is as close as any court in the US has ever come to saying that color, without more, can serve as a trade identifier.
Color only serves to distinguish source, origin, or sponsorship in combonation with other trade dress features - such as container configuration. For example, UPS cannot, and will never be able to, trademark the color brown despite their significant investment in the commercials "What can BROWN do for you?" What they can, and do, trademark, is the color brown in combonation with the distinguishably boxy shape of their trucks. Big difference.
The "Owens Corning" (think pink fiberglass and the Pink Panther) case is often cited for the proposition that color alone can serve as a trade identifier. While it is true the court said OC could have exclusive rights to the color pink in their fiberglass, it never said OC had the exclusive right to the color pink.
Similarly, Cutty Sark whiskey attempted to trademark a gold color by exhaustively advertising in magazines and on billboards the color of their whiskey. Nowhere was the name Cutty Sark used, just the color. They gave up, and its unlikely that despite any investment of time and money, that secondary meaning would develop in the color alone.
The only cases where color is protected by the courts are in cases dealing with pills. While these courts do stand up to protect color, in combonation with pill shape, they do so in contrast to other cases rejecting exclusive rights in colors. But the strong public policy in having readily identifiable and distinguishable medications overrides the traditional proscriptions in the Lanham Act against trademarks of pure color alone.
Finally, it is unlikely design patents can be extended to smells. Design patents protect new, nonobvious ornamental designs applied to useful things. Application requires a drawing of the design, and protection is narrowly limited to that design. Therefore, this patent set provides protection for visual elements of things. Even if a change in the law were permitted - how does one draw a scent? Submit a sample of a scent? How does one check to see if a scent infringes? Everything, theoretically has a smell, should every item manufacturered have a scent patent? And to what useful article is the design element applied? The purposes underlying the institution of design patents simply do not hold for scents.
In fact, scents do not even qualify for the lower threshold of trade identity protection. Every aroma case tried in court has failed on its merits. Aroma is simply descriptive of a product's ingredients, and absent secondary meaning (no example of which has yet been demonstrated); accordingly, no rights can vest in a scent.
Scents and aromas are more appropriately relegated to trade secret protection, which is the only IP protection capable enough to protect a product's unique combonation of ingredients that generate a certain scent.
As for WHY they picked the colour... two reasons. One, they thought it looked "professional" and classy (like the railcars) while still being unique. This was in contrast to the very first UPS vehicles which were all painted different and often bright colours (red, yellow, etc).
Two, brown hides dirt very well, giving the impression of always being clean. Infact, the company itself borders on the obsessive with presenting a 'clean image'. UPS trucks are washed daily (!) so they always look nice. Any time a truck is damaged, the very first thing they do with it is hide the truck. Seriously, its company policy that obviously damaged/scratched vehicles are not allowed to sit in sight of the public. The company also has VERY strict rules on the apperance of its employees too (the ones the public sees anyways).
Anyways... yeah, just wanted to share that little nugget of information. People don't realize just how much time, money, and effort some companies (like UPS) put into image. The objective being, of course, that people DON'T realize the amount of work it takes... and instead simply create a network of positive associations - like colours and apperances - with the company entity.
It really is amazing what you don't know you know.
Someone patent "silent but deadly" before Microsoft does!
...bomb us back into the stone-age. "civilization" has gone too far.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
kid: "Mooom, can I smell now, pleaaasseee"
Mom: "No honey we havent paid yet, hold on your breath for 5 more minuts"
The lunatic is in my head
You can find here the list of european trademarks. Put "Trademark type" to "Olfactory".
And cigarette and cigar manufacturers will enter the fray, adding layers of protection to the "flavor" that accompanies their image in the marketplace.
Now, if someone can patent the smell of nicotine, or the stale smell of cigarette smoke, they can put the tobacco companies out of business.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
"So Mr and Mrs Smith, you want to have kids? Mrs Smith you were born from a Monsanto engineered egg in fertility treatment? ah, in that case they'll require a license fee for reproduction."
"Sir, im closing your hot dog stand down, you don't have a license to publicly serve that mustard, only a home license!"
"Police today raided the home of a 68 year old woman involved in illigal cookie piracy. She is currently being charged with distribution to a number of local children."
"License to grow apples, thats $40,000 per tree or you can get a site license for $1,200,000?"
