Same for copyright law. The point was to give creators a few years to profit from their work before it goes into public domain.
Comment on Patent troll Sable pays up, dedicates all its patents to the public!
Buffalox@lemmy.world 3 months agoThe original idea with patents is to help protect small inventors from being run over by bigger corporations.
But the result is more often the opposite, where small inventors that have a genuinely profitable novel product, is quickly forced to bankruptcy by frivolous patent suits, even when the new product is patented, and when bankrupt bought for peanuts by the bigger corp.
The other main basis for patents is that the technology should not be lost, in case of the inventors death.
But the way tech works today, that is no-longer relevant.
lunarul@lemmy.world 3 months ago
henfredemars@infosec.pub 3 months ago
As someone who was awarded several patents, these things were not made to be a source of infinite money forever!
Up there with our copyright law it’s a system that has been horribly abused to the benefit of super powerful corporations that run everything.
Buffalox@lemmy.world 3 months ago
I have a friend who works for the city and invented a brilliant system to remove weed from pebble driveways, without using weed killers. They wrote an article in the local paper, and he was even awarded by the mayor.
Several people recommended to him to patent his system, and he contacted a patent lawyer to do just that.
The lawyer praised his idea, and stated he could make the paperwork to get the patent, for the small fee of some insane amount.
Luckily he pulled out, and did not go forward.
It turns out that his idea was already in production in Germany. The money to the patent lawyer would have been a complete waste.
The moral of the story is, that the only sure winners on patents, are the lawyers.
henfredemars@infosec.pub 3 months ago
That’s really cool! My invention was a means of accelerated processing for images that makes it cheaper to produce what used to be dedicated color processing chips for digital cameras. While these are no longer used today, it did find some applications. At this point there’s a few libraries or at least some of the rows as open source in the hopes they might find some use in the future and contribute to society that way.
Buffalox@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Cool, digital photography is an area that has had insane development IMO.
I’m absolutely flabbergasted by the digital photography capabilities of modern phones. high res, image stabilization, and of course color mapping/filtering.
The processing power needed is insane. 4K movies are 8 megapixel at 3 colors 30 fps, and it’s 750 million sub pixels, that need to be processed per second, and we do that on a cheap tiny handheld device! The better ones can handle 8K and that’s 3 Billion sub pixels per second!
It’s impressive that you have been part of it. 👍 😎
henfredemars@infosec.pub 3 months ago
Following your edit, I’m sorry to hear that the patent system couldn’t protect him. This isn’t the first case I’ve heard of. Honestly, you have to be rich, which I think is completely intentional to ensure that only big business can benefit from a patent.
Buffalox@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Some companies are just scumbags, and the bigger they are the worse it gets.