
Ask HN: Elizabeth Holmes has 200 patents – if tech didn't work, why not noticed? - anonymousmoose
I searched her name on a couple of patent search engines.<p>Turns out she has around 200 patents (with other people mostly).<p>So if her tech didn&#x27;t work, then why didn&#x27;t people figure it out sooner? Why did it take a journalist from WSJ to find the fraud?<p>How come some prominent physicist or biologist doing &quot;competition research&quot; didn&#x27;t declare that the patents were based on bogus claims?
======
mchannon
Thomas Edison freely admitted most of his 1,093 US patents were for inventions
that would never have worked.

Patenting a completely ridiculous and impossible idea is quite straightforward
if you know the system and have the money and reputation.

Journalists are notoriously bad at technical due diligence, but the fact is
even trained scientists and engineers can be duped, particularly when access
is limited.

Having been in a similar situation (not the federal one), where something
looked fishy in a company I was involved in (and ended up being revealed as
fishier than fish), I wouldn't be at all surprised if it comes out that the
patents were fine, the ideas were fine, the talent had the skills, and it
would have been less work on everybody's part to actually build it than to
lie, cheat, and misrepresent it.

I have never been to or interviewed anywhere more paranoid/aggressively
secretive than Theranos, and that includes military bases and classified
government installations. This should be the moral of the story: investors
should take as a red flag companies that work that hard to show you they're
hiding their technology.

~~~
narrator
Patenting inventions that don't work is a great way to waste a lot of money on
patent attorneys and patent office fees. Worldwide patenting can get even more
ridiculously expensive.

There are some really nutty patents out there.

~~~
windyfeeling
I am listed as (co)inventor for several patents from my last job with a big
firm. All but a couple of them my report to my team lead was along the lines
of “this new method does not provide a benefit over what’s existing, but also
does not negatively impact.” It’s truly an experience sitting in a conference
call with a company patent lawyer where you say one thing and then you listen
to them spin it in a more positive light. The money needed to file the patents
pay out patent bonuses (to the people listed as (co)inventors) is literally a
rounding error. My team lead held on the order of tens of patents, all with
similar findings, all filed to prevent our competition from patenting first.

------
jdietrich
The patents don't really tell you whether the Theranos technology actually
works. They cover small parts of the overall system - fluid handling,
centrifuge configurations, software processes and so on.

It's quite common for companies to use a mix of patents and trade secrets to
protect their technology. Filing for patent protection is a tradeoff - you
gain the exclusive right to use that invention for 20 years, but the invention
becomes public knowledge. In many cases, that tradeoff isn't worthwhile. The
fact that a set of patents don't add up to a working process is quite normal.

~~~
sorokod
But are they required to deliver individually? If not I can imagine patents in
the spirit of "fake it before you make it" which may be applied against
someone else who "made it" while the patent holder still "fakes it"

or not even trying to.

~~~
trebligdivad
You're not required to proof anything; you can (and people often do) patent
things that just seem good ideas at the time. If you work for big companies
you're strongly encouraged to patent lots, and generally all you have to do is
persuade some of your colleagues that it makes sense before then convincing
the patent examiners it's new.

~~~
jdietrich
There are thousands of patents for perpetual motion machines. An invention
must be novel, useful and non-obvious to be patentable, but it doesn't
actually have to work.

[https://patents.google.com/?q="perpetual+motion"](https://patents.google.com/?q="perpetual+motion")

~~~
pjdemers
I thought perpetual motion machines claims were automatically denied. I know
they were back in the 1970s when my dad worked at the patent office.

~~~
andybak
Yes but the interesting aspect of this is that they had to make a specific
rule for this case. In the general case of "filing nonsense" the system fails.

------
herodotus
The numbers game is a part of the modern Patent system. It is almost certainly
impossible for a patent officer to asses the scientific or technical merit of
a patent application. At best, they can throw out the nutbar submissions. The
submitting companies often want patents partly (or mostly completely) for
marketing reasons: "Our technology is protected by N patents!". Even Steve
Jobs said this when he introduced the iPhone: "We’ve been innovating like
crazy for the last few years on this, and we filed for over 200 patents for
all the inventions in iPhone, and we intend to protect them." I am sure many
of them are great, but one of those 200 is mine, and, frankly, the idea in it
was never used in the iPhone.

