Acid Reigns
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Canoas
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^I agree that it shackles scientific evolution.
It will probably get easier to get screwed over if you invent something without patents though.
It will probably get easier to get screwed over if you invent something without patents though.
"Doing something, almost being done, then parents come in and don't let you finish.
Yes, I had a rough childhood." - devdevil
Yes, I had a rough childhood." - devdevil
Canoas
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Searz wrote:
^I agree that it shackles scientific evolution.
It will probably get easier to get screwed over if you invent something without patents though.
Well, at best what would happen is that, for example, you make a new cellphone with a new technology and other companies would use that technology on their next generation of cellphones. You would still have gotten that head start.
Besides, there's plenty of people who get screwed over by selling their patents to a company who the doesn't want to use them. For example, my chemistry teacher invented a chemical literally a thousand times more powerful than morfine. This enabled hospitals to dilute it to 1/1000 of it's concentration and get incredibly cheap anesthetics. What the morphine companies did was buy the patent and then never use it so they could keep making money selling morphine. The new substance was so cheap that it wouldn't be profitable for them.
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http://www.google.com/patents/US6368227
Someone actually managed to patent a way of using a swing.
So every time somebody uses a swing that way, they'd be forced to pay a royalty fee.
I don't even...........
Luckily, the patent was later invalidated, but the fact that it got validated in the first place is just insane.
If stuff like that is allowed I might as well patent the use of rectangular screens or the use of glass to protect a screen, or how about "Several still pictures in a sequence, to mimic movement." which basically means that I'd have patented animation.