Quotes & Sayings About Patents

If "fast" and "slow" animals had parties, writes the evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson, "some of the fasts would bore everyone with their loud conversation, while others would mutter into their beer that they don't get any respect. Slow animals are best described as shy, sensitive types. They don't assert themselves, but they are observant and notice things that are invisible to the bullies. They are the writers and artists at the party who have interesting conversations out of earshot of the bullies. They are the inventors who figure out new ways to behave, while the bullies steal their patents by copying their behavior. — Susan Cain

We have no patent on anything we do and anything we do can be copied by anyone else. But you can't copy the heart and the soul and the conscience of the company. — Howard Schultz

Patents are being used to wage war in the digital world, and as a result, patents have become a toll gate on the road of innovation. — Charles Duhigg

Whether you're a writer of stories or a writer of patents, you're an inventor. — Linda A. Tancs

It's very hard for individual inventors to get paid. For the same reason that private equity is valuable - broadly, that's a good thing - in the case of patents, many that own them aren't in a good position to take the next step. — Nathan Myhrvold

Inventions Change the World, Not Patents — Kalyan C. Kankanala

It's clear that North took some original steps in that direction, but Hall probably had the most complete approach and should get the most credit. But for Hall, unfortunately, the data are all impressionistic - what people said. None of his machinery survived. His patents were all lost in the Patent Office fire. — Charles R. Morris

manufacturers using patents, — Eric Von Hippel

Creation is not a moment of inspiration but a lifetime of endurance. The drawers of the world are full of things begun. Unfinished sketches, pieces of invention, incomplete product ideas, notebooks with half-formulated hypotheses, abandoned patents, partial manuscripts. Creating is more monotony than adventure. It is early mornings and late nights: long hours doing work that will likely fail or be deleted or erased - a process without progress that must be repeated daily for years. Beginning is hard, but continuing is harder. Those who seek a glamorous life should not pursue art, science, innovation, invention, or anything else that needs new. Creation is a long journey where most turns are wrong and most ends are dead. The most important thing creators do is work. The most important thing they don't do is quit. The — Kevin Ashton

Like patents - which also seek to protect the little guy - unions were started for all the right reasons. But like patents, they can be twisted into something that hurts innovation, competition, and ultimately consumers and the country as a whole. — Sarah Lacy

due to the fact that drug companies have limited interest in sponsoring clinical trials in this area, due to a limited potential for profit. There is little to no money to be made from essential oils within the pharmaceutical industry, as they are natural products derived from natural sources, and therefore, are not patentable. Patents on drug design and manufacture are the number one source of revenue in the pharmaceutical industry. — Amy Joyson

The issue for patents for new discovers has given a spring to invention beyond my conception. — Thomas Jefferson

Many scientists have interfered with science in precisely the way courts always worried tissue donors might do. "It's ironic," she told me. "The Moore court's concern was, if you give a person property rights in their tissues, it would slow down research because people might withhold access for money. But the Moore decision backfired - it just handed that commercial value to researchers." According to Andrews and a dissenting California Supreme Court judge, the ruling didn't prevent commercialization; it just took patients out of the equation and emboldened scientists to commodify tissues in increasing numbers. Andrews and many others have argued that this makes scientists less likely to share samples and results, which slows research; they also worry that it interferes with health-care delivery. — Rebecca Skloot

A Patent is not a license to make money, it is a license to prevent others from making money. — Kalyan C. Kankanala

Don't fight the patent, fight the infringement. — Drew Curtis

Patents lend credibility to your products. — Kalyan C. Kankanala

Sure, President Bush can say that the U.S. government won't fund stem cell research, but believe me, Japan is applauding. Because they will just do it first and get all the patents. — Kevin J. Anderson

IBM isn't investing billions of dollars every year into research and development - and winning more patents than our top 10 competitors combined for more than a decade - as an academic exercise. But research is now being driven much more by what people need rather than just by what is possible. — Samuel J. Palmisano

To tell you the truth although it would put £500 in my pockets to specify my own patent rails, I cannot do so after the experience I have had. — George Stephenson

Each year, the United States issues about 70,000 patents, only a few of which ultimately reach the stage of commercial production. — Jared Diamond

But patents are not market devices. They are the opposite. They are a government-sanctioned monopoly permitting exclusive sales of a product for a limited period of time, protected by courts of law. — Linsey McGoey

We took nothing from anybody. We gave a great deal to the world. The only thing keeping us alive is our brilliance. The only thing that keeps our brilliance alive is our patents. — Edwin Land

