[simplestats]

This is certainly the ideal scenario. But typically, they didn't exist before because they are incremental improvements based on things which didn't exist before and use technology which didn't exist before.

The claim that they are obvious is based on the fact that anyone who is involved in the production of those prior incremental steps can see what can be done as the next increment. People are working on producing wheels using molds and certain materials. Across town, someone starts selling a new kind of mold or material. The "inventor" applies it to the molding of wheels.

[nathanyz]

The difficulty is that it is really hard to claim something as obvious/non-obvious once you know about it. Basically can't determine if it is something that was incremental based on progress -or- if it just seems like that now that you know about it in hindsight.

Agree with your point though, and it may just be one of those impossible questions which is why the patent office struggles with how to make these decisions.

[simplestats]

I'm having trouble thinking of examples of what you mean. It's not like people invent new branches of math to make a patent like with revolutionary ideas in physics. Do I get 6-12 months (or even more) working on the same problem and subject to the same constraints and available technologies the inventor had? A really "prophetic" idea can probably be identified as such because it's far too ahead of its time to get patented or used anyway.

But when it comes to money-making patents, I think of technological development as an optimization process where everyone has the same objectives and a pretty limited search area at each point in time (available technologies you can use, textbook knowledge you can draw on). I'd generally expect any smart and dedicated person working on the problem to find the next best next steps sooner or later (certainly far less than 20 years).

[nathanyz]

It is a hard idea to correlate since you can't unwind knowledge. I think your idea around giving a person X time to come up with solution could work if the patent office could afford that.

Maybe take a 3rd party who is unaware of the patent/novel idea and then asking them how to solve for some generalized version of the problem that a patent states it is solving and see what happens.

Similar to black boxing that companies will do with tech that may have been shared under restricted terms.

[simplestats]

I've been in the same niche for years and can certainly tell you what I could and couldn't figure out. There's no magic in what I do, else only 23 year-old geniuses who think outside the box would be dominating all the patents. Even nobel prizes are on average awarded for work done at middle age.

Just do peer review and get experts' opinions. Don't tell them how to make it work, just tell them what it does. E.g. make the inventor provide a carefuully-worded abstract. By the way patents that claim the category of problem itself as the invention (as opposed to the specific method for solving the problem) are another big problem that needs to be eliminated. Those broad first claims are the ones shot down in challenges. For example "use a computer to processs transactions", or even "use a convolutional network to classify faces". These are not inventions; they are problems that still need to be solved, and it can be done many ways.

Anyway if you're uncertain about 6-months, how can you justify giving them 20 years of monopoly?