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A patent is meant to encourage people and companies to share the details of their inventions, instead of keeping them secret. In return the inventors get protec
by Shitty-kitty 29d ago
A patent is meant to encourage people and companies to share the details of their inventions, instead of keeping them secret. In return the inventors get protection for a certain number of years.
- robocat 29d agoThat was the stated purpose of a patent. The modern purposes of patents seem to have shifted a long way from that. I wonder how much of ADSL's advantage is due to trade secrets (spread across many vendors) versus how much has been published as patents.
- Brendinooo 28d ago>The modern purposes of patents seem to have shifted a long way from that I'm not sure if that's true, or if it's more that 1) we hear more about the more egregious stuff and/or 2) something was lost in translation with that stated purpose when the world went digital.
- robocat 28d agoPatents are not discussed as inventions any more. Other aspects now matter: defensive patents, patent pools, patent trolls, patent portfolios, etc. Triple damages made a farce of patents as dissemination of invention.
- PunchyHamster 29d agowe're getting patents intern could re-invent from scratch in a week in whiteroom