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What happened to Harold Aptroot? He's been a fixture here for a long time.
He had a disagreement with jschell and used some colorful language in the Algorithms forum, but I can't imagine that that got him booted.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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I hadn't seen that, but I doubt anyone would get booted for it. This time of year, I wouldn't be surprised for someone to be absent for a while. There are other members, however, who I fear are no longer with us, and not out of choice.
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Well Harold was here yesterday, and then poof! His account is closed.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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Looking at that last exchange there is nothing to get him removed. I suspect he decided it was time to move on.
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Well it sure is a shame. My memories of his technical posts are that they are extremely accurate and comprehensive.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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Maybe just a timeout, let's hope.
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We come and go.
Once, there was a trollslayer here; left without noise, but not without noticing.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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If I remember rightly, our resident trollslayer left because they were sick of blonde jokes here in the lounge. I seem to remember that it was another of our missing members that triggered this.
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When you file the papers to register a patent you are basically revealing the inner workings ( which you want to be kept secret) of your device because you have to describe in detail what you want to protect. Anyone can check and see what’s in a patent. Is that so?
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I expect so, which is why some people don't get patents.
Also so others can see if their own version would be in violation.
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I had thought of a so-called patentable idea and also put an application to the Intellectual Property department in my previous organisation. However it was turned down because of "detectability" issues; meaning that it was difficult to detect its infringement by others.
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Yes, the government extends a 20 year protection for your patented invention. Others must know how it works to determine if their invention duplicates the patented invention. The down side is that someone can take your invention and come up with a new invention citing the existing invention and then detailing the unique thing that they added to make a new invention. You will often see previous patents cited in patents for new inventions.
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Like in all scientific work.
If your scientific paper just repeats what others have done, it will not be accepted at an international conference or in a peer reviewed scientific journal.
It must add something new, that has some significance. For patents, it is often referred to as an 'invention height', that must be significant.
I am happy that scientists publish their works for others to build upon. And I am happy that inventors publish their inventions for others to build upon.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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That's the point of patents.
You share your knowledge and in exchange you get a time limited monopoly.
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By seeing someone’s patent you can get ideas how to build something similar (but of course not exactly the same), interesting.
PIEBALDconsult, Amarnath, Gary thanks for your thoughts.
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If it is too similar you can get sued for patent infringement. If it is substantially different, than it's closer to a new thing.
A lawyer once explained to me that a patent is in essence a deal where, in exchange for describing how something works, you get the full force of the government to protect your exclusivity for a limited time. On the other side of the deal, the community (government) gets to know the new idea and eventually benefit from it.
The whole patent land is so full of pitfalls that tons of lawyers get to make tons of money navigating poor souls through it.
Mircea
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In 2009 I worked for a man who owned the only patent for a product that did what his did.
However, many, many companies were blatantly infringing on that patent.
And the reason is that they could, because they had all the money and the lawyers, and this man was just trying to make ends meet.
So filing a patent in itself is not a guarantee of exclusivity. You have to have endless resources to defend it.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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Richard Andrew x64 wrote: So filing a patent in itself is not a guarantee of exclusivity. You have to have endless resources to defend it.
You are 100% right and there are very well-known cases[^] to prove that point.
Mircea
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That happens. Yet, often a patent holder who sees that others obtain the same results will think that their patent is infringed - but at closer study, it turns out that the others used a different (although related) technique for obtaining the same results.
The "claims" of a patent application will usually have to be very specific for the application to be accepted. You cannot apply for a patent "to make a wheel spin around", only for a very specific way to make that wheel spin. The more specific, the higher your chance of having the application accepted. But also, a super specific specification, the higher the probability that some competitor says "We are not doing it exactly that way!"
Also, there are different traditions in the US and in Europe. It used to be quite simple to obtain a US patent - the patent office didn't do that much investigation, but left the task to those who challenged the patent after it was granted. Having a patent withdrawn was not uncommon. The European tradition is to make a lot deeper investigations before the patent is granted, and withdrawing a patent is rather uncommon. If you are granted a patent, you can be much more sure that you really have a unique right to exploit it, and it is easier to defend it.
There is a coordinated system for applying for patents in all (or a selection of) European countries. Yet, you have to pay the yearly fee in every country where you want the protection. It can turn out to be expensive, especially after 5-10 years, when the fees usually rise significantly. Many companies claim to have a patent long after it has expired (either after 20 years, or because the fee hasn't been paid), or it was a US patent only, which has no legal significance in Europe (or the rest of the world outside US).
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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Also, patents are valid in the jurisdiction(s) where you pay the registration fees and the annual fees to uphold your patent - usually low for the first 5-10 years, then increasing sharply for the next years until you patent expires (after 20 years).
Blaming Asian countries for "stealing" your patent is invalid unless you have have registered and paid your patent fees in those countries. If all you are willing to pay for is a US patent, even Europeans can freely exploit it (as long as they do not market in the US products covered by the US patent).
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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> Also, patents are valid in the jurisdiction where you pay the registration fees.
I find that unusual. You have to register your invention in every country or at least all Western countries and Asia to make sure it doesn’t get stolen. Paying a fee in several countries that’s a lot of money I imagine
modified 31-Dec-23 9:32am.
