| > I'm trying not to "merely assert that" by giving examples supporting my point :-) I do appreciate that you've come back with more now. > But anyone who simply saw the mechanism they rigged could re-implement it for themselves! The decades of work before it make it amply clear it was not obvious [1]. Oddly enough, your own paper describes quite a few features of that Wright patent not immediately apparent, but it doesn't matter, as you've missed one point about the standard I articulated. If you recall, my standard was for people who had not seen it to be able to make it simply by being told what it does. If anything, the history of flying would support the notion that "make a thing that flies" was non-trivial at the time. > But the mathematics that goes into proving that they actually work and work well span pages. Math is not patentable subject matter... unless you disguise it as software :) And standard that excluded silly UI patents that lead to billion dollar lawsuits (modulo various jury errors, like charging them for things not found infringing and other court adjustments)? Let's just say that I'm thinking "feature" when you're thinking "bug". > It showed that while the total rate of innovation didn't change much across countries, in countries with patents, significant innovation was diversified into areas that were elsewhere under-developed because they were easy to copy. "Innovation" is an inherently nebulous thing to measure. Also, if the only patents are the things the public can't easily figure out, then they would actually do the job they're supposed to--advancing science and the useful arts. I don't like software patents at all, though, and if we did have them they should require source code. It's frankly insulting that they can get away with that and I honestly question whether some of the "inventors" of software patents I've seen actually made anything. |