Message du 13/04/14 20:12 De : "jim bell" [apparently this didn't 'stick' the first time] Some people debate whether 'intellectual property' (such as patents) should exist. The standard for patenting is said to be: An invention, to be patentable, should be "new, useful, and unobvious to those skilled in the art". A month ago, when it became obvious that finding Air Malaysia Flight 370 could be difficult, the 30-day limit of the electronic pingers got me to thinking. Why? Instead of pinging for 30 days, why not have them ping increasingly slowly, so that the pinger would last 'forever'. Considered discretely, let it ping at the normal rate for 1 week, at half the rate for the next week, at quarter the rate for the subsequent rate, etc. Or, have a continuous equivalent of this, a ping-rate which slows to approximate this rate over time. This kind of pinger would 'never' run out. Should this idea be patentable? Is it new? I haven't heard of it. Is it useful? It is now clear why it would be useful...now!!! Is it 'un-obvious'? Well, despite the fact that I just thought of it a month ago, and I had never heard it proposed before, I wonder why it shouldn't be called 'obvious'. If anything, I think it's amazing that it hasn't been implemented before. People who work in aeronautics and electronics are smart and imaginative...at least I thought they were...until now? It should also be possible to include in the ping, information (transmitted by pulse-position information) about the last lat/lon received by the aircraft.
It is not that your idea didn't "stick" but we have a different problem today than two centuries ago when patents were invented. Patents were invented when people were very ignorant and simple things like boiling cucumbers inside a tightly sealed glass was an innovation that changed the world. Basically anything at that time was something simple yet important enough to warrant a patent. Until the beginning of the 20th century. Now as you pointed out, it is not a matter of creating something nobody knows about. All problems are solvable, it is just a matter of someone putting their hands into it. Big things that would be patentable today, which are not obvious to anyone would be things like Star Wars hovering vehicles, light sabers, etc. One patentable thing is from a guy that made a new kind of cellphone antenna that tracks the devices and sends individual beams to each device using less power and being much faster, you may have heard about it. That's something which is not easy and cannot be easily done with current technology. How many times in a year do you hear about such inventions? But like in ancient times, such wild ideas come out only every once in a while. That wouldn't keep the patent offices, lawyers, attorneys, engineers and all those that orbit around it occupied and pockets filled. It looks like we ought to find other jobs for such people, otherwise they will fight tooth and nail to continue having every insignificant little invention patentable.