Patents Quotes

As academics we have pretty good judgment about the quality of institutions that cannot simply be measured by counting the number of papers published or patents received. Outsiders who swoop in to count beans and make up lists based on statistics have little sense of what excellence is. ~ Henry Rosovsky

If I could patent 'being real', I think I could own that. ~ Tupac Shakur

I had to learn everything about manufacturing, patents and how to run a business, and eventually I came up with an prototype that worked. ~ Melissa George

America can compete with anyone in the world as long as the playing field is level. China's been cheating over the years. One by holding down the value of their currency. Number two, by stealing our intellectual property; our designs, our patents, our technology. We will have to have people play on a fair basis. ~ Mitt Romney

After filing a patent, your job is only quarter done. ~ Kalyan C. Kankanala

The "health, education, and welfare" section of government is another boondoggle. First we manufacture indigent and superfluous people by legal monopolies in land, money and idea patents, erecting tariff barriers to protect monopolies from foreign competition, and taxing laborers to subsidize rich farmers and privileged manufacturers. Then we create "social workers, " etc., to care for them and thereby establish a self-aggravating and permanent institutionalized phenomenon ... ~ Laurance Labadie

Marijuana is rejected all over the world. Damned. In England heroin is alright for out-patents, but marijuana? They'll put your ass in jail. I wonder why that is? The only reason could be: To Serve the Devil - Pleasure! Pleasure, which is a dirty word in Christian culture. ~ Lenny Bruce

With a few honorable exceptions the press of the United States is at the beck and call of the patent medicines. Not only do the newspapers modify news possibly affecting these interests, but they sometimes become their agents. ~ Samuel Hopkins Adams

In the early days of the software industry, people cared about copyright and didn't give a damn about patents - they copied each other willy-nilly. ~ Nathan Myhrvold

Patents lend credibility to your products. ~ Kalyan C. Kankanala

The reforms proposed by the Patent Reform Act of 2007 are precisely the type of congressional action needed. The Act will remove obstacles to growth and restore balance to the patent system. ~ Viet D. Dinh

I am explicitly not opening the giant can of worms that is the ongoing current discussion of patent, copyright, and trademark reform. ~ James Fallows

As industries migrate toward the Far East, the future of many Western cities will no longer lie in manufacturing products but ideas and patents. Young, mobile elites can choose where they want to live, and they can easily move, which means that cities are involved in a heated competition for the best people. Only the most attractive cities can benefit from this development. ~ Charles Landry

For us, not cooperating in the monopoly regimes of intellectual property rights and patents and biodiversity - saying "no" to patents on life, and developing intellectual ideas of resistance - is very much a continuation of Gandhian satyagraha. It is, for me, keeping life free in its diversity. ~ Vandana Shiva

If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today. ~ Bill Gates

I have a hunch that the unknown sequences of DNA will decode into copyright notices and patent protections. ~ Donald Knuth

Fighting patents one by one will never eliminate the danger of software patents, any more than swatting mosquitoes will eliminate malaria. ~ Richard Stallman

Patents protect ideas, but only if they are implementable. ~ Kalyan C. Kankanala

They've destroyed small farms and local economies across the globe. And now, they own patents on the seeds themselves. Those seeds represent the knowledge, labor, and heritage of all of humanity, and their DNA is now owned by Monsanto and ConAgra and ADM. They're the oligarchs of food, the pater familias of life itself. "The ownership, genetic code, practices and profits of agriculture are being collected in fewer and fewer hands - hands that have no dirt under the fingernails," writes George Pyle. ~ Anonymous

Everywhere in science the talk is of winners, patents, pressures, money, no money, the rat race, the lot; things that are so completely alien ... that I no longer know whether I can be classified as a modern scientist or as an example of a beast on the way to extinction. ~ June Goodfield

I decry the current tendency to seek patents on algorithms. There are better ways to earn a living than to prevent other people from making use of one's contributions to computer science. ~ Donald Knuth

Beauty, however, must here be understood in its original meaning: as the glow of the true and the good irradiating from every ordered state of being, and not in the patent significance of immediate sensual appeal. ~ Josef Pieper

Ty Inc.'s 1989 catalog had this on the back cover: "Warning: If anyone dare copy our creative designs and patents without written permission, ownership of your eternal soul passes to us and we have the right to negotiate the sale of said soul. Furthermore, our attorneys will see to it that life on Earth, as you know it, is not worth living. ~ Zac Bissonnette

The issue for patents for new discovers has given a spring to invention beyond my conception. ~ Thomas Jefferson

The history of patents includes a wealth of attempts to reward friends of the government and restrict or control dangerous technologies. ~ James Boyle