~~~
sova
Any hints as to what that particular patent is about? =)

~~~
herodotus
All I am willing to say is that my colleague and I made the suggestion to the
Patent committee before we knew anything about the actual design of the iPhone
(or even that there really was going to be one). In essence, we imagined what
would be needed to enable a click-wheel to function for text and numeric
input, and proposed a solution. We were surprised that the committee accepted
the proposal - and, when we finally were disclosed on the iPhone, there was no
click-wheel! But the patent was granted.

------
bagels
People were skeptical of Theranos' claims before the WSJ expose from Oct 15,
2015.

Here are some examples that predate that article:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/scientist-skeptical-
thranos-b...](http://www.businessinsider.com/scientist-skeptical-thranos-
blood-test-elizabeth-holmes-2015-6)

[http://www.businessinsider.com/science-of-elizabeth-
holmes-t...](http://www.businessinsider.com/science-of-elizabeth-holmes-
theranos-2015-4#ixzz3YO784nGj)

This discussion from 2013 talks about Theranos doing full blood draws which
they wouldn't need to do if their technology worked:
[https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/theranos.1043576/](https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/theranos.1043576/)

~~~
danso
I brought this up in a comment downstream, but it was a Dec. 17, 2014, blog
post by the now defunct Pathology Blawg that arguably led to the downfall of
Theranos. The _Blawg_ author was contacted by someone feuding with Holmes at
the time. The _Blawg_ author eventually contacted the WSJ reporter in secret:

[http://archive.is/BGtRJ](http://archive.is/BGtRJ)

One of the compelling things the _Blawg_ author did was note this passage in
the New Yorker story [0]

> _Holmes also pointed me to a pilot study published by Hematology Reports, an
> online-only peer-reviewed journal; she is listed as a co-author. The report,
> released in April, concluded that Theranos tests “correlated highly with
> values obtained” from standard lab tests._

He looked up that journal, which he had never heard of before, and found that
it was an Italian company that charged $500 to publish. He found the Theranos
study [1], which actually _did_ contain specific scientific detail, but not
the good kind:

> _So, to summarize, the study to which Ms. Holmes referred that showed
> Theranos “correlated highly” with standard lab tests looked at one biomarker
> (C-reactive protein) in a grand total of six patients and was published in
> an online-only Italian journal._

[0] [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/15/blood-
simpler](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/15/blood-simpler)

[1]
[http://www.pagepress.org/journals/index.php/hr/article/view/...](http://www.pagepress.org/journals/index.php/hr/article/view/5466/4419)

~~~
Brakenshire
Ouch, the quote from Elizabeth Holmes on how the machine worked:

> "A chemistry is performed so that a chemical reaction occurs and generates a
> signal from the chemical interaction with the sample, which is translated
> into a result, which is then reviewed by certified laboratory personnel."

~~~
tzahola
Reads like basic.wikipedia.org

~~~
tzahola
Errata: simple.wikipedia.org

------
pjc50
1) Competing engineers are often advised _not_ to read patents, because it can
result in treble damages in infringement claims:
[https://www.essentialpatentblog.com/2016/06/supreme-court-
ru...](https://www.essentialpatentblog.com/2016/06/supreme-court-ruling-
increases-patent-owners-ability-get-enhanced-damages-halo-v-pulse/)

2) Patents are really hard to read

3) The difference between something that looks plausibly like it might work
when written down and something that actually works can be hundreds of
millions of dollars of bugfixing.

~~~
kens
> Patents are really hard to read

There are a few patents that I've found informative and useful to read: Texas
Instruments' calculator patents from the 1970s, the ENIAC patent, Astrolite,
and Autotune. These are the rare patents where they actually explain things in
detail, it reads like it was mostly written by an engineer rather than
lawyers, and I know more after reading the patent than before. (Just want to
give some recognition to the rare non-awful patent.)

