I just saw a headline about Ford patenting a system to eavesdrop on passengers conversations to serve them related ads. If I had patented that before, could I stop it from being used?
In theory yes
In reality, they will find a way around your patent.
Look up the patent on window wipers as an example
This oddly reminds me that the original patent for the chainsaw was for aiding childbirth.
I’ll let anyone curious enough google that.
I’m not doing the research on that. That is horrifying
If it makes you feel better they were tiny compared to what’s at home depot
Curiosity got the better of me a while back. It’s horrifying and incredibly interesting at the same time.
Well, thanks for the fall down that particularly horrifying rabbit hole. I can only imagine the pain these women went through, given this was at a time that predates anaesthesia.
You use the chainsaw to open the lady and pluck out the baby? What a genius idea. This will save a lot of time. /s
Kearns and the car windshield wipers?
I think that might have been his name.
In theory yes, you have to remember though that you have to enforce parents yourself. If you suspect infringement you will have to sue and carry the lawyer costs, at least until a court judges in your favor. This is off course besides the costs of applying for the parent itself. Your patent might also not be valid in all countries.
In practice the chances of a private person doing this and winning against a multi-billion dollar corporation without going bankrupt are negligible.
Those damn parent application costs!
That’s what my sister had to pay before adopting her kid.
If you hold a patent, then you have an exclusive right to that invention for a fixed period, which would be 20 years from the filing date in the USA. That would mean Ford could not claim the same or a derivative invention, at least not for the parts which overlap with your patent. So yes, you could sit on your patent and do nothing until it expires, with some caveats.
But as a practical matter, the necessary background research, the application itself, and the defense of a patent just to sit on it would be very expensive, with no apparent revenue stream to pay for it. I haven’t looked up what sort of patent Ford obtained (or maybe they’ve merely started the application) but patents are very long and technical, requiring whole teams of lawyers to draft properly.
For their patent to be valid, they must not overlap with an existing claim, as well as being novel and non-obvious, among other requirements. They would only file a patent to: 1) protect themselves from competition in future, 2) expect that this patent can be monetized by directly implementing it, or licensing it out to others, or becoming a patent troll and extracting nuisance-value settlements, or 3) because they’re already so deep in the Intellectual Property land-grab that they must continue to participate by obtaining outlandish patents. The latter is a form of “publish or perish” and allows them to appear like they’re on the cutting edge of innovation.
A patent can become invalidated if it is not sufficiently defended. This means that if no one even attempts to infringe, then your patent would be fine. But if someone does, then you must file suit or negotiate a license with them, or else they can challenge the validity of your patent. If they win, you’ll lose your exclusive rights and they can implement the invention after all. This is not cheap, and Ford has deep pockets.
First of all patents run out generally after 20 years. And then everyone can use your technology.
The whole idea of patents is incitivising inventors to publish their invention for everyone to see. In exchange they get a period of exclusivity. This way they also don’t have to deal with as many trade secrets.
Have you ever heard of China
Even if nobody finds a way around, that would be incredibly expensive.
Yes, but you would need to defend your patent and continue to file patents and variations as tech evolves to prevent work-arounds.
Patent law is a fucking mess, don’t bother getting involved with it.
the US government would find some way to eminent domain it.
That’s… not how eminent domain works…? Like it’s scope only applied to stuff like building sidewalks, roads, bridges, and other infrastructure.
yeah, I didn’t feel like going around to dig up the technical term. everybody knows what I meant, which is why I said it that way.
If you’re not going to take the effort type “can a government use patents” into Google and look at the top link. It took me less than a minute to find that government using a patent is just baked into the patent system. There’s not additional law around it. So it might be better to go the WD 40 route and never actually file a patent to the formula to avoid sharing the formula publicly.
With all the other comments, it becomes pretty obvious that the easiest way to do it, would be being a multi-billionaire in the first place… Wait a second…
Pretty sure companies like bp and shell do exactly that. Except the harm reduction is to their oil profits. Can’t have competing tech on the market
A lot of people accuse them of this in regards to some sort of like water powered engine. So far the evidence seems to be that there’s no way to split water into hydrogen and oxygen that uses less power than the resulting burning of the gas can generate.
I said that to say take these accusations with a grain of salt.
Oh yea, you may have noticed a tinfoil hat on those telling you that. You can’t make energy out of nothing, splitting it costs as much energy as combining would get you…
…minus a tonne of losses. Not that oil is remotely efficient in comparison.
I heard about solar cell tech and such. Apparently they bought the patents and said they’re going to use it expand into green energy. Which they never did, obviously
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