If "fast" and "slow" animals had parties, writes the evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson, "some of the fasts would bore everyone with their loud conversation, while others would mutter into their beer that they don't get any respect. Slow animals are best described as shy, sensitive types. They don't assert themselves, but they are observant and notice things that are invisible to the bullies. They are the writers and artists at the party who have interesting conversations out of earshot of the bullies. They are the inventors who figure out new ways to behave, while the bullies steal their patents by copying their behavior. ~ Susan Cain

The 1850s proved to be the decade of the most prolific patent litigation in America's history. Lincoln himself was involved, as well as his most three prolific cabinet members: Chase, Seward and Stanton. ~ Darin Gibby

If you patent a discovery which is unique, say a human gene or even just one particular function of a human gene, then you are actually creating a monopoly, and that's not the purpose of the world of patents. ~ John Sulston

Sin, every day, takes out a patent for some new invention. ~ Edwin Percy Whipple

The bulk of all patents are crap. Spending time reading them is stupid. It's up to the patent owner to do so, and to enforce them. ~ Linus Torvalds

It's a phenomenon that started in the United States in which corporations make claims on the life forms, biodiversity and innovations of other cultures by applying for patents on them. ~ Vandana Shiva

A patent a day keeps the competitor away. ~ Kalyan C. Kankanala

But patents are not market devices. They are the opposite. They are a government-sanctioned monopoly permitting exclusive sales of a product for a limited period of time, protected by courts of law. ~ Linsey McGoey

You should be innovating so fast that you're invalidating your prior patents ~ Elon Musk

Thomas Edison held 1,093 patents. He was a great believer in exercising his mind and the minds of his workers and felt that without a quota he probably wouldn't have achieved very much. His personal invention quota was a minor invention every ten days and a major invention every six months. To Edison, an idea quota was the difference between eating beefsteak or a plateful of Black Beauty stew. ~ Michael Michalko

If you didn't have patents, no one would bother to spend money on research and development. But with patents, if someone has a good idea and a competitor can't copy it, then that competitor will have to think of their own way of doing it. So then, instead of just one innovator, you have two or three people trying to do something in a new way. ~ James Dyson

Software patents are dangerous to software developers because they impose monopolies on software ideas. ~ Richard Stallman

Between 1980 and 2000 the number of patents registered in Israel was 7652 compared with 367 for all the Arab countries combined. In 2008 alone is really inventors applied to register 9591 new patents. The equivalent figure for Iran was 50 and for all majority Muslim countries in the world with 5657. ~ Niall Ferguson

Before the monopoly should be permitted, there must be reason to believe it will do some good - for society, and not just for monopoly holders. ~ Lawrence Lessig

Each year, the United States issues about 70,000 patents, only a few of which ultimately reach the stage of commercial production. ~ Jared Diamond

manufacturers using patents, ~ Eric Von Hippel

Making money from enforcing patents is no more wrong than investing in preferred stock. ~ Nathan Myhrvold

It's very hard for individual inventors to get paid. For the same reason that private equity is valuable - broadly, that's a good thing - in the case of patents, many that own them aren't in a good position to take the next step. ~ Nathan Myhrvold

The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying. ~ John Carmack

Food is the very heart of freedom. How can people be free if they can't feed themselves without getting sued for patent violations? ~ Daniel Suarez

The people - could you patent the sun ? ~ Jonas Salk

I think software patents are a bad idea. Many patents are given for trivial inventions. ~ Larry Wall

But Hale didn't follow. For a second he just stood and stared out over his empire. It was like he was lost in a dream when he said, "So, your dad broke into the patent office."
"Yep," Kat told him.
"How many goats am I going to owe him for that?"
"More than you've got, big guy. Way more than you've got. ~ Ally Carter

A Patent is not a license to make money, it is a license to prevent others from making money. ~ Kalyan C. Kankanala

I had removed my patent leather shoes after a while, for they foundered badly in the sand. It pleased me to think they would be perched there on the silver log, pointing out to sea, like a sort of soul-compass, after I was dead. ~ Sylvia Plath

If we did not have a patent system, it would be irresponsible, on the basis of our present knowledge of its economic consequences, to recommend instituting one. But since we have had a patent system for a long time, it would be irresponsible, on the basis of our present knowledge, to recommend abolishing it. ~ Fritz Machlup

No one told these American soldiers they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with US patents. ~ Smedley Butler

Man must learn to rely upon himself. Reading bibles will not protect him from the blasts of winter, but houses, fires. and clothing will. To prevent famine, one plow is worth a million sermons, and even patent medicines will cure more diseases than all the prayers uttered since the beginning of the world. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll

Microsoft, Apple, Facebook all bought huge patent portfolios to further their strategic game. They're doing what I'm doing! ~ Nathan Myhrvold

people (to quote the researchers) had achieved an astonishing amount (Kell et al., 2013). They had become high-ranking politicians, CEOs of companies, high-ups in government agencies, distinguished academics, journalists for well-known newspapers, artists and musical directors. They had been awarded patents, grant money and prizes, and had produced plays, novels, and a huge amount of economic value. They had, in other words, made incalculable contributions to society, for everyone's benefit. ~ Stuart Ritchie

Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. The was the "war to end wars." This was the "war to make the world safe for democracy." No one told them that dollars and cents were the real reason. No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits. No one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with United State patents. They were just told it was to be a "glorious adventure".