Edit: I looked at a few of the Holmes patents. I'd put them in the awful
category. Hundreds of pages of worthless discussion, followed by claims that
are semi-incomprehensible, seem obvious, and have little to do with the
earlier hundreds of pages. They have lots of nice graphs and diagrams though.

~~~
abecedarius
Eric Drexler's solar-sail patent was the only actually-educational patent I've
ever seen, myself.
[https://patents.google.com/patent/US4614319](https://patents.google.com/patent/US4614319)
(Hm, I remember it as more detailed -- maybe I was remembering a tech report
instead. But still this looks like reasonable English.)

------
danso
I wonder what u/Alupis is thinking today? via a HN thread in 2014:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7951624](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7951624)

> _Seems rather sad state of our Patent system here in the US where a 19 year
> old with no prior technical background, who was a Chemical Engineering
> student, a sophomore no less (meaning barely finished or finishing General
> Ed. requirements and just starting Major courses), can write and file for a
> highly-technical patent involving radios, sensors, embedded devices, and the
> like..._

> _It 's very doubtful she understood how any of that works, or would work in
> her product/patent. Underlying story seems it's absurd this was patent-
> able._

------
staticautomatic
Once a patent is issued, it is exceedingly rare for it to go through
additional review unless there is litigation that prompts it (re-exam, IPR,
etc.)

Separately, it's quite common for people to patent things that don't work or
can't be directly implemented as stand-alone things at all. Indeed, defendants
in patent litigation often point out the many early patents on "flying
machines" as proof that the issuance of a patent is not proof that it would
lead to a working thing.

------
KaiserPro
Theranos had great PR.

You have to understand that most tech news places question the substance of
most press releases. Especially if they are medical.

For example, no-one questions AirBnB's core buisness model: listing holiday
lets. There is literally nothing+ new about airBnB. Uber is the same, its a
taxi service that is subsidising users.

Babylon health is another example, which has yet to really break mainstream
news.

They have run trails for replacing NHS 111, They make a lot of noise about
using AI and other such bollocks, but actually its a decision tree with a nice
natural language system infront.

What they don't say in the blurb is that its less effective than the current
telephone system. Parts of it are deemed unsafe by their own medical staff,
and there is no rigid medical testing to prove it's safety.

None of this matters yet because its an app, and it has "AI".

~~~
hotdog97
The truth is that in the alternative timeline where Theranos had a male
founder they would never gotten their initial founding.

Holmes and Theranos rode the perfect wave built by the media being thirsty for
a young, smart (blonde) female. It's so obvious when you look at it in
hindsight.

Hilariously, even after the total collapse this topic is often taboo.

I can't help but feel for sorry for the young women out there creating
actually useful innovations.

~~~
detaro
Theranos's first funding was in 2004, it had already raised $90M at $1B
valuation in 2010, and started filling its board with defense bigwigs in 2011.

What media wave had happened at that point? From what I've seen, serious media
coverage appeared in 2013, when they left "stealth mode" with the promise of
the droplet testing, almost a decade after the initial investment.

~~~
hotdog97
I was misinformed (or remembered incorrectly) about the founding/media blitz
sequencing. Thanks for informing me.

~~~
ahel
Then if you're interested in being less wrong, I suggest you to question why
you were believing what you said, keeping in mind it was wrong.

------
Reedx
I think a big part of it is that people _wanted_ it to be true.

The idea is very compelling. Who wouldn't want it to be true/possible? And
it's obvious to anyone how valuable such a thing would be.

Plus... Young woman founder/CEO (& paper billionaire as a result). Dropout
from Stanford. Silicon Valley. On the cover of magazines. Big names on the
board. Association with Bill Clinton, etc.

~~~
southern_cross
She's relatively young and attractive and perhaps possesses hidden talents.
Like maybe the ability to charm the pants off (so to speak) of men -
especially older, rich, powerful men who were in a position to help move her
ambitions along. Also men who may have been somewhat blinded to obvious
warning signs of potential trouble.

~~~
joewee
Doubtful. If this was common we would have more female startups funded. Just
because she is attractive and raised money doesn’t mean she had to use sex to
get there. She did go to a Ivy League school which brings a network and
credibility in and of itself.

