Martin

Senior Member
Dec 31, 2000
56,913
Talking about patents, do you know that we don't care that Chinese rippers create Volvo spare parts, defying patent rights? Apparently it is healthy for the company.
Patents are bullshit anyway. The pretext is they encourage competition by making people disclose their inventions. In actual fact they just stifle competition.
 

JCK

Biased
JCK
May 11, 2004
125,388
Patents are bullshit anyway. The pretext is they encourage competition by making people disclose their inventions. In actual fact they just stifle competition.
Indeed they are. My wife's dad has created a device that measures some welding parameters. He sells it with really old robust laptops :D and a very simple DOS program. Hey it does the job well for a welder and they don't ask for more. He says it's a smart measuring machine and he sort of can live well on selling it and supporting it (he does other things though, also welding related but that's not the issue)

I asked him once why he doesn't patent his product and he replied exactly as your reply. He also added that his product is "safer" non-patented.
 

Martin

Senior Member
Dec 31, 2000
56,913
Indeed they are. My wife's dad has created a device that measures some welding parameters. He sells it with really old robust laptops :D and a very simple DOS program. Hey it does the job well for a welder and they don't ask for more. He says it's a smart measuring machine and he sort of can live well on selling it and supporting it (he does other things though, also welding related but that's not the issue)

I asked him once why he doesn't patent his product and he replied exactly as your reply. He also added that his product is "safer" non-patented.
That's probably true, because once you try to patent something you have to make some sort of claim that it hasn't been done before. The last thing you want is someone else leaping in to patent the same thing (on a bogus claim, why not) and then demanding royalties from you.
 

.zero

★ ★ ★
Aug 8, 2006
82,905
That's probably true, because once you try to patent something you have to make some sort of claim that it hasn't been done before. The last thing you want is someone else leaping in to patent the same thing (on a bogus claim, why not) and then demanding royalties from you.
but then again it comes back to the bottom line

if you're in it to make profit, then you know that to make money you have to spend it -- patent licensing, incorporation, lawyer fees, etc..
 

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 0, Guests: 151)