Hand-washing & hand-wringing Re: <fart>

[Stephen D. Williams]

I've thought all this through, and yes, the patent system as it now 
exists has inhibitory influence in certain cases.

I also realize that most patentable, or marketable at least, insights 
are arrived at by a number of people more or less at once.  Sometimes I 
wait to see if it is a becoming-obvious-idea, which I know will be 
snapped up by a well-funded corporation.  I know I have experienced that 
a few times in the past.  One example: various automated gun locks which 
I was drawing up in about 1992.  The talks of the last few years are a 
bizarre deja-vu.

Another of my ancient pet ideas: anti-motion sickness glasses that used 
accelerometers to dead reckon and create an artificial horizon on the 
screens of LCD goggles.

The fact is that just making an idea public doesn't make it happen.  In 
fact, taking a lesson from investor weight on patents in the dot com 
era, an idea may have far more likelihood of competing with other ideas 
if it has successfully survived the funding/patent process.

I have ideas outside of my profession; those I don't mind giving away 
but I can also be patient with them.

If there was an open-source plumbing manufacturing company, I'd have 
somewhere to go with this particular idea.  Since the only companies 
that would pick it up and do something with it are public, for-profit 
enterprises, I can't see just giving it to them.  If I were purist about 
public IP, open source, etc., I would still go for the patent and then 
use a GPL-like license.  More likely, a GPL-like license for non-profit 
(i.e. GPL-like) use with a dual license for commercial use. ;-)

I've had this plumbing idea for several years...  I also have ideas 
about traffic/terrain signaling, living/working space anti-collision, 
and of course many comp-sci/IT algorithms.  My fledgling startup (now 
'hibernating' !!) even did a patent search on my idea to prevent 
automation of website traffic.

Patents seem good when the little guy gets them, bad when the big 
corporation gets them.  Real, truly innovative patents, not the vanity 
patents all of the dot coms pushed through.  One thing I would like to 
see changed: patents should expire in shorter time periods, but the time 
shouldn't start ticking until the idea becomes economically viable in 
some sense.  

sdw

Gordon Mohr wrote:

>Stephen D. Williams writes:
>
>>I actually have an invention that would revolutionize hand washing... 
>>
>
>Does it need revolutionizing? 
>

It is sub-optimal in the universe of solutions that includes my idea, in 
my analysis.  QED

>> Unless and until I find someone willing to fund the patent process or 
>>until I have the money to pour down the drain ( ;-) ), the world will 
>>just have to continue suffering. 
>>
>
>Or, you could stop thinking of your idea as a source of proprietary
>advantage, and simply give it as a gift to the world. Perhaps you'd 
>get fame; perhaps you'd gain satisfaction at having performed a good 
>deed that "revolutionizes" many lives.
>
>It seems unlikely that the value of the idea will grow over time,
>barring growth in the seriousness of hand-bourne diseases. Further, 
>there is an increasing risk that the invention, if truly valuable,
>will occur to someone else, causing its economic value for you to 
>drop to zero.
>
>Given that for now you have chosen to "make your living elsewhere", 
>you seem to have assessed the risk-adjusted return (economic and 
>psychic) of pursuing the hand-washing invention as being lower than 
>the return of whatever else you're currently doing.
>
>So keeping the idea "in your back pocket" is suboptimal both
>for you and society. It is only through a dreamy, unrealistic
>estimation of the idea's value -- an estimation largely disproven 
>by your day-to-day preference of other income-generating activities --
>that the nondisclosure course-of-action can seem sensible.
>
>This same sort of dreamy misestimation is why people who should know
>better buy lottery tickets. By neither disclosing nor pursuing your
>invention, have you fashioned yourself a virtual lottery ticket?
>
>I further suspect that your invention did not arise because you were 
>specifically devoting effort to creating patentable new devices, but 
>rather because you saw a need and, given your experience and way of 
>thinking, you had an insight. 
>
>That is, you would have conceived of the innovation even without 
>the prospect of patent monopolization. However, that prospect has 
>now led you to delay disclosure and commercialization, perhaps
>indefinitely.
>
>This would then seem to be a situation in which the patent system 
>is having an effect exactly counter to its stated aims.
>
>- Gordon
>
>
>
>
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>