You're thinking about the invention process backwards.
Edison, according to legend, patented the light bulb. (He actually patented an improved filament, and the screw-in base.) Once the thing exists, it is easy to trace the process back to the origin, just as it is easy to trace from the leaf of a tree back to the trunk at ground level.
Edison did not patent the thousands of experimental filament failures that he tested before reaching a viable consumer product. His task was to climb the tree and find one particular leaf.
The PB & J sandwich seems simple. All you had to do was add two ingredients together!
But you also had to not add any of the other possible sandwich ingredients. No lettuce. No tomato. No mayonnaise. No mustard. No ketchup. No roast beef. No jalapeno slices. No pickles. No cole slaw. You also had to pick the right variety of bread. Pumpernickel doesn't work out quite as well. Sliced bagel favors different sorts of sandwiches. Cornbread doesn't work at all.
You can't just permute every possible combination of sandwich-able foods and expect the good combinations to be obvious. But once identified, they are obvious in retrospect, thanks to a quirk of human psychology. It wouldn't have been obvious that phonograph needles could be made from peanuts, or that light bulb filaments could be made from bamboo until after inventors had done it for the first time. So don't confuse simplicity with obviousness.
The problem with patenting a particular sandwich, or any other type of food recipe, is enforceability. Once the recipe is known, you have no way of knowing whether unlicensed cooks are making your dish.
The fact that Disney is using RFID bracelets, on the other hand, is immediately discoverable and verifiable by anyone who visits their parks. Furthermore, they have pockets deep enough to afford even unreasonable license terms. The problem was not even technical. It has always been human acceptance. Stick an RFID on a hospital-style plastic band, and no one wants to wear it. Embed it in an exclusive park souvenir, and people will even pay extra for the privilege of having one.
The bracelet is how you get the guest to carry the same RFID tag for their entire visit without losing it, breaking it, or shorting it out. Previously, Disney has used paper tickets, hand stamps, biometrics readers, and mobile applications to manage guests, and they still had problems with loopholes, fraud, and innocent accidents.
If someone were able to patent a PB&J sandwich, somewhere like a Disney theme park might be one of the few places on the planet where its licensing could be enforced profitably. They cannot hide what they do, as anyone present could read a menu and watch a sampling of trays exiting the serving line, then figure out the numbers on a napkin.
This is exactly what the patent system was made for; so the little guy could have an incentive to invent without being crushed by a copycat with more clout. So he doesn't have to be the only person to pitch it. He only has to be the first to offer patent licensing terms.
I think you make a good point. I wasn't saying yes or no, just posing the question, since it seems like a fairly obvious invention, that one doesn't need to work particularly hard at to invent, and probably has been thought of and will be thought of repeatedly by people who work with rfid's over time. You say that's hindsight because i've only now heard of the combination. But I thought the whole premise of rfids was tiny devices that could be embedded in anything.
Maybe it seems bogus because it's a human, social invention, rather than a technical one.
In any case he got the patent, so what does he have to be bitter about? He even went to law school so it would probably cost him less to sue than the average joe. After going through all the trouble to get it, why doesn't he sue anyway? I bet the fear of having his patent invalidated if Disney decides not to settle plays a role.
>This is exactly what the patent system was made for; so the little guy could have an incentive to invent
I think this is completely false despite it being "common wisdom". I've challenged people who say this to provide some sort of evidence that patent systems aid innovation and seen none that was anywhere near convincing so far.
Nobody so far has so much as ventured an answer except one person who pointed to a study that measured innovation solely by the increased use of patent systems in countries where the regime of legal monopolies strengthened over time. I see that as evidence of the insidious nature of patent systems if anything, but to each his own I guess. Got anything?
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is no legal construct that cannot be employed to the advantage of the party that can hire better lawyers. In the battle of ironclad patent versus fully funded legal war chest, the latter wins.
The implication of my post, in context, was that the patent system does not accomplish that idealistic purpose. And indeed, the article itself says that most actual innovation avoids patents. I interpret this as the network of innovators recognizing the flaws in the system and routing around them.
> I've challenged people who say this to provide some sort of evidence that patent systems aid innovation and seen none that was anywhere near convincing so far.
You've been challenging people who haven't looked enough :-) For one, Kenneth Sokoloff (mentioned in TFA) authored some of the highest cited studies that show the benefits of patent systems.
You are right that measuring the effect of patents on innovation in terms of patents is somewhat circular, but economists have long realized this. There are now tons of historical and empirical studies showing increased patenting being correlated with improved metrics of innovation as measured by various proxies such as R&D expenditure, diversity of industries doing research, VC financing for startups, employee growth, and even economic well-being. Of course, there are costs of the patent system as well, and various studies that attempt to quantify those.
Instead of pointing to dozens of individual studies, it'd be easier to point you to this meta-study that references a number of those other articles:
"RECENT RESEARCH ON THE ECONOMICS OF PATENTS", Bronwyn H. Hall and Dietmar Harhoff (Google for PDF)
Edison, according to legend, patented the light bulb. (He actually patented an improved filament, and the screw-in base.) Once the thing exists, it is easy to trace the process back to the origin, just as it is easy to trace from the leaf of a tree back to the trunk at ground level.
Edison did not patent the thousands of experimental filament failures that he tested before reaching a viable consumer product. His task was to climb the tree and find one particular leaf.
The PB & J sandwich seems simple. All you had to do was add two ingredients together!
But you also had to not add any of the other possible sandwich ingredients. No lettuce. No tomato. No mayonnaise. No mustard. No ketchup. No roast beef. No jalapeno slices. No pickles. No cole slaw. You also had to pick the right variety of bread. Pumpernickel doesn't work out quite as well. Sliced bagel favors different sorts of sandwiches. Cornbread doesn't work at all.
You can't just permute every possible combination of sandwich-able foods and expect the good combinations to be obvious. But once identified, they are obvious in retrospect, thanks to a quirk of human psychology. It wouldn't have been obvious that phonograph needles could be made from peanuts, or that light bulb filaments could be made from bamboo until after inventors had done it for the first time. So don't confuse simplicity with obviousness.
The problem with patenting a particular sandwich, or any other type of food recipe, is enforceability. Once the recipe is known, you have no way of knowing whether unlicensed cooks are making your dish.
The fact that Disney is using RFID bracelets, on the other hand, is immediately discoverable and verifiable by anyone who visits their parks. Furthermore, they have pockets deep enough to afford even unreasonable license terms. The problem was not even technical. It has always been human acceptance. Stick an RFID on a hospital-style plastic band, and no one wants to wear it. Embed it in an exclusive park souvenir, and people will even pay extra for the privilege of having one.
The bracelet is how you get the guest to carry the same RFID tag for their entire visit without losing it, breaking it, or shorting it out. Previously, Disney has used paper tickets, hand stamps, biometrics readers, and mobile applications to manage guests, and they still had problems with loopholes, fraud, and innocent accidents.
If someone were able to patent a PB&J sandwich, somewhere like a Disney theme park might be one of the few places on the planet where its licensing could be enforced profitably. They cannot hide what they do, as anyone present could read a menu and watch a sampling of trays exiting the serving line, then figure out the numbers on a napkin.
This is exactly what the patent system was made for; so the little guy could have an incentive to invent without being crushed by a copycat with more clout. So he doesn't have to be the only person to pitch it. He only has to be the first to offer patent licensing terms.