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by Latteland
2636 days ago
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I think there's huge potential for patented ui patterns to follow the same problematic sequence as regular patents - patent trolls, and the "it's like xyz, but on a computer". yes, there were brilliant ideas in the original iphone, but there were also repurposed things from other domains. If I am a super rich person like the founder of intellectual ventures (world's greatest patent trolls), I could just have a team of 100 people iterate through many different design possibilities (there are some things with only so many solutions) and patent them all, and then they could get a tax on the whole industry. Need a file chooser control, we own all potential ones. |
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That, for awhile at least, was their core business model. As part of that agreement, they have to fight to defend the patents of small inventors who have literally entrusted their life's work to Intellectual Ventures.
I went to a public presentation by IV awhile back where they talked about their reputation as a patent troll and how they've tried to back off on the lawsuits and do more and more to work with partners to get products to market.
IV also does a lot of original research in hard sciences. If you remember that mosquito laser thing, they've spent a lot of time trying to make an actual product out of that. Turns out making a death laser that only kills harmful species, and is safe around people is rather hard, and involves a lot of original engineering work, and then a ton of work going through the government regulatory process. (Rather strict rules about lasers and all that!)
One of the coolest things they talked about was putting that laser tech to use on farm lands to zap bugs that harm crops! How they described their bug species recognition tech was incredibly cool! Obviously it doesn't take care of all types of bugs, but it is the coolest way I've ever heard of to reduce pesticide usage, and to do so in a way that is hyper-targeted at only harmful insects!
Anyway, they make cool tech, and if anyone ever gets a chance to see them talk about what they do, I'd recommend it.
tl;dr Hacker News meetups have some cool speakers.