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Comment by djrogers | Hacker News Reader

Someone really ought to start patenting every awesome piece of technology that we love from sci-fi, then license them for free to anyone who can actually use them.

Maybe we could get a kickstarter going for it! I say we start with battlemechs and work our way down from there.

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Doesn't the patent imply realistic implementation? I don't think you can patent just anything without any idea how to make it. For example a teleporter? I agree however that preemptive defensive patents that are released for free is a good idea.

I seriously doubt Samsung has any the ability to overcome the hurdles in storage, communication, and video projection to make these in a reasonable timeframe either.

They'd also require significant advances in materials science in order to get to the point where they can even try and overcome those hurdles. Bionic contact lenses are going to be hard enough to develop. Including viable camera functionality is going to be an even greater task.

No, not really. There are many, many, many patents that are obviously not a working invention. You just have to be able to tell a good story and pay the fee.

You need to reduce it to practice. Which means something less than a fully working product, but more than just the idea of what the product would do. You need to know how the invention works.

I agree that's the idea, but based on many patents I've seen it's not the reality.

>Someone really ought to start patenting every awesome piece of technology that we love from sci-fi

That's actually Nathan Myhrvold's, ex-CTO of Microsoft, business plan for Intellectual Ventures.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Myhrvold#Intellectual_v...

He basically gathered around a bunch of visionaries, 'industry leaders' and sci-fi people and then they started patenting ideas that they thought would end up as products a decade+ later. Some accused him and IV of being patent trolls... because they patented all kinds of general stuff.

nice try, Nathan.

Intellectual Ventures charges money for licensing, nothing free about it. I'm not saying they should be free, just saying they aren't.

I recently learned that IV has 3 arms of operation: Patent trolling, basic research, and health/disease related tech.

People know about their trolling but little about the other two. I must say they are not particularly adept at PR.

Sadly, IV is known as one of the most egregious patent trolls out there...

Why do you need to patent them rather than just publish the idea? One there is prior art you can't get a patent in an idea (simplifying).

"Shouldn't be able to get", not "can't get". I don't know how that business works, but it may be cheaper than having to legally establish that there has in fact been prior art.

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