A widely-available car that even properly follows laws would also save, collectively, many hours per day of everybody's time, even among those who don't drive it.
A few seconds here because an intersection wasn't blocked... A few seconds there because a turn signal allowed some advance planning... Another few seconds because lane merges were done earlier than the last possible moment...
I should probably call a good friend, go get a drink, and laugh about the whole thing. Paranoia doesn't really help at all. He wasn't arrested, and wasn't even implicated as being a part of anything suspicious. Why waste more time and money complaining because the Federal Bureau of Investigation did some investigation of a federal matter?
Nevermind the overhead costs of transporting that many items, coordinating the transports, and ensuring that the materials stay in controlled environments the whole time. Also conveniently ignore the facts that librarians have learned a thing or two about preservation in the past two thousand years, and that engineers have produced better fire-control systems, and that there's more to storage than just lots of shelf space.
Ignore the past thousand years of progress, and this is indeed a serious risk. Otherwise, it's no more a risk than any other storage system.
Supposedly, a satellite. That satellite would then fire an infrared laser beam down to earth, with 100 billion times the power of what Earth currently uses.
Am I the only one slightly concerned about this idea turning the Earth into an interstellar spacecraft, solving the global warming problem permanently (as far as humans are concerned)?
That's because the Wall Street Journal, like so many others, confuses the meaning of the visualizations. They aren't results. Instead, they're great tools for finding what parts of the theory need a better test.
As a contrived example, let's say that this visualization shows that a plume of dark matter going in a particular direction at a particular time. Comparing the visualization at that time to known colliding clusters in the real world might help show where to point our telescopes for evidence of dark matter. It helps to create the initial hypothesis, reducing the number (and therefore the cost) of failed experiments.
Another use is for verification of a model. If we already know of several colliding clusters, this visualization should, be able to produce images that look very similar to those clusters. If not, then we know that there's something wrong with the model, and we can find ways to improve it.
Tying that in with your example, we now know that the fluid model used wasn't perfect. It's time for more analysis, experiments, and refinements, eventually resulting in a more thorough knowledge of our universe.
No scientist worth their salt will say that any model is absolutely perfect. In fact, the one you spoke of didn't. She said it was the "perfect model to do <a given job>," implying that it could do the job with the given parameters, and that deriving a completely new model wasn't necessary. The model itself is imperfect, but it fit the job perfectly. If the journalists presented the model as a prediction, that's the journalists' fault.
Graphics give understanding, though. A numeric analysis can show exactly what happens, but it doesn't convey a general idea of what's going on. Pictures are easier to understand, and show more information at once. There's a reason why the weatherman shows his forecasts on a giant map.
Speaking of giant maps, I visited the ANL recently, and saw a computer system being used for related research. If they're using the same visualization system (which looks REALLY similar to the video in TFA), then this graphical model could be shown on a giant screen, and the model could be rotated & zoomed at any point. It's science through pictures, not just pictures of science.
If having patents is a losing game, why has it worked fine for 536 years? New companies spring up all the time, and some of them even do well.
As a personal example, my company's doing quite well, and yes, we have our own patent-pending technology. We've met our competitors. They are not happy about what we can do. Our patent application includes language limiting the scope to our specific field, so when it's public, it will be a drop-in solution for those who aren't our competitors. Seems to me that's a pretty decent compromise to accommodate a broken implementation.
Meanwhile, there's a fair amount of evidence in favor of patents as well. Perhaps you could point our a specific study that supports what you're saying? Saying "go read this propaganda book" doesn't contribute to the discussion much.
There was pretty conclusive evidence of...
There's pretty conclusive evidence that the world is a tetrahedron sitting on the back of a giant marmoset. Of course, I'm not going to give references, either.
That's where NDAs, appropriate wages, and a need to know basis can come in.
So after spending their money on researching a product, an independent inventor must spend even more to investigate the leak, and maybe prosecute the guy who leaked the information for... breach of contract? With no real chance of getting an income from his work, all he can do is go after a small fine? The big company can just consider that fine a "finder's fee" for the new product, and pay more for the information. The inventor has no way to go after the company that's profiting from his idea, so he's still screwed.
Of course, the inventor could just implement draconian security policies, and not allow anyone to leave diagrams on whiteboards, or notebooks on desks, or talk with anyone from other departments, but that takes even more money.