~~~
southern_cross
She didn't have to use sex, per se, but merely sex appeal. (It's kind of
telling that you immediately went there.) Or maybe even the "You kind of
remind me of my daughter/niece/young wife/etc" angle. Maybe even just the
"youthful enthusiasm and vigor" angle, or the "female empowerment, breaking
the glass ceiling" angle. I also understand that she liked to pass herself off
as something of a female Steve Jobs, so there's that. Plus, female-led
startups in Silicon Valley are pretty rare, so that in itself is an attention
grabber.

~~~
joewee
I’d like to read the story about her. It seems like she was just a great self
promoter. Being attractive does help, but that goes for both men and women. We
tend to like attractive people, that’s why the big 4 consulting firms are full
of young attractive kids recruited because they were jocks or cheerleaders.

My point is that if sex appeal was the core factor in her success, we would
have significantly more female founders because almost all investors are men.
It’s more likely to me that she was a amazing self promoter who didn’t let
reality get in her way, similar to Steve Jobs.

------
lopmotr
Somebody has to do the legwork to dig up problems. That's what journalists are
for, so it's not surprising a journalist found it. There are "obvious"
problems everywhere that nobody has found because nobody has looked. Such as
bugs in open source software or a recent case in New Zealand where the
government misread a report and gave incorrect advice about save levels of
meth in houses occupied by meth users. That mistake created a whole industry
of meth testers and decontaminators for something which suddenly turned out to
be harmless after-all. Government housing tenants were forced out of their
houses and made to pay the cost of decontamination. Landlords lost money
having to clean up "dangerous" contamination - which could cost $10,000s to
replace plasterboard but still nobody checked the source of that guidance to
find the mistake.

------
olskool
I worked at a small tech company that was bought by a large company. They sent
a patent attorney to talk to us. He said to send his office anything that
might be patentable. He said that patents for big companies were kind of
mutually assured destruction in the sense that if someone sued us over
infringing on one of their patents if we had enough patents they were probably
infringing one of ours.

------
jedberg
Unfortunately one major flaw of the patent system is that you don't have to
produce a working prototype to get a patent.

The United States had a working requirement only between 1832 and 1836, and
only for foreigners.

So for the most part, if you can think it, you can patent it.

------
lordnacho
This will sound cynical but many patents are not for IP protection as much as
for showing other people that you're a real tech company. Investors and
customers are both groups that might be impressed by your having a patent.

~~~
zxcmx
This is the major reason I have seen startups apply for patents. Pure
signalling value.

Lots of companies patent complete bunk, and I’ve never seen anyone get called
on it. It seems like investors don’t really read them.

I have also seen companies patent things that won’t work and that they have no
intention of working on - with the rationale that it will confuse competitors.

Given what we know about Theranos it’s entirely plausible that some of their
patents were intended as “smokescreens”.

------
southern_cross
I'm just an ordinary Joe and it was pretty obvious to me from the beginning
that this was mostly just a scam. For one, she didn't have the necessary
background to really create anything new and inventive here. Second, her
supposed goal was a "no needles" system, which of course she didn't really
have. Third, my wife is a nurse and she told me that finger-prick samples are
mostly useless for many of the tests that might need to be run, so instead
relatively large amounts of blood have to be drawn from a vein. Also that one
reason why they often draw multiple vials of blood is because the test results
from each individual vial may vary considerably; I forget the details though.

That said, microfluidics (where you use minimal sample sizes and minimal
reagents and such) is a real and growing thing, and I assume that she was just
trying to ride that wave. But it turns out that this doesn't work so well for
blood samples.

------
danso
The book, "Bad Blood" (written by the WSJ reporter) goes into great detail
about how Holmes and Theranos were able to get away with their scam. "Fake it
till you make it" is a thing not particularly bound by physics, especially
when you have charisma and the friendship and backing of influential investors
and board members.

