Reply to post: Sorry, Trevor

IP freely? What a wind-up! If only Trevor Baylis had patent protections inventors enjoy today

Mr Gullible

Sorry, Trevor

Whilst Trevor Baylis' wind up radio did wonders for people in Africa being able to listen to the radio, I would question whether the actual 'wind-up' design deserved a patent.

As I recall, one of the conditions of being granted a patent is along the lines of the design should be sufficiently unique and of sufficient ingenuity that it would not be an obvious solution to someone involved in the relevant discipline - in this case, electronic engineering. Attaching a clockwork (not original) dynamo (not original) to an existing device in order to power it is neither.

If he re-designed the radio circuitry to be considerably lower power than what was available at the time (I seem to remember this may possibly have been the case), then that could be considered to be of sufficient ingenuity for a patent and a completely different matter, but not for sticking a clock mechanism with a dynamo in the battery compartment.

The 'clockwork radio' concept was clever in that it identified a market for a product that everyone else seemed to have overlooked and Mr Baylis deserves credit for that, but that's not what patents are for.

I'm too lazy to look at the patent application, but those shouting that the actual 'wind-up' part was genius and deserved a patent seem to fit into the current american model of applying (and often getting) patents for mundane and obvious solutions, which is becoming a major problem for those wishing to truly innovate these days.

BTW, I take it all those giving examples of the open source community being a shining example of why we should abandon patents and evil capitalism will be refusing their salary at the end of the month and won't mind when there are no medicines to treat them when they get alzheimers or parkinson's or various cancers in later life. There are serious problems with the patent system, but the principal of people or organizations getting a return on their investment (or even, shock horror, making a profit) is a morally just one.

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