Reply to post: Re: Edwin Armstrong

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

Mage Silver badge

Re: Edwin Armstrong

Actually the Superhet was a French invention, and based on mathematics anyway. There is argument that Superhetrodyne and FM should not have been patentable as they are ultimately mathematical ideas. RCA should never have had either patent.

Patents, especially in the USA since the Victorian era, favour big corporations as they can afford a team creating them and lawyers to defend them. They are pretty useless to individuals unless they can quickly sell to a corporation. The USA USPTO is totally broken as they are uninterested in properly searching prior art, novelty, unobvious to those skilled in the art etc as they get more money from approvals than rejection. Their system is built round the idea of the Patent later being tested in Court. Obviously the Richer and US native company will win.

Copyright isn't as tricky but can be bypassed as you can't protect the idea. Again the main problem is big corporations. Google will assume works are orphaned or Public Domain unless a massive Corporation threatens them. They and Wikipedia only care about their OWN content. Hollywood, photo libraries, etc wants to extend forever and claim small guys infringe when they don't. DRM is contrary to the concept of Copyright. It should be illegal.

A good design patent / Registered design is a special sort of copyright. Again it favours the big company, but even there they need a unique shape (coca-cola bottle), or a mis-spelled word (Lyft) or made up word (Kleenex), or a custom design of logo / font face.

The solution isn't abolishing IP, but reforming the system.

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