Incidentally, the book does contain a lot of discussion about patents. Holmes
offended a longtime family friend, Richard Fuisz -- who, incidentally, was a
former CIA agent -- around 2005-2006. He was mad Holmes and her family never
consulted with him about the Threanos idea, so he wrote his own patent (made
public on Jan 3, 2008) that he described as "the Theranos killer". It turned
into a big legal battle that caught the eye of a _Fortune_ writer, who ended
up writing the first big magazine cover story on Holmes/Theranos:

[http://fortune.com/2014/06/12/theranos-blood-
holmes/](http://fortune.com/2014/06/12/theranos-blood-holmes/)

The whole subplot is quite remarkable. Fuisz's battle with Theranos led to
some damaging testimony in deposition. Fuisz's son became determined to take
down Theranos and from what I can tell, had a big (but mostly unknown) part in
the unraveling of Theranos. He found in a Google search a blog post [0] (now
taken down) that made serious accusations about Theranos after the New Yorker
cover story.

Joe Fuisz, Richard's son, ended up contacting the blog author and telling him
about the Fuisz vs. Holmes fight [1]. This blog author ended up contacting a
WSJ reporter that he had previously worked with, John Carreyrou.

So rather than science/engineering directly leading to Threanos's downfall, it
seems a personal spat played a bigger part. And ironically, this spat involved
a guy who wanted to out-patent-troll Elizabeth Holmes.

An excerpt from the book about what started Richard Fuisz's feud:

 _Richard Fuisz was a vain and prideful man. The thought that the daughter of
longtime friends and former neighbors would launch a company in his area of
expertise and that they wouldn’t ask for his help or even consult him deeply
offended him. As he would put it years later in an email, “The fact that the
Holmes family was so willing to partake of our hospitality (New York
apartment, dinners, etc.) made it particularly bitter to me that they would
not ask for advice. Essentially the message was, ‘I’ll drink your wine but I
won’t ask you for advice in the very field that paid for the wine.’ ”_

 _Carreyrou, John. Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (p.
71). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition._

[0] edit: Here's an archive snapshot of the now taken down blog post:
[http://archive.is/BGtRJ](http://archive.is/BGtRJ)

Carreyrou gives a lot of credit to the author for giving the tip that turned
Carreyrou's interest toward Theranos. Strangely, there's not mention of why
the blog suddenly shut down. If you google around, you'll see it closed up a
few weeks after Carreyrou's first big Theranos story.

[1] edit: via a comment on the oldest HN post (Sept. 2013) about Theranos, I
found a link an online summary of the patent dispute:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6349870](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6349870)

[https://www.leagle.com/decision/infdco20121203541](https://www.leagle.com/decision/infdco20121203541)

------
Amygaz
It is likely that you are counting all the results of your search results, and
not curating them. I counted 25 different patents in the USA (40 worldwide),
and 13 of those are actually granted.

------
a-dub
I want a process patent...

"Small Scale Patent Acquisition and Publication for the Purposes of Misleading
Investors and Customers on the Feasibility of Large Scale Research and
Development Efforts"

------
micro_cam
Theranos may have been outright fraud but their technical claims never seemed
that outlandish. There are many legitimate companies/academic labs working on
similar bloodtests and even brining more limited versions to market.

There timing was excellent too. I actually remember thinking a few years ago
that all one would need to do to design something like the theranos product is
run enough blood samples through a good mass spec and load the date into map
reduce. But based on research since then "enough" turns out to be a whole lot.

And there _are_ also scientists who think that ideas like that are ridiculous
and biomarkers for certain diseases (like early stage cancer) will never be
findable in blood. And many of them are vocal about the fact. But since there
are experts on both sides that isn't a clear indictment of the idea.

It is also worth noting that the "crisis of reproducibility" is bad enough in
bio that I wouldn't haven been surprised if Theranos had very promising early
results that didn't pan out. Thats happened to a lot of people.

Personally I fully believe we'll see a Theranos like product in the next 20
years around the time protein sequencing and mass spectrometry tech gets cheap
enough to do studies with on ~millions of people instead of ~thousands.

------
acjohnson55
Inspectors don't really concern themselves with verifying that an invention
works. That would be insanely expensive. It's on the inventor to make
something work so that they can profit. Although I do think inventors should
have some burden of proof that they're effectively using their patent to
provide a service to the market that justifies their monopoly protection.

~~~
astrodev
As a matter of fact, it is normal for patent examiners to not even read the
invention specification and focus only on the claims.

I was surprised to learn that from a patent attorney, but it seems to be
common knowledge, e.g. [1]. Upon reflection, that's the only way it can work.
A generalist patent examiner could never understand all the inventions given
the volume of applications they must handle.

[1] [http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2016/07/25/anatomy-bogus-alice-
rej...](http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2016/07/25/anatomy-bogus-alice-
rejection/id=71192/)

~~~
jwatte
It's only the claims that matter, but the claims typically draw on vocabulary
and context established in the disclosure. Often, part of getting a patent
granted is clarifying the disclosure such that the examiner can understand the
idea and how it's different from previous art.

