The Man Who Created the Pencil Eraser and How Patents Have Changed 234
fermion writes "This weeks 'Who Made That' column in The New York Times concerns the built in pencil eraser. In 1858 Hymen Lipman put a rubber plug into the wood shaft of a pencil. An investor then paid about 2 million in today's dollars for the patent. This investor might have become very rich had the supreme court not ruled that all Lipmen had done was put together two known technologies, so the patent was not valid. The question is where has this need for patents to be innovative gone? After all there is the Amazon one-click patent which, after revision, has been upheld. Microsoft Activesync technology patent seems to simply patent copying information from one place to another. In this modern day do patents promote innovation, or simply protect firms from competition?"
it looks like they... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Revised Summary (Score:5, Funny)
In this day and age everyone would just be giggling about a guy being called "hymen" of all things.
Lawyers (Score:4, Funny)
Lawyers and lobbyists have come a long way since 1858; with enough lawyers and lobbyists today, ScrewCorp could patent a pencil colored yellow.
Re:Revised Summary (Score:5, Funny)
In this day and age everyone would say that his name was obviously the source of his invention, being a constant reminder to put a rubber on his pencil.
Re:Independence of the courts ? (Score:3, Funny)
That is to say, it has to be or do something completely new.
I'm confused, really -- what part of "... On a Computer" do you _not_ understand?