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I believe there is a US sewing thread company has trademarked a peach (?) smell on its product. If course, we will not know whether this smell trademark stands up in law until another company wants to stick the same smell on their thread. Perhaps the vanilla smell of Play-Doh will provide the court case we need?
only in those insane parts of the world. Like the US of A. Down here, "computer programs" are ABSOLUTELY NOT patentable.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
1. Patent the taste of chicken
2. Sue everyone (because we all know that everything tastes like chicken)
3. Profit!!!!!!!
. . . as would be the ability to patent a color. Now that smell is as quantifiable via parameters as color is via wavelength, I would think this would tend to close the door on patentability. Of course, it is never wise to underestimate the malfeasance of our "represenative" lawmakers when in the presence of the smell of fresh cash.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
Oh how I do love the smell of napalm in the morning.
There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
Link HERE
how do you "describe" the color orange? there are an infinite number of shades approaching colors on the other sides of whatever color wheel its on, are they all orange also?
why is all this stupid shit even considered reasonable as enforceable and taken seriously by the gov't/court system at all in any way?
Receptor patterning opens the door for a variety of new patenting possibilities...
That's like patenting a musical chord.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
Come play Heroes of Might and Magic Mini online.
Nuff said
Science is the Real TRUTH!
Where its going to be much cheaper not to shower!!
The lunatic is in my head
As I understand it our senses of taste and smell are essentially based on detecting the actual physical shape of molecules, because it when a physical shape (say a plug) matches a physical receptor for that shape (say a socket) something goes "bing" and you get x taste or smell.
As an aside there is a known medical condition where people's senses are crosswired in their heads and smells trigger taste reactions, I remember an old case of brain surgery where taste and auditory was crosswired and a drop of vinegar sounded like an explosion.
so, if it's all shape based, we're going to get into levels of accuracy, is it just "sweet" like sugar, or is it the particular sweetness of tate and lyle demerara sugar?
To be honest I'd be more worried about similar molecule shape patents, after all molecule shape is defined by molecule chemical composition and formula, specifically here I'm talking about large corporations patenting chunks of amino acid that happens to occur naturally in my body.
Where do I stand when someone owns a patent that matches a part of my DNA?
Do they own a part of me?
Do I have to pay them a licence to have kids and reproduce my DNA in part?
Or, far more worryingly, do they have the right to use associated knowledge, eg this bit of DNA that we own the patent to is associated with people who have a specific biochemical makeup in their brains, a biochemical signature that is associated with people who are great to have around in times of great troubles, but who are a real pain in the ass in a modern USA style society where you will conform and obey citizen or else.
Can they use this patented knowledge to deny me legal insurance, limit life and injury insurance, and screen me from having the sorts of jobs where I might cause some shit for big brother?
Can I be pressured to report to level 42 for biochemical "readjustment" or "training", or simply disenfranchised as a citizen otherwise?
It's so fucking easy.
Nowadays you don't need to run the risk of being taken to court for saying "no fucking niggers" because all you have to do is for example check for the presence of the genetic code for sickle cell anaemia, except of course you're testing for your genetic IP, not sickle cell, just so happens the two overlap.
comments?
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
Here's to the first car manufacturer to patent "new car smell".
That would probably make a great air freshener for my car.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
I'd patent the smell of bullshit, but I guess the smell wafting from the USPO would be prior art.
roses for my wife
...
:( advertising peach scented odour remover :)
.... .... and being shocked by electric contacts and burnt by tiny lighters ..... yuck
poo for spammers
seriously.... I cannot wait hexediting flavours and smells
I cannot wait getting spam that smells like cat piss
I cannot wait playing doom 5 on ps4 with all the scent/flavour/vibrating sensors being stuffed into my sensing organs
smell the rotten flesh, the taste of your own blood
Too much prior art.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Yes, you can patent improvements, but if I understand your intent correctly, you are missing the point. You can *only* patent the improvement, so you'd still have to license the underlying patent. One good example was the now-famous example of Robert Kearns, who invented the delay windshield wiper (and then fought for over 25 years to get the automaker who stole it to pay up). The automakers didn't continue to use his 4 part (one moving part) 1962 design for decades without ever once improving it; they did improve it -and patented the improvements, but were still in violation, because they hadn't licensed the underlying patent.
