If it's the replacement for trade secrets then why it's not declared so?
If it's the replacement for trade secrets then why it's not declared so?
Posted Apr 19, 2010 0:34 UTC (Mon) by bojan (subscriber, #14302)In reply to: If it's the replacement for trade secrets then why it's not declared so? by dlang
Parent article: Film: "Patent absurdity"
This, IMHO, is the wrong issue. Invention shouldn't need protecting. What needs protecting is your ability, as an inventor, to move first and reap benefits from that alone. Trade secrets work pretty well for that.
If, then, your invention is so non-obvious to others, it will take them much longer to reverse engineer it. Which will give you even bigger advantage. If it is more obvious, you will lose this first mover advantage rather quickly, as you should, because the invention was fairly obvious.
On the other hand, patent systems gives the same number of years to all inventions, making the obvious one real obstacles to progress.
Posted Apr 19, 2010 0:58 UTC (Mon)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link] (6 responses)
take the example of the safety pin, it was very non-obvious to come up with, but very easy to reverse engineer.
trade secrets can do absolutly no good in protecting the invention.
a small company that starts to manufacture them could easily have the product reverse-engineered by a large company that doesn't have to build a factory to build them, and which has distribution channels to sell them, and which can purchase materials cheaper than the small company.
there would be a slight lag in the time to market of the copy-cat product of the large company, but not much of one, and any such lag could be smaller than the time it would take the small company to negotiate prices with sales outlets nationwide (which the large company would not need to do)
think how quickly wallmart could get a product cheaply onto store shelves across the country and consider how hard it would be for a small company to get their product onto store shelves across the country.
Posted Apr 19, 2010 1:53 UTC (Mon)
by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
[Link] (5 responses)
> take the example of the safety pin, it was very non-obvious to come up with, but very easy to reverse engineer.
Walter Hunt was happy to get $400 for the invention at the time (which would be around $10,000 today). If he were to sell this to a manufacturing company at the time, instead of the man he owed the money to, do you not think the manufacturer would make a sizeable profit on this before others moved in? And, they could also be the ones owning the trademark (if they so wished), making the "original" safety pin. And all that for measly $400, or $10,000 in today's money.
I don't see the significance of this example.
Posted Apr 19, 2010 2:27 UTC (Mon)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link] (4 responses)
if you want an example where there was a much larger fight, but similar (if less clear) inability to protect against reverse engineering, take a look at the colt revolver patents. I don't remember the full history (and I am not taking the time to look it up right now), but I seem to remember that the initial inventor attempted to make a go at it before selling out to a larger manufacturer (and if I remember, he sold out because people were infringing on his patent and he didn't have the resources to fight them), but even that larger manufacturer waged patent fights for years.
Posted Apr 19, 2010 6:05 UTC (Mon)
by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
[Link] (3 responses)
"At the time of his death, Colt's estate, which he left to his wife and son, was estimated to be valued at around $15,000,000."
This is an interesting quote from the same article:
"Colt never claimed to have invented the revolver, as his design was merely a more practical adaption of Collier's revolving flintlock, which was patented in England and achieved great popularity there."
That's the thing about copying - it is very, very useful :-)
Posted Apr 19, 2010 6:37 UTC (Mon)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link] (2 responses)
As was pointed out by others Colt is yet about example of how original inventor got no benefits out of the patent. If you take look on the huge "patent fights" over easily reverse-engineerable patents you'll see that rarely original inventor get serious money to continue his work (Edison is rare exception). In most cases the people who buy patent for the cheap and then exploit money benefit - or in some rare cases few guys invent something and only one profits out of the invention. Patents like this are good for extortion but bad for progress: patents which cover results of expensive research are rarely fought over. It's literally cheaper to buy the license rather then reverse-engineer.
Posted Apr 19, 2010 22:27 UTC (Mon)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (1 responses)
Oh -and if you're talking about the light bulb, it wasn't that! Edison patented a light bulb that DIDN'T WORK. The light bulb he made his money from was a copy of Joseph Swann's, which he came across - in production - in England some two years before he filed his own patents.
(Oh, and Swann's bulb was patented - Edison ripped him off!)
Cheers,
Posted Apr 20, 2010 6:52 UTC (Tue)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link]
If it's the replacement for trade secrets then why it's not declared so?
If it's the replacement for trade secrets then why it's not declared so?
If it's the replacement for trade secrets then why it's not declared so?
If it's the replacement for trade secrets then why it's not declared so?
Colt is yet another good example and Bell is too
Colt is yet another good example and Bell is too
Wol
Colt is yet another good example and Bell is too