Abraham Lincoln said, Patents Add Fuel to the Fire of Genius. What the great man did not say is that Too Much Fuel Can Burn the Genius — Kalyan C. Kankanala

people (to quote the researchers) had achieved an astonishing amount (Kell et al., 2013). They had become high-ranking politicians, CEOs of companies, high-ups in government agencies, distinguished academics, journalists for well-known newspapers, artists and musical directors. They had been awarded patents, grant money and prizes, and had produced plays, novels, and a huge amount of economic value. They had, in other words, made incalculable contributions to society, for everyone's benefit. — Stuart Ritchie

The United States of America was a pirate nation for the first one hundred years of its existence, ripping off the patents and trademarks of the imperial European powers it had liberated itself from by blood. By keeping their GDP at home, the U.S. revolutionaries were able to bootstrap their nation into an industrial powerhouse. Now, it seems, their descendants are bent on ensuring that no other country can pull the same trick off. — Cory Doctorow

If I could patent 'being real', I think I could own that. — Tupac Shakur

To the extent that scarcity of land is natural, and absentee landlord claims are not enforced by the state, economic rent on land is a form of scarcity rent that will prevail under any system. But to the extent that the scarcity is artificial, resulting from government or absentee landlord restrictions on access to vacant land, or landlord rent on those actually occupying and using land, the mutualist contention is that such rent is a deviation from normal exchange-value caused by unequal exchange. Patents, likewise, are such a deviation, being nothing but a monopoly imposed by the state. Such examples, therefore, have no bearing whatsoever on the validity of the labor theory of value. — Anonymous

I've just been told that Nestle has taken out patents on the making of pullao. (Pullao is the way we make our rice in India, with either vegetables or meat or whatever.) Before you know it, every common use of plants will be patented by a Western corporation. — Vandana Shiva

Patents have long served as a fundamental cog in the American machine, cherished in our national soul. — James Gleick

No one told these American soldiers they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with US patents. — Smedley Butler

The bulk of all patents are crap. Spending time reading them is stupid. It's up to the patent owner to do so, and to enforce them. — Linus Torvalds

Between 2008 and 2010, at least 261 patents were filed related to growing "climate-ready" crops - seeds supposedly able to withstand extreme weather conditions; of these patents close to 80 percent were controlled by six agribusiness giants, including Monsanto and Syngenta. — Naomi Klein

Our strategy in dealing with patents in Mono is the same strategy that any other software developer would take. In the event of a patent claim, we will try to find prior art to the claim of the patent. — Miguel De Icaza

Patents do not promote progress of science and technology, Inventors do. — Kalyan C. Kankanala

Patents protect ideas, but only if they are implementable. — Kalyan C. Kankanala

All inventions are not patentable, and all patented subjects are not inventions. — Kalyan C. Kankanala

The 1850s proved to be the decade of the most prolific patent litigation in America's history. Lincoln himself was involved, as well as his most three prolific cabinet members: Chase, Seward and Stanton. — Darin Gibby

Sin, every day, takes out a patent for some new invention. — Edwin Percy Whipple

Hope is a strange invention - A Patent of the Heart - In unremitting action Yet never wearing out — Emily Dickinson

Patents are basically rights to try and develop a commercial product. — Craig Venter

However, the big German chemical cartels, I. G. Farben in particular, had harbored their patents; had, in fact, created a world monopoly in plastics, especially in the development of the polyesters. By — Philip K. Dick

I make more mistakes than anyone else I know, and sooner or later, I patent most of them. — Thomas A. Edison

Did you know that Kodak actually invented the digital camera that ultimately put it out of business? Kodak had the patents and a head start, but ignored all that. — Peter Diamandis

Patents? Disappointed? Don't think of it that way. Software patents weren't feasible then so we chose not to risk $10,000. — Bob Frankston

Everywhere in science the talk is of winners, patents, pressures, money, no money, the rat race, the lot; things that are so completely alien ... that I no longer know whether I can be classified as a modern scientist or as an example of a beast on the way to extinction. — June Goodfield

"Patents make our product defensible." The optimal number of times to use the P word in a presentation is one. Just once, say, "We have filed patents for what we are doing." Done. The second time you say it, venture capitalists begin to suspect that you are depending too much on patents for defensibility. The third time you say it, you are holding a sign above your head that says, "I am clueless." — Guy Kawasaki

It's not healthy for patents to be used to stop other people from doing business. — Jerry Yang

For a decade, makers of AIDS medicines had rejected the idea of lowering prices in poor countries for fear of eroding profits in rich ones. The position required a balancing act, because the companies had to deflect attacks on the global reach of their patents, which granted exclusive marketing rights for antiretroviral drugs. — Barton Gellman

We don't name God; God reveals His name to us. We don't have the right to exercise authority over God. God copyrights, He trademarks, He patents His name. — Mark Driscoll

