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by coldtea 3875 days ago
>I said "obvious and trivial thing to do once you know that blue light affects melatonin production."

That doesn't change my argument. That too was known for ages, and still no light changing apps for it like flux (with the exception of a Linux app which I think came later).
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lispit 3875 days ago
>That too was known for ages, and still no light changing apps for it like flux

How is Joseph Programmer von Notasleepscientist supposed to know that a blue-light dimming filter is something that he might want before he sees the effect in action? I'll give some credit to f.lux for popularizing the idea, but once the idea is out there, there are only two ways you can implement it: postprocessing in software, or postprocessing in the CLUT. You wouldn't need to know anything about how f.lux works to come up with one of them yourself, once you are aware of the idea.

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SapphireSun 3875 days ago
This fact is in neuroscience and psychology text books. It has been well known for quite a while. That said, it's true that others haven't done this prior to f.lux coming out. From a business model perspective, they are making a utility that could have been bundled into the OS. It's a small feature, not a whole business, unless they can gain exclusive use of their invention.

Whether this patent protection incentive was necessary for them to try to get their product out there in the marketplace is a harder question to answer. Certainly, they have chosen a business model that relies on getting the public familiar with the technology and then licensing it to manufacturers. It does seem to me that many fewer people would know about flux if they were charging for it initially, but it also doesn't seem like a huge leap forward tech wise, though it may provide a lot of value. I'm kind of on the fence.

EDIT: I did a little digging. While I happened to have known about this fact for a long time, and am pretty sure it was in my textbooks as of around 2005 or 2006, it seems this may have been discovered around 2001. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11487664

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upofadown 3875 days ago
Actually, the stuff about blue light and melatonin in humans was discovered by biologists in the 90s. They get all the credit here. Obvious applications of that knowledge would not normally be patentable, but the US patent office is pretty much batshit insane at this point.
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OopsCriticality 3875 days ago
In fact, a long felt and unmet need in the field would serve as a secondary indicia of non-obviousness.
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