Re: The joy of Patents

On Tue, 22 Oct 2024 14:04:53 -1000, Lynn Wheeler wrote:

claim was constitution setup patent system to protect new innovative
players from large monopolies (that nominally protect their status quo).

The original concept was called “letters patent”. These were Government-
granted monopolies in particular industries (e.g. salt extraction from
seawater, or the manufacturer of gold leaf); if anybody else tried to set
up in competition with you, the legitimate monopoly holder, the Government
would send its goons round to give them a hiding.

When it became clear the system was outdated, instead of getting rid of it
completely, the idea was changed so that you needed to come up with some
kind of “invention” to get a “patent”, which gave you a monopoly on the
rights to that “invention”.

Though oddly, the concept of “invention” needs to be narrowly defined. For
example, Einstein couldn’t get a patent on his groundbreaking General
Theory of Relativity, but microchips exploiting General Relativity to
accurately determine your position in space and time can indeed be
patented. Was the underlying enabling theory too “inventive” to be
patented, perhaps?