this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2024
293 points (90.8% liked)
Technology
59605 readers
4225 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
If you're enforcing a patent that would have been come up with other people in the same field, then the patent is invalid, many of us would consider going after people with an invalid patent -- patent trolling.
Patents are meant for UNIQUE ideas and things that nobody else would have come up with on their own. But increasingly they're being used for obvious ideas that thousands of other people also have around the same time, to lock out competition.
Patents last for 20 years, that's a long time for something unique and groundbreaking to become mundane and seemingly obvious in hindsight, especially when almost everything these days builds on top of something already existing at a break neck pace.
But the problem with the current system is that everybody has to try to patent absolutely everything they come up with because if they don't somebody else might and then sue you for it, and instead of the patent offices actually doing their jobs and dismissing them outright so they would be free to use for everyone, they grant patents on the most simplest or broadest of things.
The silver lining is that plenty of great new things have been made specifically because people have been trying to avoid someone else's patents - "necessity is the mother of all inventions", literally.