> There's about 30 things I can think of off hand that I don't have
> patents on because I don't have $100k for each idea for the
> dance-macabre with the Patent Office. Not counting software. So I
> put some of my stuff on the net.
Actually, its about $25K for a good US lawyer per patent. Probably
much less when not using some over-payed corpoprate lawyer.
I've been told (more or less) by US patent laywer that for $25K, you
can more or less patent anything.... (you just make it look different
to things that have come before, whether or not it really is).
> Don Lancaster, long-time hardware hacking columnist, has NEVER seen
> an *individual* make money on a patent.
I have -- I know several people with patents, only one has made money
from it, enough in fact to allow them to hack around all day instead
of getting a real job (it also supports their spouse and kids to some
extent too I believe).
> Possession of patents is not reflective of innovation, it's
> reflective of money.
Yes. People who do IPOs often look for patents to give their company
some 'added value', "even if the patent is worthless"
> Doesn't the leader in over-the-top business aggression, Microsoft,
> have a patent on using XOR to toggle a cursor?
There are worse patents out there -- one for tuning a 1 bit into a 0
bit, and also one for the converse. You can lease this for 0.10 cyber
dollars per bit on the web somewhere.
> I suggest a policy, that patents are for hardware.
It only moves the goalpost -- hardware and software algorithms are
becoming a very fine line (eg. FPGAs).
> The Patent Office would thank us.
No they won't -- they make money from patents. Presumably the more
patents they see, the more they make.
-cw
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/