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it will be full of lawyers and special interest groupsit will be full of lawyers and special interest groupsPosted Jan 6, 2013 16:56 UTC (Sun) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164)In reply to: it will be full of lawyers and special interest groups by josh Parent article: The USPTO Would Like to Partner with the Software Community ... Wait. What? Really? (Groklaw)
Indeed, Edison loved patents and happily abused them to keep the whole development of technology back so he could profit just a little more. Patents have helped block innovations all over history - from steam and electricity to modern day computing. I wonder if there are any examples where they had actual benefits for innovation and technology...
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Patent number 1 Posted Jan 7, 2013 19:01 UTC (Mon) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]
Actually, while it wasn't technology, I believe patent no 1 actually DID do as it was meant to do, advancing medicine and saving thousands of lives of mothers and babies.
A family of doctors invented the "paddle", the predecessor of the suction cup they put on babies heads to pull them out if they have to. They kept it as a trade secret, blindfolding the labouring mum, and sending everybody else out of the room.
The patent got it into the hands of physicians everywhere and saved many lives.
That said, it could easily be the last patent that worked as intended, too ...
Cheers,
Patent number 1 Posted Jan 7, 2013 19:07 UTC (Mon) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402) [Link]
"patent no 1"
Perhaps patent no 1 in the US.
The first patent (in the concept of patents) was probably granted in 5th century Italy.
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