------
burnte
It was noticed. I can patent anything short of a perpetual motion machine
regardless of functionality. But if you talked to people in the biotech
community, most were very doubtful (at best) of her claims. I have several
friends in the very markets she was going after, and they were never anything
less than 100% certain she was a fraud and was going to blow up in the end.

------
xienze
I have like, a dozen patents, and I'm nobody special. Some companies, like the
one I worked for, have a real culture around patenting anything and everything
that seems even halfway interesting. It's all about volume. None of my patents
are BS, they're just rather mundane and very limited in scope. I suspect it's
the same case for Holmes.

------
verelo
Because the patent system in is broken, always has been, probably always will
be. Less of it is about creating and protecting innovation, most of it is
about creating litigation to slow down others who attempt to compete with you
(even when they’re doing something different).

------
throwawayjava
_> Turns out she has around 200 patents (with other people mostly)._

I have no idea about these patents, but it's certainly possible that those
particular patents describe functional subcomponents/processes of an overall
system that doesn't work.

 _> How come some prominent physicist or biologist doing "competition
research" didn't declare that the patents were based on bogus claims?_

I'm not sure what "competition research" means. In any case, approximately 0%
of prominent scientists read patents. Patents are written both for and by
lawyers/courts.

------
rajacombinator
You’ve got to consider who has incentives to do the research. This basically
breaks down into a few categories:

1) entrenched competitors that want to protect market share. 2) hedge funds
that start OTC trading and are shorting. 3) insiders that want to vaporize the
company as part of a bizarre money laundering scheme. (Most likely, although
very bizarre, option imo.) 4) the rare journalist that does investigative
research. 5) the rare VC that does dd.

So something changed to interest one of these groups. Prominent physicists and
biologists couldn’t care less what private companies are doing.

~~~
southern_cross
"Prominent physicists and biologists couldn’t care less what private companies
are doing."

Unless, of course, they are sniffing around looking for funding. Consider for
example the current NIH/alcohol kerfuffle.

------
rossdavidh
There are lots of legitimate reasons why this could have been so, such as they
were patents of some small piece of Theranos' technology that worked, even
though their grand scheme did not.

However, the real reason is that patents are bogus, and more or less all they
assert is that this person or company filed the paperwork first. The Patent
Office has not even close to the amount of staff they would need to actually
verify that the patents they grant are working.

------
ericseppanen
Is it legitimate to have a CEO add their name to a patent? My impression is
that the "inventor(s)" have to be the people who actually came up with the
idea.

~~~
dctoedt
> _My impression is that the "inventor(s)" have to be the people who actually
> came up with the idea._

(Inactive) patent attorney here. Your impression is correct (for the U.S.; I
can't speak to other places): ALL "co-inventors" MUST be listed as inventors,
and ONLY they may be listed. A "co-inventor" is someone who contributes to the
"conception," i.e., the complete mental picture, of the subject matter of at
least one claim in the patent application. [0]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventor_(patent)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventor_\(patent\))

~~~
Yoric
Good to know. I've known a CEO who deliberately altered all the patents from
his startup to put his name (and only his name) as inventor, rather than, say,
people who actually any clue what the patent was about.

------
Blackthorn
People did figure it out though.

------
rafiki6
Patents aren't a peer-reviewed academic journal. They're just a way to gain
exclusive rights to an idea for a period of time, whether or not that idea
pans out. If I am doing competition research, it's not to determine the
feasibility of the patents, but rather if I will get sued if I attempt to
build my idea. My incentive is not to validate their work, but rather my
liability.

------
cimmanom
Furthermore, if she's got patents on these processes, can she wield them
against anyone who tries to implement them _successfully_?