As industries migrate toward the Far East, the future of many Western cities will no longer lie in manufacturing products but ideas and patents. Young, mobile elites can choose where they want to live, and they can easily move, which means that cities are involved in a heated competition for the best people. Only the most attractive cities can benefit from this development. — Charles Landry

The right of the Gabbitas and Kogan Page to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7494 6747 0 — Gabbitas Educational Consultants

If Patents are for Patients, Then Patients will be for Patents. — Kalyan C. Kankanala

Software patents, in particular, are very ripe for abuse. The whole system encourages big corporations getting thousands and thousands of patents. Individuals almost never get them. — Linus Torvalds

Patents are like fertilizer. Applied wisely and sparingly, they can increase growth. But if you apply too many chemicals, or make patents too strong, then you can leach the land, making growth more difficult. — Alex Tabarrok

Biopiracy (is) biological theft; illegal collection of indigenous plants by corporations who patent them for their own use. — Vandana Shiva

Marconi is a good fellow. Let him continue. He is using seventeen of my patents. — Nikola Tesla

Anything that restricts entry works in the interests of the suppliers and against the interests of the buyers; so, it is not at all surprising that businesses lobby government aggressively for assistance in retarding entry with patents, copyrights, zoning laws, occupational licensing, environmental regulations, etc — Anonymous

Mark the spirit of invention everywhere, thy rapid patents, Thy continual workshops, foundries, risen or rising, See, from their chimneys how the tall flame-fires stream. — Walt Whitman

I decry the current tendency to seek patents on algorithms. There are better ways to earn a living than to prevent other people from making use of one's contributions to computer science. — Donald Knuth

There are certain zip codes that generate a disproportionate share of patents, of startups, of wealth, of jobs. And it's really important if other parts of the country are going to want to create these tech centers. — Juan Enriquez

With a few honorable exceptions the press of the United States is at the beck and call of the patent medicines. Not only do the newspapers modify news possibly affecting these interests, but they sometimes become their agents. — Samuel Hopkins Adams

Patent leather wedges-they were big when I went to prom! — Candace Bushnell

Our patents' old age shocks us in the same manner that our children's growth to maturity does , but without the joy. — Azar Nafisi

Making money from enforcing patents is no more wrong than investing in preferred stock. — Nathan Myhrvold

For one thing, there are many "inventions" that are not patentable. The "inventor" of the supermarket, for example, conferred great benefits on his fellowmen for which he could not charge them. Insofar as the same kind of ability is required for the one kind of invention as for the other, the existence of patents tends to divert activity to patentable inventions. — Milton Friedman

An unproductive truth is none. But there are products which cannot be weighed even in patent scales, nor brought to market. — John Sterling

With the rise of software patents, engineers coding new stuff - whether within a large software company or as kids writing smartphone apps - are exposed to a claim that somewhere a prior patent is being infringed. — Jonathan Zittrain

In the early days of the software industry, people cared about copyright and didn't give a damn about patents - they copied each other willy-nilly. — Nathan Myhrvold

As academics we have pretty good judgment about the quality of institutions that cannot simply be measured by counting the number of papers published or patents received. Outsiders who swoop in to count beans and make up lists based on statistics have little sense of what excellence is. — Henry Rosovsky

My aim is: to teach you to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

In an industry with highly sequential innovation, it may be better for society to scrap patents altogether than try to tighten them. — Eric Maskin

For us, not cooperating in the monopoly regimes of intellectual property rights and patents and biodiversity - saying "no" to patents on life, and developing intellectual ideas of resistance - is very much a continuation of Gandhian satyagraha. It is, for me, keeping life free in its diversity. — Vandana Shiva

Between 1980 and 2000 the number of patents registered in Israel was 7652 compared with 367 for all the Arab countries combined. In 2008 alone is really inventors applied to register 9591 new patents. The equivalent figure for Iran was 50 and for all majority Muslim countries in the world with 5657. — Niall Ferguson

If you're a large corporation, you can afford to pay the money to register patents, but if you're an individual like me, you can't. — Larry Wall

Start-ups do not need cheap patents, they need quality patents. — Kalyan C. Kankanala

Holding a patent doesn't mean you are inventive, and not holding a patent doesn't mean you are not. — Kalyan C. Kankanala

I describe what is happening as 'food fascism' because this system can only survive through totalitarian control. With patents on seed, an illegitimate legal system is manipulated to create seed monopolies. Seed laws that require uniformity - which criminalize diversity and the use of open-pollinated seeds - are fascist in nature. Suing farmers after contaminating their crops is another aspect of this fascism. Pseudo-hygiene laws that criminalize local, artisanal food are food fascism. And attacks on scientists and the silencing of independent research are examples of knowledge fascism. — Vandana Shiva