After all of that, it seems simpler and more reliable just to have restrictions on copying ideas.
So where is any evidence that patents eliminate competition?
However, they have a much better chance when the field has no patents or weak patentability because patents are used as a weapon against startups. The 3 measly patents your startup has are nothing compared to the thousands of patents the big boys have.
If it's a good patent, one is enough. With a proper implementation (no broad patents), the big company's patent on toothpaste tubes can't possibly affect your patent on a starter motor. With a patent-is-proof philosophy in the courts, having a patent on your product could indemnify it against other patents. Again, those are implementation details.
Now a free market isn't actually free, and regulation of covered physical area is fine, but not regulation of covered market segments...
Of course, a startup company will be a niche player at the start, like every other company. Patents should not guarantee every inventor will become a millionaire. Instead, they guarantee inventors get a chance to recoup their investment. Even a small toy company like Larami had a better chance to make a profit than a single guy building pressurized water guns from PVC pipe.
Looking through that book, conveniently available online, it has a lot of examples of patents doing nothing. It has a lot of examples where ideas got copied by people who had common goals. Examples of patents actually hurting society are extremely rare, and usually coupled with the original inventors getting screwed.
Perhaps you'd like to show some of these "most surveys"? Let's turn to the ever-authoritative source, Wikipedia. Pulling out a few key points here, I see that reducing price to try to build a market reduces profitability. While Microsoft can afford to waste money on the XBox, I don't know any guy in a garage with money to spend like that. What else? Investments in future needs early, before demand actually rises. Also a great idea, but also requiring lots of money that inventors probably don't have.
What about disadvantages? It seems the biggest problems are with other companies copying research, and general market risk. Either the inventor gets screwed, or everyone does. Seems this first-mover advantage is bad for inventors, as well.
Assuming the inventor has a few million dollars in their back pocket, they might be able to fund manufacture themselves. Who's going to do it though? They'll need employees, and supply lines, and advertising, and a small army of other people who all get to see the product before it's public. With no protection, there's nothing preventing one of those hired hands from passing the design on to another company.
So in other words, no, monopolies don't give up power voluntarily. Competition alone doesn't help your argument much, either...
Firefox gained ground because of the US government pushing Microsoft to reduce the bundling with IE, and a few million dollars in funding from Mozilla Foundation, itself funded by the Bank Of AOL. Chrome is funded by Google, which got its money through the use of patented (!) algorithms.
Vista failed for more than just "lacking competition". Mac OS X was out for five years, with regular updates, before Vista. In fact, one of the biggest reasons Vista failed was because of Apple's advertising and some internal problems, rather than a lack of new features. It seems a big ad budget can override innovation.
Your last sentence is a four-line jumble of clauses. If I read it right, you seem to be saying that little guys get screwed, and without patents the big players can lock them out of the market. Yep. That's why we need patents.
Would you mind showing me any of this evidence? Preferably something where a monopoly voluntarily gave up its position to let a newcomer make a profit?
You're talking about a basic equilibrium. If there are three companies, each doing different things, and each equally large, they'll compete evenly, and leave a choice for the consumer.
What about the little guys, though? The two guys who invent a new product in a garage? Before they can even get a manufacturer producing their product, the larger companies have the money and resources to produce it easily. The little guys get screwed. They made the initial investment in the product, did the work, solved the problems, and they get nothing. If they're lucky, somebody will mention them in a documentary in 50 years.
Free markets and capitalism are largely synonymous.
Capitalism is a system of economics based around private ownership of resources. Contrast it with economic communism, where the people collectively own everything, or socialism, where the state owns everything.
The free market is any system where there are no restrictions on who can buy or sell, or what can be bought or sold. Contrast it with a regulated market, where there are rules on the prices of goods, or who can buy from which companies, or where certain regions must be supplied from...
It is fully possible to have capitalism without a free market. A free market without capitalism is also possible, though it gets a little weird and requires some different definitions. They are entirely different concepts. Calling them synonymous is like greeting a pigeon with "nice doggy!".
The reference to a protection racket shows the potential for serious problems with patents...
That example should be interpreted as "get a patent, and it'll keep Big Bad Corporation away from you. Don't get a patent, and take the risk of losing your market..."
Not having patents just means you're always taking the risk.
and it's unhealthy for a society to not have some skepticism of the institution.
Maybe that's why I have no hesitation in pointing out that the current implementation sucks.
