Comment on Welcome to the Golden Age of User Hostility
Norgur@fedia.io 7 months ago
"uncovered a patent" sounds like there was investigatios and a hidden thing Roku did behind everyone's back, not wanting anyone to know what they're up to. Patents are public. That's their purpose. They tell others what they cannot do because someone else was first. So they didn't "uncover" shit. They read it in the publicly accessible catalogue from the patents office.
That's to "uncovering" what respect towards customers is to Roku: fuck all
Actually, that’s not the real reason patents are public. The reason is to allow everyone to freely use the patent after the expiry.
The tradeoff is supposed to be the inventor gets exclusive use for a decade in exchange for detailing exactly how the thing works for everyone else.
have you ever actually looked for patents? uncovering is the right term here.
Not too many decades ago it wouldn’t have been so easy to casually read these documents.
This is “new.” How new is what is debatable.
tad_lispy@lemm.ee 7 months ago
In the USA there are almost 650 thousands patent applications being filled (of which almost 400 thousands are getting grants) each year. So while technically what you wrote is correct, in practical terms finding an interesting patent is certainly not a trivial task for a journalist.