[twistedpair]

Props for using a Wikipedia cite. At least when I was in school, you couldn't cite an encyclopedia as a reference, and that was when they cost money and were written by scholars. So lets look at the patent doctrine [0].

The definition of an invention by the USPTO is not simply something new. In a nutshell, it needs to be novel (no prior art), non-obvious to someone skilled in the art, and not a simple combination of existing things. Making a new algo or something run and scale faster is not inherently an invention. Sadly, while a ban algorithms (mathematical forumulae) and the non-obvious requirement are in the patent doctrine, the courts have set precedents in the recent decades to allow the current software patents despite the classic interpretation that these things were not patentable.

Indeed folks are taking this current contorted patent doctrine and conflating "invention" with "innovation", bestowing on their innovative new WordPress theme the greatness of an actual patent. Sadly, much of the difficult stuff going on in the startups would not have been a patent in 1950. But if we want to focus on the "feel good" version of invention, where it's new to you, then there is a ton of "innovation" going on. FB might be scaling and have a ton of technology to do so, but the net result of being able to share cat videos faster than a decade ago isn't pushing civilization forward the same way the killer patents of the 20th century did.

[0] http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/mpep-9015-appx-l.h...