As for your claim, there's not that much evidence that patents actually are beneficial to society,
As for your claim, there's not that much evidence that patents actually are not beneficial to society.
In most markets, the first mover's advantage is generally seen as the biggest element in turning an idea into money
You mean like the GRiDPad? Or QDOS? Those are just off the top of my head. In fact, there are a lot of reasons why ideas fail, and being second to market isn't that important. Even if it were, it takes time to get enough investors to produce something. During that time, another (larger) company could launch their identical product first. Without patents, inventors get screwed.
It's also hard to tell that if a butterfly had flown just a bit differently, Hurricane Katrina may not have happened.
Of course, it's also entirely possible that in a world with no patents, everyone might just play nicely, and love and care for each other, and never be greedy... but I'm not going to bet my future on it, and I certainly wouldn't waste my resources inventing something.
Patents are a very simple trade-off: protection of your idea, in exchange for public disclosure. By mitigating the risk of disclosure, there's more disclosure, and more innovation. The only problems come from a broken implementation.
I'm sorry, but when exactly did I say patents were a part of the free market, or even implied that a free market was related? What nonsense is it that I'm spouting?
Patents do not restrict a consumer's ability to choose solutions to their problems. Got a headache? Try Headache-B-Gone! Don't like that? Try No-More-Pain, from a different company, working with a completely different chemical.
If anything, patents protect the market, though it's in a roundabout, protection-racket kind of way. I won't bother calling it a "free market", since that term usually implies utter anarchy.
Without patents, there's nothing preventing Umbrella Corp. from simply copying new ideas, and applying their huge marketing budget toward promotion. The actual inventor did the work and spent the resources, but gets nothing while Umbrella Corp. gets all the profit. Umbrella Corp. also eventually gets the single effective voice in how the idea behaves, stifling future products.
With patents, the inventor gets a brief period of time where they get a monopoly on that one idea. During that time, they have a chance to promote their own product, and take full credit for its existence. There's nothing preventing Umbrella Corp. from creating their own similar-but-different product, but that means that Umbrella Corp. will be spending their own resources, and inventing something new.
Perhaps a better solution is to claim that derivative patents are a valid defense to infringement.
Hypothetically, consider an exception where you can infringe on a patent freely, if and only if there is no trivial workaround, and your improvements to the idea are themselves worth a patent. Perhaps better still is an arrangement where a court-determined percentage of royalties gets paid up the chain, as a form of forced licensing to other innovators.
As an example, a crane with an elbow joint might be worth a patent. A crane with a ball joint at the elbow (capable of reaching around corners) could be determined to be patentable in itself, as a novel and nontrivial idea in itself. A court may determine that the idea is 50% due to the elbow patent, and the ball-joint crane company pays 50% of their royalties to the elbow-joint crane company.
Once again, it's an implementation problem, and not the problem of patents themselves.
...And that's how I'd hope others behave, too. In the early days of MapReduce, though, it was a major breakthrough that enabled Google to produce a leading search engine. Without filing the patent on it, Google would have been at risk for anyone else to copy the infrastructure. My opinion is that patent protection helped Google grow significantly for a few years. After Google had made enough use of their patent, they licensed it away freely, choosing to counter the poor patent implementation. It's almost like they were trying to not be evil or something...
Now Cialis, as the product of tens (or hundreds) of millions of dollars in research and clinical trials, gets the chance to make a profit before knockoff labs are allowed to copy it, at the relatively-cheap cost of just copying the molecule. Invention gets rewarded.
Without patents, my company's product probably wouldn't have been developed. We run on Hadoop, which is based on technology licensed (free of charge) from Google. Would Google have released the details of its BigTable and MapReduce technologies without patent protection? My guess is no. They might have done the research, but probably not released all the details.
One year for a physical device is far too short. That's why the lifespan is 20 years. I'm fine with that. Software patents should, in my opinion, only last long enough to be useful. I think I said that already...
...software patents last far longer than the idea's useful life
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As long as you drive just as well as the autonomous car does, I'm fine with human drivers.
Change lanes in an intersection, though, and I'll start hating you.
Drugs lead to increased rates of other crimes. Heavy trucks just raise taxes (via deteriorating roads).
Sounds to me like the police are putting money into protecting people, rather than just imposing fines on otherwise-harmless businesses.