The under-funded and over-extended United States Patent and Trademark Office does not have the resources to adequately evaluate the burgeoning number of applications, and too many low-quality patents are being issued as a result. — Viet D. Dinh

Working on the final formulation of technological patents was a veritable blessing for me. It enforced many-sided thinking and also provided important stimuli to physical thought. [Academia] places a young person under a kind of compulsion to produce impressive quantities of scientific publications; a temptation to superficiality. — Albert Einstein

At Mint, we developed five pending patents on our technology, ranging from categorization to the Ways to Save system that calculates how much a new financial product would save a user given their present financial situation. — Aaron Patzer

It's a phenomenon that started in the United States in which corporations make claims on the life forms, biodiversity and innovations of other cultures by applying for patents on them. — Vandana Shiva

The "health, education, and welfare" section of government is another boondoggle. First we manufacture indigent and superfluous people by legal monopolies in land, money and idea patents, erecting tariff barriers to protect monopolies from foreign competition, and taxing laborers to subsidize rich farmers and privileged manufacturers. Then we create "social workers, " etc., to care for them and thereby establish a self-aggravating and permanent institutionalized phenomenon ... — Laurance Labadie

After filing a patent, your job is only quarter done. — Kalyan C. Kankanala

And the reason is that until Wonder came along and figured out how to spread the idea of sliced bread, no one wanted it. That the success of sliced bread is not always about what the patent is like or what the factory is like, it's about can you get your idea to spread or not? — Seth Godin

You know, hon, after Stephie died, we never really talked about her." she says, her hands tight around the cart handle. "There's a lot of pain there. Still. I guess we feel like we failed her. Like maybe if we were home instead of away at college, we could've done something to fix her. Something my patents and the doctors and her boyfriend missed. Sometimes I think I don't have the right to talk about her. Like at the end, I don't know her well enough to say anything. So much of her life became secret. She spent all of her time with her boyfriend, and when she was home, her nose was buried in her diary. I swear that diary was her best friend, even more than Megan."
"Did you ever read it?" I ask.
"No."
"Not even after she died?"
Aunt Rachel shakes her head, removing an eggplant from the middle row and pressing her fingers against its flesh. "To this day, I don't know if I would've, either. We never found it, Delilah. It's like she just ... took it with her. — Sarah Ockler

The history of patents includes a wealth of attempts to reward friends of the government and restrict or control dangerous technologies. — James Boyle

I have a hunch that the unknown sequences of DNA will decode into copyright notices and patent protections. — Donald Knuth

I wish I could put a patent on that thing. That was so straight I had to lean over sideways to see the flag! — Gary Player

People equate patents with secrecy, that secrecy is what patents were designed to overcome. That's why the formula for Coca-Cola was never patented. They kept it as a trade secret, and they've outlasted patent laws by 80 years or more. — Craig Venter

In liberal society we claim that freedom of speech is sacred and therefore has an absolute character. But we know (or should know) that "free speech" inhabits a structured space: not only is "hate speech" legally forbidden in liberal societies, but there are also laws protecting the circulation of copyrighted material, and the reproduction of trademarks and patents without explicit permission. — Talal Asad

You should be innovating so fast that you're invalidating your prior patents — Elon Musk

Food is the very heart of freedom. How can people be free if they can't feed themselves without getting sued for patent violations? — Daniel Suarez

Know your stuff. Have an angle. Know how to grow business, how to develop products, have patents and an undeveloped market that could be huge. — Mark Cuban

The quality of American patents has been deteriorating for years; they are increasingly issued for products and processes that are not truly innovative - things like the queuing system for Netflix, which was patented in 2003. Yes, it makes renting movies a snap, but was it really a breakthrough deserving patent protection? — Robert Pozen

There is a patent office at the seat of government of the universe, whose managers are as much interested in the dispersion of seeds as anybody at Washington can be, and their operations are infinitely more extensive and regular. — Henry David Thoreau

If people don't get paid for their inventions, that's not a good thing. In the case of many patents, there are people who aren't in a position to take them to the next level. If you don't enforce your rights, no one is going to enforce them for you. — Nathan Myhrvold

While the proximate ground of discrimination may be of another kind, still the pervading principle and abiding test of good breeding is the requirement of a substantial and patent waste of time. — Thorstein Veblen

Fighting patents one by one will never eliminate the danger of software patents, any more than swatting mosquitoes will eliminate malaria. — Richard Stallman

If you look at the world's top 50 drugs being sold today, they are being marketed and sold by companies that did not invent them. I respect patents. I'll pay a royalty. But I shouldn't be denied the right to produce drugs for poor people at reasonable prices. — Yusuf Hamied

There is nothing called as cheap patents. Anything cheap is not worthwhile. — Kalyan C. Kankanala