[lbo-talk] Maximise or satisfice? (was:stupid americans?

Chris Doss lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com
Wed Sep 29 03:25:52 PDT 2004


--- Gregory Geboski <greg at mail.unionwebservices.com> wrote: Patents: Because the US has always been on the forefront of tying Enlightenment to commodity production. And the few times I've actually seen a random sampling of issued patents, I've been struck by how many are trivial "improvements" on an existing idea or just goofy junk.

--- I used to work in an intellectual property law firm in Washington, DC, as a patent searcher, which meant that my job was doing research at the patent and trademark offices to determine how unpatentable a given idea was. There are hundreds of patents just dealing with slight variations of toothbrush design (and the ever-popular "toothbrush with toothpaste in the handle" idea.) Something like only 1% of patents ever earn a profit. (If I rember aright, the two top grossers have been the telephone and the zipper.)

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