A widely-available car that even properly follows laws would also save, collectively, many hours per day of everybody's time, even among those who don't drive it.
A few seconds here because an intersection wasn't blocked... A few seconds there because a turn signal allowed some advance planning... Another few seconds because lane merges were done earlier than the last possible moment...
Here's to the future, and hoping it comes soon!
I should probably call a good friend, go get a drink, and laugh about the whole thing. Paranoia doesn't really help at all. He wasn't arrested, and wasn't even implicated as being a part of anything suspicious. Why waste more time and money complaining because the Federal Bureau of Investigation did some investigation of a federal matter?
Nevermind the overhead costs of transporting that many items, coordinating the transports, and ensuring that the materials stay in controlled environments the whole time. Also conveniently ignore the facts that librarians have learned a thing or two about preservation in the past two thousand years, and that engineers have produced better fire-control systems, and that there's more to storage than just lots of shelf space.
Ignore the past thousand years of progress, and this is indeed a serious risk. Otherwise, it's no more a risk than any other storage system.
Supposedly, a satellite. That satellite would then fire an infrared laser beam down to earth, with 100 billion times the power of what Earth currently uses.
What could possibly go wrong?
Perfect! Now instead of fearing that we'll be casting ourselves off into space, I can just fear that we won't get the timing/direction right!
I remember Shoemaker-Levy 9. It did not end well for the inhabitants.
With paranoia, you're never alone.
That realization does nothing to assuage my small but persistent fears.
Am I the only one slightly concerned about this idea turning the Earth into an interstellar spacecraft, solving the global warming problem permanently (as far as humans are concerned)?
That's because the Wall Street Journal, like so many others, confuses the meaning of the visualizations. They aren't results. Instead, they're great tools for finding what parts of the theory need a better test.
As a contrived example, let's say that this visualization shows that a plume of dark matter going in a particular direction at a particular time. Comparing the visualization at that time to known colliding clusters in the real world might help show where to point our telescopes for evidence of dark matter. It helps to create the initial hypothesis, reducing the number (and therefore the cost) of failed experiments.
Another use is for verification of a model. If we already know of several colliding clusters, this visualization should, be able to produce images that look very similar to those clusters. If not, then we know that there's something wrong with the model, and we can find ways to improve it.
Tying that in with your example, we now know that the fluid model used wasn't perfect. It's time for more analysis, experiments, and refinements, eventually resulting in a more thorough knowledge of our universe.
No scientist worth their salt will say that any model is absolutely perfect. In fact, the one you spoke of didn't. She said it was the "perfect model to do <a given job>," implying that it could do the job with the given parameters, and that deriving a completely new model wasn't necessary. The model itself is imperfect, but it fit the job perfectly. If the journalists presented the model as a prediction, that's the journalists' fault.
Graphics give understanding, though. A numeric analysis can show exactly what happens, but it doesn't convey a general idea of what's going on. Pictures are easier to understand, and show more information at once. There's a reason why the weatherman shows his forecasts on a giant map.
Speaking of giant maps, I visited the ANL recently, and saw a computer system being used for related research. If they're using the same visualization system (which looks REALLY similar to the video in TFA), then this graphical model could be shown on a giant screen, and the model could be rotated & zoomed at any point. It's science through pictures, not just pictures of science.
It's like déjà vu all over again.
If having patents is a losing game, why has it worked fine for 536 years? New companies spring up all the time, and some of them even do well.
As a personal example, my company's doing quite well, and yes, we have our own patent-pending technology. We've met our competitors. They are not happy about what we can do. Our patent application includes language limiting the scope to our specific field, so when it's public, it will be a drop-in solution for those who aren't our competitors. Seems to me that's a pretty decent compromise to accommodate a broken implementation.
Meanwhile, there's a fair amount of evidence in favor of patents as well. Perhaps you could point our a specific study that supports what you're saying? Saying "go read this propaganda book" doesn't contribute to the discussion much.
There was pretty conclusive evidence of...
There's pretty conclusive evidence that the world is a tetrahedron sitting on the back of a giant marmoset. Of course, I'm not going to give references, either.
That's where NDAs, appropriate wages, and a need to know basis can come in.
So after spending their money on researching a product, an independent inventor must spend even more to investigate the leak, and maybe prosecute the guy who leaked the information for... breach of contract? With no real chance of getting an income from his work, all he can do is go after a small fine? The big company can just consider that fine a "finder's fee" for the new product, and pay more for the information. The inventor has no way to go after the company that's profiting from his idea, so he's still screwed.
