
The sewing machine patents - 10ren
http://volokh.com/posts/1240849478.shtml
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dougp
<http://volokh.com/posts/chain_1240849478.shtml> is a better link. The content
is really in those 3 links at the bottom. His basic point as I understand it
is that there never really was the good old days of the patent system and that
it has been broken since long before computers. People have always had to pool
patents to make progress.

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natch
I went to a talk once where the presenter made the case (very well) that there
was just one single patent that enabled Singer to sew up, so to speak, the
market.

Even more elegant, it came down to just one claim.

The claim was for a sewing device in which the thread went through a hole that
was positioned near the sharp tip of the needle (unlike on a hand sewing
needle, where the hole is on the other end). Simple, and very hard to get
around.

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jcl
According to the article, your presenter was wrong. Singer's patent was an
improvement on an existing machine that already had an eye-pointed needle (an
improvement which had been invented over a century earlier).

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chaostheory
Just to make sure I didn't read it incorrectly - is this the summary?

Patent pools can overcome patent trolls, and that there's no need to change
the patent system even with the advent of technology such as biotech and
software

The paper's topic seemed really interesting, but the blog post didn't really
give a summary of the paper's major points. all it did was quote three
paragraphs from the paper's conclusion

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decode
You can download a PDF of the full paper that is referenced here:

<http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1354849>

Click "Download" at the top and then click the SSRN link. Doesn't require
registration.

