Patents and Cooties

I was troubled for a while there. A whole industry of law factories sprang up the last several years to make money off ideas. Not __their__ ideas, mind you, but ideas no one had jumped through the $25,000+ patent hoops to claim. In other words, ideas ripe for the picking.

And while Palo Alto Research Center created almost everything in the current interface world—the concept of a GUI, the mouse, the window, and a whole lot more, they didn't patent any of it. Imagine if they did. Both the Mac *and* PC would be screwed. As well as linux.

Since those days of actual discovery, we've had a rash of patents for things like clicking on a button to buy something; factories of lawyers chasing dollar signs churning out the most ridiculous stuff. They figured they'd gold-rush the fields of intellectual capital for speculative claims. If they could score a patent on the smiley face, or better yet, emoticons in general, they could sell common sense ideas back to all the companies already using them. If they couldn't be innovative, at least they thought they were being clever. And as stupid as it sounds, it was actually working in some cases. Until recently. The patent office started to crack down, and now it seems like most software patents will be invalid.

Not to worry. There are lots of other stupid patents unaffected by this ruling. For reasons I won't get into, I recently investigated how tendons are re-attached to bones in modern medical practice; I tripped across this little gem: US Patent #4414967. Someone had the bright idea, and spare pocket change, to claim that you could probably attach that pesky tendon with a stapler or a rivet gun. Or, dressed-up in "patentese" by the lawyers:

(a) positioning the tendon or ligament against the bone;

(b) placing a stapler over the tendon or ligament;

(c) activating the stapler to rapidly release stored energy;

(d) rapidly and reproducibly imparting a controlled amount of the released energy to a staple thereby propelling the staple, the staple comprising at least a pair of prongs and means for connecting the prongs; and

(e) guiding the propelled staple towards the bone whereby at least one prong of the staple is driven by momentum into and frictionally fits within the bone and holds the tendon or ligament against the bone.

Then there are stranger cases, like government patent 6630507 ---patenting the active ingredients in marijuana as antioxidants and neuroprotectants. It boasts of beneficial uses in strokes, trauma, the treatment of neurodegenarative diseases such as parkinsons, etc. A simple medical patent on the surface ---one that baldly contradicts proclamations by the FDA (also government, I'm pretty sure) that marijuana has absolutely no medicinal value. Whatsoever. Which is the reason it's classified as a schedule 1 drug.

Sometimes information in juxtaposition reveals more to the story than the individual parts. Reminds me of this example:




And there's more craziness in the dusty bins of the patent halls.

and finally...

Cooties


Yep, something little boys have known for a long time finally has gotten some scientific backing.

:-)