Of course, the inventor could just implement draconian security policies, and not allow anyone to leave diagrams on whiteboards, or notebooks on desks, or talk with anyone from other departments, but that takes even more money.
After all of that, it seems simpler and more reliable just to have restrictions on copying ideas.
So where is any evidence that patents eliminate competition?
However, they have a much better chance when the field has no patents or weak patentability because patents are used as a weapon against startups. The 3 measly patents your startup has are nothing compared to the thousands of patents the big boys have.
If it's a good patent, one is enough. With a proper implementation (no broad patents), the big company's patent on toothpaste tubes can't possibly affect your patent on a starter motor. With a patent-is-proof philosophy in the courts, having a patent on your product could indemnify it against other patents. Again, those are implementation details.
Now a free market isn't actually free, and regulation of covered physical area is fine, but not regulation of covered market segments...
Of course, a startup company will be a niche player at the start, like every other company. Patents should not guarantee every inventor will become a millionaire. Instead, they guarantee inventors get a chance to recoup their investment. Even a small toy company like Larami had a better chance to make a profit than a single guy building pressurized water guns from PVC pipe.
Looking through that book, conveniently available online, it has a lot of examples of patents doing nothing. It has a lot of examples where ideas got copied by people who had common goals. Examples of patents actually hurting society are extremely rare, and usually coupled with the original inventors getting screwed.
Perhaps you'd like to show some of these "most surveys"? Let's turn to the ever-authoritative source, Wikipedia. Pulling out a few key points here, I see that reducing price to try to build a market reduces profitability. While Microsoft can afford to waste money on the XBox, I don't know any guy in a garage with money to spend like that. What else? Investments in future needs early, before demand actually rises. Also a great idea, but also requiring lots of money that inventors probably don't have.
What about disadvantages? It seems the biggest problems are with other companies copying research, and general market risk. Either the inventor gets screwed, or everyone does. Seems this first-mover advantage is bad for inventors, as well.
Assuming the inventor has a few million dollars in their back pocket, they might be able to fund manufacture themselves. Who's going to do it though? They'll need employees, and supply lines, and advertising, and a small army of other people who all get to see the product before it's public. With no protection, there's nothing preventing one of those hired hands from passing the design on to another company.
So in other words, no, monopolies don't give up power voluntarily. Competition alone doesn't help your argument much, either...
Firefox gained ground because of the US government pushing Microsoft to reduce the bundling with IE, and a few million dollars in funding from Mozilla Foundation, itself funded by the Bank Of AOL. Chrome is funded by Google, which got its money through the use of patented (!) algorithms.
Vista failed for more than just "lacking competition". Mac OS X was out for five years, with regular updates, before Vista. In fact, one of the biggest reasons Vista failed was because of Apple's advertising and some internal problems, rather than a lack of new features. It seems a big ad budget can override innovation.
Your last sentence is a four-line jumble of clauses. If I read it right, you seem to be saying that little guys get screwed, and without patents the big players can lock them out of the market. Yep. That's why we need patents.
Would you mind showing me any of this evidence? Preferably something where a monopoly voluntarily gave up its position to let a newcomer make a profit?
You're talking about a basic equilibrium. If there are three companies, each doing different things, and each equally large, they'll compete evenly, and leave a choice for the consumer.
What about the little guys, though? The two guys who invent a new product in a garage? Before they can even get a manufacturer producing their product, the larger companies have the money and resources to produce it easily. The little guys get screwed. They made the initial investment in the product, did the work, solved the problems, and they get nothing. If they're lucky, somebody will mention them in a documentary in 50 years.
Free markets and capitalism are largely synonymous.
Capitalism is a system of economics based around private ownership of resources. Contrast it with economic communism, where the people collectively own everything, or socialism, where the state owns everything.
The free market is any system where there are no restrictions on who can buy or sell, or what can be bought or sold. Contrast it with a regulated market, where there are rules on the prices of goods, or who can buy from which companies, or where certain regions must be supplied from...
It is fully possible to have capitalism without a free market. A free market without capitalism is also possible, though it gets a little weird and requires some different definitions. They are entirely different concepts. Calling them synonymous is like greeting a pigeon with "nice doggy!".
