Kevin Aylward said:
No one seems to be adreeing this point, so I will. Its the downer.
No one cares a toss about patents. Ideas are 10 a penny. The likelihood
that you have an idea that has any value, is next to zero. Every Tom
Dick and Harry thinks they have a greate idea. They are *millions* of
complexly worthless patents that have never made anyone any money.
A mate of mine with his own start-up, made his millions not by any
patents, but simply being the first to design a new chip that Cypress
wanted at that time. They bought his company for $30M.
Its finished product people want, not bedroom musings.
My only regret is that at the start up of my mates company, he offered
me a design job with 150,000 share options, and I went elsewhere...
Kevin Aylward
[email protected]
http://www.anasoft.co.uk
SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode
Windows Simulator with Schematic Capture,
Waveform Display, FFT's and Filter Design.
As a general comment ...
Last week I came across a recent Italian patent covering the action of a
mouse scroll wheel.
A 'novel and inventive idea' in the eye of European law, this patent (claim
#1), described how the faster you scrolled the mouse wheel, the faster the
screen display moved. Whoever would have thought of that!. Incredulous, I
subsequently turned up dozens of other patents based around the scroll
wheel. All vacuous, all obvious, all without merit.
Something's now seriously amiss within the world of intellectual property
legislation. Dross patents such as these and the millions more like them are
now par for the course. Individual basic innovation and enterprise, is now
well and truly being stifled in favour of large companies with sufficient
resources to Hoover-up any and all of this kind of rubbish.
At one time there was a useful spam/junk filter, in that a proposed idea
needed to pass the test of being seen as 'worthy' by another skilled in the
same art.
No longer. These assessments now seem made by spotty kiddies who've just
passed their patent exams.
Problem is, that although this spam has no trace of any inventive or
technical merit, it is not worthless. Far from it. It is of priceless value
to the lawyers who are employed to fight over it.
They generate the spam. They defend the spam. They trouser the fortunes.
The European parliament is shortly voting on whether to allow software
patenting. I see this as an obscenity, yet know for sure the final vote
outcome. (many MEPs come from a legal background).
Then again ... as last week's New Scientist article suggested, maybe we've
just run out of ideas. We're only getting what we deserve.
regards
john