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Strange but true. It does cost a load of money. The processing of the patent to have it accepted (or rejected) is expensive. The yearly fees are expensive; in most countries they are not that bad the first 5 years or so, but then they start rising for the next 15 years, maybe to several times the "introductory special offer" price. This is obviously to make you release the patent, letting other benefit from it. Also, if your patent was worth anything, after 5-10 years you should have recovered the expenses of developing your invention, and you are probably making good money on it. Your need for public protection of your investment (in developing the invention) is reduced. So if you insist on continuing this protection for the full 20 years, it makes some sense that you use some of your profit to pay for it.
To be more precise, you will apply for a patent in those countries where you need protection. Say, if your invention is an automatic pineapple harvesting machine, you would not waste money on yearly patent fees in Norway. A Norwegian inventor of a new cross country ski binding will probably not seek a patent in sub-Saharan African countries. If you see a zero or minimal probability that anyone in that country will make money on your invention, without your involvement, then don't waste money on the protection.
However, since so much manufacturing goes on in the US, and the US is a huge, often the dominating, market for all sorts of products, people from all over the world make sure to obtain at least a US patent. If the invention is something that might be picked up by Chinese manufacturers for a three billion customers Asian market, maybe a Chinese, and maybe a Japanese, Taiwan, Indonesian and South Korean patent could be worth the money. The risk is minimal of some Belgian or Finish guy setting up a factory for exploiting your invention, marked with both US and Chinese patent numbers, for sale on the local market. Probably, your loss of license fees are less the the cost of maintaining a patent in those countries.
Also note that what is protected is commercial exploitation of the invention. As long as they don't make money on it by manufacturing or selling it, anyone from the fifteen year old boy in his basement hobby workshop to billion dollar companies may build your invention for studying it, how it performs, how it can be improved, its weaknesses. That is one main purpose of patents being public: Others should learn from them, even if they cannot make money on the patent as long as it is upheld.
On the other hand, lots of patent holders try to scare competitors (and their customers), knowing well that most people do not know much about patents. One thing is pointing to a US patent even if my production and marketing of my goods is strictly limited to Norway and the Norwegian market. Unless they have a Norwegian patent, the US patent holder cannot stop my business. Also quite common: The patent holder pretends that he still has a valid patent, well aware that most people never check when the patent was granted, even fewer check if the patent has been upheld by paying the yearly fees, and most people do not even know that patents unconditionally expire after 20 years.
To pick one example: AIS, the radio standard where ships broadcast to each other their position and bearing (and a bunch of other stuff) to avoid collisions, uses a multiplexing technique called STDMA, for which a patent application was filed in 1993. The patent was granted in 1996, but while the application is being processed, your invention is protected. So for 30 years, the patent holder has made profit on his invention. Nevertheless, they still proclaim on their web site (AIS patent[^]), in boldface red print "In order to avoid legal problems GP&C thus recommends all purchasers of AIS transponders to actively inform themselves of the patent situation".
Well, they are not lying: If you do so, you will learn that the patent is expired. That is not what they want you to do, but to pay 5% (presumably of your product's sales price according to "a voluntarily signed licence". You don't have to pay them, but they want to leave an impression that if you don't they their lawyers will come after you. Those lawyers can to nothing with a patent expired years ago! Also, holding up a US patent in any other country has no other function than to scare those who are insecure about patenting.
This is not a special case, but rather common.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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Interesting read
modified 1-Jan-24 10:23am.
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Hmm. My company encourages patenting worthy ideas, and provides assistance for filing them along with cash awards if they are successful.
A few years ago a manager two levels up from my group told the lot of us that "software development is not an inventive process." 
And with that, I no longer was concerned with the whole notion. I probably average something patentable every 2-3 years, but I keep my big yap shut.
Software Zen: delete this;
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I personally know two guys, and the daughter of a third guy, each with a handful of granted patents. None of the patents have been industrialized. They are original ideas, sure enough, but no one in commercial business have found any use for them. These patent holders are very confident that their inventions would save the world, if just the world would understand the genius of their inventions. Or for the third one, who I never met: His daughter has kept the patent papers, dated 1957 - 1963, hoping that they might be of any value, that she could start collect patent fees from them; she had never heard about patents expiring.
These were people who actually had been granted patents. In the US, the patent offices used to be liberal in granting patents, leaving to challengers to show that the invention wasn't new at all, and the patent was revoked. In Europe, getting a patent is much more difficult (and expensive). The applicant must do a lot more thorough job in proving that the invention is indeed new, and also that it has a significant "invention height". You very rarely hear about a patent being revoked in European countries. I never considered spending money on any of my own "great" ideas, but several times I have discovered that what I thought was a genial idea, had been used in the industry for many years.
Patents are like publishing your own music on the internet. I saw one survey indicating that 80% of the music on the internet had been played less than 30 times since their publication. It takes more than a good idea - whether for an invention or a tune - to give you a net feedback.
So there are two big steps to be made: First, having a set of patent lawyers confirm that your invention really is new and that it has sufficient invention height to be worth the effort of going through the mill. Second, to have someone confirm that the invention is useful for something, so useful that it is actually incorporated into a product or as a product by its own. Both steps are tall.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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