~~~
_rpd
She could try, but the patents might be found to be 'non-enabling' and thus
invalid. Patents are supposed to teach a reader how to make the invention.

In particular, it seems that the microfluidics stuff needs new inventions to
make it work in practice. So presumably those aren't described in the patents.
Although it wouldn't be the first time that management overlooked solutions
provided by their own researchers.

~~~
owenversteeg
Are patents _required_ to teach a reader how to make the invention? That seems
like an interesting requirement that I hadn't heard of before, and I've got a
patent with my name on it myself.

~~~
_rpd
35 U.S.C. § 112(a) ...

> The specification [of the patent] shall contain a written description of the
> invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such
> full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the
> art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make
> and use the same

It's the raison d'etre of patents. A time-limited monopoly in exchange for
full documentation of the invention for the long term public good.

~~~
owenversteeg
Huh. Thanks for including the relevant part of the US Code. I'll be honest, I
had no idea it was a requirement. I've read plenty of patents where the patent
definitely would not function to let someone build the invention in question.
I wonder how strictly this is enforced.

------
godelmachine
These days they get patent for just about anything. Elon Musk patented Tesla
Model S’ looks by presenting sketches to the patent office. A UX designer who
works close to my office patented the graphical layout of a reporting
software. She got a US design patent for that.

------
JamesAdir
What wonders me in this story is how many investors have been duped into this
fallacy, without proper due diligence, checking the supposed contracts and so
on. If I was an investor in a VC fund, I would have sued the investment
managers for negligence on their part.

------
anonu
Shows how broken the USPTO process is... You can pay a lawyer a nice chunk of
change and patent whatever. Then you can hire some more lawyer/trolls to go
out and sue people who infringe on your patent.

------
pontifier
I've got a patent on a fusion reactor... If my tech doesn't work I wish
someone would let me know and save me the trouble of all the hard work to
build it :)

~~~
pontifier
Conversely, If the tech does work, I hope someone infringes me and saves me
the trouble of all the hard work to build it ;)

------
pbreit
I’m not entirely convinced what they were trying to is impossible. More that
they went about it in a preposterous way.

~~~
drunkenmonkey
Does anyone else hear the Carmagnole drums beating through the headlines?

------
CamperBob2
You can patent pretty much anything. The USPTO runs open-loop. A patent
examiner will face zero consequences for approving trivial, obvious,
unoriginal, or otherwise invalid claims, but they will face real consequences
for rejecting them, in the form of additional workload.

Their philosophy can best be summarized as, "Rubber-stamp 'em all and let the
courts sort 'em out." We all get to pay for that.

------
carapace
There's uBeam, the company trying to charge devices using ultrasound.
Apparently it's still hard to tell from the outside if this is going to work.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBeam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBeam)

Or Magic Leap
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Leap](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Leap)

> In December 2017, UK IT news site, The Register, reported that Magic Leap is
> a vaporware company that "has received nearly $2bn in funding over four
> years, values itself at $6bn, and has yet to produce anything but fake
> technology."

> On March 7, 2018, Magic Leap raised $461 million in Series D funding led by
> the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, the country's sovereign wealth
> fund.[25]

Half a billion dollars for vaporware?

But there are lots of fun ways to spend your money:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cal_3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cal_3)

> Cal 3 is a state ballot initiative to split the U.S. state of California
> into three states. It was launched in August 2017 by Silicon Valley venture
> capitalist Tim Draper.

Reminds me of my favorite ever Richard Pryor joke: "Cocaine is Nature's way of
telling you, 'You have too much money.'"

------
billwill
Patenting doesn't automatically convert into production, customers, and sales.

------
jgrewal
PATENTS GET BYPASSED WITH MIN. CHANGES

------
chvid
Maybe not all 200 are fraud ...

------
musgrove
I wonder why there hasn't been a media outcry like with Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey
Skilling, Richard Scrushy, et al. People wanted those scoundrels drawn and
quartered, but no one's calling for her head. Is it because of her sex?

~~~
jonhendry18
Probably because the people who have lost money on Theranos are rich
investors, not the "regular folks" who invested too much of their 401ks in
Enron, nor did Theranos cheat people like how Enron gouged old Californians on
their electric bills by intentionally shutting down power generation.

