Quote: "Um, who wouldn't patent something to not make money from it? I don't understand Isn't that capitalism?"
Lemme emphasize the key words in that quote for you:
Quote: "Because they only obtained the patents to make this sort of money off of them."
"this sort" as in money made from lawsuits. Capitalism has nothing to do with this. This is troll behavior, it should be discouraged.
Quote: "So you could never patent the idea of a hoverboard anyway, since it's clearly been demonstrated before in Back To the Future, and is therefore public domain!"
This is false. Simply because an imaginary invention was portrayed in a scifi film, does not relieve said invention of patentability. If you actually MAKE ONE in REALITY and you are the first to do so, you may patent it.
Example: If I made a nano-suit, providing the same functionality as those in Crysis... I could patent it, because the ones in crysis are imaginary while mine is real and I was the first.
(Not that I would bother patenting the thing as anyone disputing my invention would get knocked to the moon... literally
)
Quote: "I don't know how expensive it is to defend yourself in court. If someone summons you to court, you can just turn up by yourself. You don't need legal representation. Let them have their day and rip you apart from hot shot lawyers, but they'll only win if their case has merit. I don't care how smart you are and how much you pay someone - if you go to court and sue me for a million for wearing socks, on the grounds that you own a monkey that can juggle apples ... you're not going to win, even if I sit there twiddling my coconuts."
First of all, I got that this is highly sarcastic, but in all seriousness, in the US even if you don't hire a lawyer you still have to pay for court fees, which can still be fairly costly. Twiddling your coconuts without a providing defense is only putting a target on your head saying "I know I'm infringing on their patent, I'm just here to waste them more money" and any lawyer worth their salt would play right into that. All in all, you can say you'd play it cool and be stupi-- "clever" about the lawsuit, but you'd likely just get chewed up by an arrogant judge that doesn't want to see an arrogant kid sitting in their courtroom making a mockery of it all.
I've filed for patents before. Regardless what people here may think, they don't just hand out patents all willy nilly. I've filed for a patent with so much complex mumbo jumbo, I was afraid they'd turn it down for being too big to bother reading, when in actuality, it was turned down because they read the entire thing and found it to be "lacking" in content, both in design and in general detail. Now, keep in mind these companies obtained their patents much further back than when I filed for mine, things may have been different. Just saying, you can't just write "This is called 'ADDITION'. 1+1=2", send it into the patent office and get a patent for it.
On another note, many of the large companies *coughmicrosoftcough* hold patents that they know very well could be overturned if challenged, and thus they don't make big deals out of them unless they knew that it wouldn't bring much attention to themselves by an entity that had the means TO challenge them, and would normally use them as nameless leverage as someone stated above.
I'm all for patents, but this trolling needs to be put to rest. I don't care who does it, or what weapon they use... just do it.
~Plystire
Only those who sow the seeds of their desires will reap their benefits later.
However, I have seeds of my own to tend to. I don't have time to be someone else's watering can.
