What is a patent? A patent is an incentive for invention. It allows an inventor to have a monopoly on an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for the inventor releasing information about the invention. An excelent idea, but sadly, some things have been patented which should not be patented! The US patent office allows many non-inventions to be patented, giving the non-inventors the right to annoy and sue anyone who "infringes" on their non-invention! I hope to give the US patent office a red face by exposing what they consider to be a patent.
NOTE: A patent should not be confused with a copyright! A copyright is on media of various forms. If you take a picture or write an article, that is copyrighted. A copyright is not something you apply for in the United States, but something that is automatically granted. If you write something, then it is automatically copyrighted by you. In the United States you do not even have to write "Copyright by (xxx), 2006". The copyright is a protection of creative media works and is automatic. A copyright in the US typically expires 70 years after the death of the person to copyright it. The owner of a copyright can sell or give away the copyright or he can release it into the public domain (remove the copyright). There are rules on what can and cannot be copyrighted, but a copyright is not an invention and an invention is not a copyright. Do not get them confused.
Let us get started: what does an item have to be to be granted a patent? There are 4 basic requirements:
1. It has to be patentable subject matter. Specifically, literary works are not patentable. Things that can be manufactured and manufacturing processes are patentable.
2. It has to be novel, that is, some part of the invention must be new. For example, I cannot patent the wheel (even if I reinvent it), since the wheel is not new.
3. The patent has to be non-obvious. So, if you have a porch, an obvious way to keep rain from falling on it is to build a roof over it. Therefore a porch roof is not patentable. A non-obvious way is to construct a force-field that keeps the rain away - that would most certainly be patentable (assuming the force-field has not yet been invented).
4. It has to be useful.
If we look at some US patents, we see that these guidelines are not followed. To see a list of the bad patents, please see other posts in this blog.
If you find more bad patents, let me know!
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