The reference to a protection racket shows the potential for serious problems with patents...
That example should be interpreted as "get a patent, and it'll keep Big Bad Corporation away from you. Don't get a patent, and take the risk of losing your market..."
Not having patents just means you're always taking the risk.
and it's unhealthy for a society to not have some skepticism of the institution.
Maybe that's why I have no hesitation in pointing out that the current implementation sucks.
As for your claim, there's not that much evidence that patents actually are beneficial to society,
As for your claim, there's not that much evidence that patents actually are not beneficial to society.
In most markets, the first mover's advantage is generally seen as the biggest element in turning an idea into money
You mean like the GRiDPad? Or QDOS? Those are just off the top of my head. In fact, there are a lot of reasons why ideas fail, and being second to market isn't that important. Even if it were, it takes time to get enough investors to produce something. During that time, another (larger) company could launch their identical product first. Without patents, inventors get screwed.
Two words: Clippy World
It's also hard to tell that if a butterfly had flown just a bit differently, Hurricane Katrina may not have happened.
Of course, it's also entirely possible that in a world with no patents, everyone might just play nicely, and love and care for each other, and never be greedy... but I'm not going to bet my future on it, and I certainly wouldn't waste my resources inventing something.
Patents are a very simple trade-off: protection of your idea, in exchange for public disclosure. By mitigating the risk of disclosure, there's more disclosure, and more innovation. The only problems come from a broken implementation.
I'm sorry, but when exactly did I say patents were a part of the free market, or even implied that a free market was related? What nonsense is it that I'm spouting?
Patents do not restrict a consumer's ability to choose solutions to their problems. Got a headache? Try Headache-B-Gone! Don't like that? Try No-More-Pain, from a different company, working with a completely different chemical.
If anything, patents protect the market, though it's in a roundabout, protection-racket kind of way. I won't bother calling it a "free market", since that term usually implies utter anarchy.
Without patents, there's nothing preventing Umbrella Corp. from simply copying new ideas, and applying their huge marketing budget toward promotion. The actual inventor did the work and spent the resources, but gets nothing while Umbrella Corp. gets all the profit. Umbrella Corp. also eventually gets the single effective voice in how the idea behaves, stifling future products.
With patents, the inventor gets a brief period of time where they get a monopoly on that one idea. During that time, they have a chance to promote their own product, and take full credit for its existence. There's nothing preventing Umbrella Corp. from creating their own similar-but-different product, but that means that Umbrella Corp. will be spending their own resources, and inventing something new.
Perhaps a better solution is to claim that derivative patents are a valid defense to infringement.
Hypothetically, consider an exception where you can infringe on a patent freely, if and only if there is no trivial workaround, and your improvements to the idea are themselves worth a patent. Perhaps better still is an arrangement where a court-determined percentage of royalties gets paid up the chain, as a form of forced licensing to other innovators.
As an example, a crane with an elbow joint might be worth a patent. A crane with a ball joint at the elbow (capable of reaching around corners) could be determined to be patentable in itself, as a novel and nontrivial idea in itself. A court may determine that the idea is 50% due to the elbow patent, and the ball-joint crane company pays 50% of their royalties to the elbow-joint crane company.
Once again, it's an implementation problem, and not the problem of patents themselves.
...And that's how I'd hope others behave, too. In the early days of MapReduce, though, it was a major breakthrough that enabled Google to produce a leading search engine. Without filing the patent on it, Google would have been at risk for anyone else to copy the infrastructure. My opinion is that patent protection helped Google grow significantly for a few years. After Google had made enough use of their patent, they licensed it away freely, choosing to counter the poor patent implementation. It's almost like they were trying to not be evil or something...
Now Cialis, as the product of tens (or hundreds) of millions of dollars in research and clinical trials, gets the chance to make a profit before knockoff labs are allowed to copy it, at the relatively-cheap cost of just copying the molecule. Invention gets rewarded.
Without patents, my company's product probably wouldn't have been developed. We run on Hadoop, which is based on technology licensed (free of charge) from Google. Would Google have released the details of its BigTable and MapReduce technologies without patent protection? My guess is no. They might have done the research, but probably not released all the details.
One year for a physical device is far too short. That's why the lifespan is 20 years. I'm fine with that. Software patents should, in my opinion, only last long enough to be useful. I think I said that already...
...software patents last far longer than the idea's useful life