[ExI] Designing and applying technology for the third world

spike spike66 at att.net
Sat Sep 25 19:31:47 UTC 2010


 > ...On Behalf Of Keith Henson

> Subject: Re: [ExI] Designing and applying technology for the 
> third world
> 
> On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 9:58 AM, Bryan Bishop 
> <kanzure at gmail.com> wrote:
> > ...but whenever something is made, it's patented and immediately 
> > made secret. - Bryan
> 
> Patents don't make it secret.  Quite the other way... Keith


Ja, that was my experience with the Lockheed patent office, all five times I
went to them with ideas.  They looked over my invention and specifically
decided to not patent, but to keep the ideas as trade secrets.  The patent
application throws it into the open, where any yahoo can actually get around
the patent fairly easily by deriving some minor variation on the theme.

Patents don't mean what they used to.  If you hear the tired conspiracy
theories about oil companies buying up and shelving patents that would make
cars run on dog turds (etc) you know it is bogus.  If such a thing existed,
anyone could get a car to run on wolf turds and it would be a separate
patent.  The modern patent office has evolved in such a way that you can
patent anything, but it doesn't mean much.

spike





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