min-myinnersoul

Conventional thinking is that without patents,we would not have innovation. Mankind would stagnate in the Dark Ages. Really ??  This port is triggered by the drama between Apple and Samsung . In the tech industry, everybody is suing everybody else over patent infringement. Hundreds of patents are granted over what goes inside one mobile phone. Is this all necessary ? These days, that business seems to be driven by lawyers rather than technology - M&A activity in this industry seem to be driven mostly by patents.The patent industry has exploded so much that this blogger even blogged about the ridiculous patents that have been granted . The central premise that innovation will be stopped if there are no patents is nonsense. Right through human history, innovation has flourished with no help from the patent office, thank you.  Patents are a recent human invention - perhaps in the 15th century. Innovation has not exactly been stifled throughout human history.  You may sa...

A crying shame, it is. This blog is not meant to be political in nature and is (usually) not prone to hyperbolic hand wringing. This post does both, unashamedly. I just could not believe that the Digital Economy Bill was “passed”, or rather rushed through the British House of Commons. Actually what took place was the ‘Third reading”, which is not the same thing as passing. But we won’t get into quaint British parliamentary traditions where worthies have to yell “Hear Hear” when they actually are meaning &^%$ @#$. They effectively passed that bill. See the photo in this article to see how vigorously attended this debate was. I am not a British national; I do not live in the UK and have no business commenting on British policy or laws. But I am a self confessed Anglophile. I hold great fondness for all that is good and great in Her Majesty’s kingdom. That paragon of virtue, fair play and freedom, passes such a thing as the Digital Economy Bill - that is difficult to stomach. 95% of...

On Monday Judge Robert Sweet struck a blow for common sense in that mind boggling area of Patents in the US. He invalidated several patents on two breast cancer risk genes in the human body issued to a bio tech firm. He had a breathtakingly simple logic – you can’t patent a product of nature ! The principle of protecting innovation through patents has been rather stretched in the US. All sorts of stuff gets patented. Many of these are primarily designed to block, or sue, others. The Patent Office uses the criteria of novel, non obvious and useful in determining whether a submission qualifies for a patent. It should also add non trivial, non absurd and non laughable as criteria ! For your reading pleasure here are some actual patents issued in the US -Method of stopping a stolen car without a high-speed chase, utilizing a bar code (well ; the barcode is to identify the vehicle; the method of stopping it is to switch off the engine) - Anti-Eating Mouth Cage (presumably a weight reductio...