In simple terms: Say I invent a fizzbin, and you improve it to make a faster fizzbin, a dual stage fizzbin, etc. I can't market a fizzbin with your improvements without licensing them -- but you can't market any fizzbins at all without a license from me. All your improvement patent entitles you to is the right to collect license fees on (or block, should you so desire) the use of your improvement.
That's US law. In other countries, like Japan, the practice is completely different (I don't know the actual law, but I do know many examples of how it is customarily applied) It is quite common for a large competitor to force a patent-holder into a "mutual licensing deal" by creating so many derivative patents that the original holder can't use or license their patent at all. (Their standard for patenting is looser, so if you invent a fizzbin lightbulb, and Mitsubishi wants to use it, they can patent "improvements" like colored fizzbin lightbulbs (including colored lenses and covers), "fizzbin lightbulbs for use at night" and separately "for use in day", "in displays", etc. -- pretty much any use a lightbulb already has, the idea of doing it with a fizzbin lightbulb is considered an improvement on both the use patent and the fizzbin lightbulb patent. Now *you* can't use your patent for any of those useful purposes, unless you cut a deal with them. They can afford to blitz the field with hundreds of patents, and to put a dozen salarymen on the task of listing common uses for existing lightbulbs; you can't.)
It's been more than a hundred years since each of these issues were settled by American law, by a lawsuit issued by Coca Cola against Pepsi and a lawsuit issued by Channel against a now-defunct perfume maker. Neither scents nor flavors may enjoy any form of legal protection more complex than a trade secret.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
What you are saying is true, and I realize my original post was not as in-depth as it should have been. The way I understand it is a smell is the interpretation of a certain chemical that comes in contact with your odor receptors in the nasal cavity. Change or improve this chemical slightly and it will be interpreted differently, hence becoming a new smell--with a new patent. I understand if you improve a fizzbin, there's still a fizzbin underneath; but a smell triggering compound is based on elements that cannot be patented, and I'm not sure how fine the line is when changing a substance (adding an OH group where there was sulfur or the like--new chemical structure, but the large chunk of the molecule would be the same), since the resultant chemical induces a different smell I would have to assume that it would be a new chemical compound and require its own patent. If I were to patent Fexofenadine hydrochloride, or dimethyl benzeneacetic acid hydrochloride, and you found a way to take the HCl group off and add something else, it would be a different drug and may react completely differently (or have a different smell). In that example, I do not believe you would need my permission, as I would be holding a patent for a chemical (or the process by which I make the chemical) with a HCl group that subsequently 'cures' allergies.
It seems to me that you have just outlined the required modifications to the law that would be needed in order to establish scent patents. The ability to specifically quantify a scent in a human-centered way is exactly what the recent Nobel prize was recognizing. It could be argued that the scent is a design implemented on top of a common delivery mechanism. I am not saying that I would be in favor of such changes to the law, but I am almost sure that some entity will attempt this once they realize that they have a new, concrete way to codify their scents other than just a recipe.
Gearry
like g-a-r-y, only different
for these folks!
I am going to patent the smell of my socks..
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
From Thomas Frey? If you take one look at his web sites you'll see he's a fantastic dreamer who distorts facts to fit his utopia future. He also never finishes anything! Whatever happened to that book of future inventions he was composing? It made the news, was featured prominently on their site, and then once all the press had left the page changed to "well we WERE going to do a book BUT now we don't think we will".
This guy has no track record. So what if he earned awards at IBM? That doesn't make him an authority on the future. Again, look at his site and some of his "bold" predictions. Intelligent shoes? Space hotels? Gee how original.
I'm sorry to come off so harshly on him but it's frustrating when someone like this gets any press because they feed on it and in the end don't deliver any results when the spotlight goes away.
Way to post anonymous and waste everyone's time. Tell ya what, when someone sues you (or the company you work with) for software patent infringement, and you've actually read the patent, you'll understand that they really can and do patent ideas. It would be great if people patented useful algorithms. It would rock if I could type into a patent search engine "dithering algorithm" and look at all of Adobe's patents. If I could even license em, that would be great. But it's not the case. Software patents consist of terms like "method for sending information derived from random number generator to server". The bozos at the patent office don't know what they're doing so they approve the patent and all of a sudden every client/server app on earth is infringing on this guy's patent. Sure, there is "prior art" but going to court and proving this is more expensive than just paying his blood sucking lawyer.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Can smell patents be defeated if there is a prior fart?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."