While I recognize the need to protect the ideas and innovations that people create, our current system is not up to the task. Much of what should maybe be protected is not, and many things are overprotected to avoid losing all control.
Today I encountered possibly the worst example I have ever seen of this sort of overprotection. I bought some adapters to make a Dell server fit into our generic server rack at the office. The price of this little piece of bent metal was bad enough ($15 ea.) but when I got it and saw that it was stamped as 'Patent Pending'. If this flat piece of steel with two bends and two rows of holes can get a patent, then the system is totally bogus. I had thought it was bad enough to see computer algorithms that seem obvious being patented, but at least in those cases I could presume that the patent examiner was just not quite savvy enough to see that this was an obvious solution to the problem it addressed. In the case of the steel bracket it isn't that I couldn't come up with this solution on my own, it is just easier to buy than to fabricate without the right tools. Check out this exquisite product of superior engineering:
Like I said, any higher primate could have come up with this wonder.I certainly can't claim to have the solution to the problem of managing intellectual property rights in our digital age, but somebody has to get it figured out. I am hopeful that the growing popularity of open-source software products will spread to other arenas; that model seems to be working quite well so far.
5 comments:
Yeah, at some point it became quite ludicrous. Think of the idea of opening yourself to prosecution for making one of those brackets on your own! (Or maybe it's more accurate to say that the patent would prevent anyone else from marketing a competing bracket.) Ridiculous! It's a frickin' bent piece of pot metal! I might as well patent the hunk of 2X4 that I use to keep a trailer from rolling down the driveway.
I remember staying at a hotel some years ago where they had (as many hotels do) a little sign in the bathroom reminding you that the hotel offered basic toiletries in case you left some necessary at home. And in their effort they had trademarked some incredibly mundane workaday statement, like "Forget Something?" or "We've Got You Covered" or the like. We got to laughing about the stupidity of this among the crew the next day (this was during the Great Lakes days) and we decided we should do something similar for the new company slogan:
"Great Lakes Airlines. There You Go."
This patent-nonsense (I felt terribly clever writing that) reached its pinnacle when Harley Davidson decided to patent the SOUND of their bikes.
The idea that other companies can no longer sell after market parts to make a honda or yamaha sound more "harley" is almost laughable.
Yeah, what a crock. And why duplicate that sound anyway? The "Harley sound" (I must be careful now, since my own bike is Harley-powered) always sounds to me like a Briggs & Stratton-powered lawnmower speaking through a megaphone. The ultimate in style-over-substance, displaced affection.
Did anyone else hear that McDonald's is trying to get a patent on how they build their burgers?
I'm not sure about the McDonald's thing, but as I understand it the local stores no longer cook the burgers: they arrive pre-cooked and are heated (microwave or otherwise) locally.
This would seem a patentable, if ill-advised, development.
Post a Comment