Various patents we’ve been a part of developing (not exhaustive)…
A few words about Patents…
A patent is a curious thing. In some ways it was a great early example of open source long before software became the poster child for the movement. It’s a form of intellectual property (IP) that had the original intent of encouraging inventors to document the novel and unique approach they came up with to solve a given challenge. In exchange for filing a patent and explaining it enough so that others versed in your field could reproduce the solution you’d get a limited amount of protection and a way of seeking reward for your hard work.
So it was property in some regards like when you bought a piece of land and you could show the deed and defend your ownership of the land in a court of law.
But a patent is different. It offers imperfect protection. It’s considered a negative grant and isn’t for forever, like owning a piece of land.
Let’s break down what that really means. A negative grant means that it doesn’t give you the right to make your invention and sell it. Instead it gives you the right to go after others that have built something on your “land” and ask them to pay for that use. You can say, great, you built that cool thing, but I had the idea first and patented it. So please pay some licensing for the right to use that idea. It used to be that patents were rewarded to the inventor that first came up with the idea. In a way that encouraged inventors to share their ideas for the good of society (instead of keeping their inventions a trade secret, which is another form of intellectual property.)
Thomas Jefferson was the first head of the Patent Office of the United States. He wanted to encourage invention in this new land and provide a way to reward that invention. But he said, “If I light a match and it catches fire, and I use that match to help light your match, I still have the fire myself.” Ideas are not rivalrous. When the original colonies were formed there were often “liberties” or “commons.” Where you could put your horse out into the commons or let it out “on liberty.” But if your horse ate all the grass there wouldn’t be any for my horse. There was rivalry over the grass. Often the challenge in commons is framed as “the tragedy of the commons.” But the idea commons is different. If you take my idea, I still have it and can generate more ideas from that first idea. An excellent primer on patents and intellectual property (and how it has been distorted over the years by Mickey Mouse and others who have worked to protect their ideas) is The Future of Ideas, by Lawrence Lessig.
In 2013 a new law was passed, called the “America Invents Act” that shifted from “first to invent” to “first inventor to file” an invention as a patent. The changes have driven debate about whether this shift will lead to stifling innovation and weight things towards larger entities versus sole inventors or encourage more invention. Hard to say where that debate will play out.
At companies I’ve worked at we’ve occasionally hosted “invention-paloozas” with our patent attorneys to gather together our most recent research and discuss what if anything is worth patenting. Some organizations are far better at this than others and have built their entire business on creating intellectual property.