Thus, having stuffed patriotism down their throats, it was decided to make them help pay for the war, too. So, we gave them the large salary of $30 a month!

All that they had to do for this munificent sum was to leave their dear ones behind, give up their jobs, lie in swampy trenches, eat canned willy (when they could get it) and kill and kill and kill...and be killed ~ Smedley D. Butler

When we speak of the perfection of art, we must recollect what the materials are with which a painter contends with nature. For the light of the sun he has but patent yellow and white lead - for the darkest shade, umber or soot. ~ John Constable

Anything that restricts entry works in the interests of the suppliers and against the interests of the buyers; so, it is not at all surprising that businesses lobby government aggressively for assistance in retarding entry with patents, copyrights, zoning laws, occupational licensing, environmental regulations, etc ~ Anonymous

Patents stand for you when everything else is lost. ~ Kalyan C. Kankanala

There are few things in politics more annoying than the Right's utter conviction that it owns the patent on the word 'freedom' that when its leaders stand up for the rights of banks to be unregulated or capital gains to be untaxed, that it is actually and obviously standing up for human liberty, the noblest cause of them all. ~ Thomas Frank

A man who has spent most of his adult life trying out a series of patent medicines is always an optimist. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

If Patents are for Patients, Then Patients will be for Patents. ~ Kalyan C. Kankanala

There is a patent office at the seat of government of the universe, whose managers are as much interested in the dispersion of seeds as anybody at Washington can be, and their operations are infinitely more extensive and regular. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Gene patents are the point of greatest concern in the debate over ownership of human biological materials, and how that ownership might interfere with science. As of 2005 - the most recent year figures were available - the U.S. government had issued patents relating to the use of about 20 percent of known human genes, including genes for Alzheimer's, asthma, colon cancer, and, most famously, breast cancer. This means pharmaceutical companies, scientists, and universities control what research can be done on those genes, and how much resulting therapies and diagnostic tests will cost. And some enforce their patents aggressively: Myriad Genetics, which holds the patents on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes responsible for most cases of hereditary breast and ovarian cancer, charges $3,000 to test for the genes. Myriad has been accused of creating a monopoly, since no one else can offer the test, and researchers can't develop cheaper tests or new therapies without getting permission from Myriad and paying steep licensing fees. Scientists who've gone ahead with research involving the breast-cancer genes without Myriad's permission have found themselves on the receiving end of cease-and-desist letters and threats of litigation. ~ Rebecca Skloot

I didn't really want to patent it because, for one, I don't like software patents, and, two, if you patent it, you make it public. Even if you don't know someone's infringing, they will still be getting the benefit. Instead, we just chose to keep it a trade secret and not show it to anyone. ~ Jessica Livingston

Software patents, in particular, are very ripe for abuse. The whole system encourages big corporations getting thousands and thousands of patents. Individuals almost never get them. ~ Linus Torvalds

The traditional arts and crafts are, in fact, "mysteries," with "secrets" that are not merely "tricks of the trade" of economic value (like the so-much-abused European "patents"), but pertain to the worldwide and immemorial symbolism of the techniques, all of which are analogies or imitations of the creative nature in operation ~ Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

In a world of widely distributed knowledge, companies cannot afford to rely entirely on their own research, but should instead buy or license processes or inventions (i.e. patents) from other companies. In addition, internal inventions not being used in a firm's business should be taken outside the company. ~ Henry Chesbrough

There is no other world. Nor even this one. What, then, is there? The inner smile provoked in us by the patent nonexistence of both. ~ Emil Cioran

I make more mistakes than anyone else I know, and sooner or later, I patent most of them. ~ Thomas A. Edison

It's clear that North took some original steps in that direction, but Hall probably had the most complete approach and should get the most credit. But for Hall, unfortunately, the data are all impressionistic - what people said. None of his machinery survived. His patents were all lost in the Patent Office fire. ~ Charles R. Morris

Don't fight the patent, fight the infringement. ~ Drew Curtis

The best lesson that any people can learn is that there is no patent cure-all which will make the body politic perfect, and that any man who is able glibly to answer every question as to how to deal with the evils of the body politic is at best a foolish visionary and at worst an evil-minded quack. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Working on the final formulation of technological patents was a veritable blessing for me. It enforced many-sided thinking and also provided important stimuli to physical thought. [Academia] places a young person under a kind of compulsion to produce impressive quantities of scientific publications; a temptation to superficiality. ~ Albert Einstein

Ultimately the judge threw Moore's suit out of court, saying he had no case. Ironically, in his decision, the judge cited the HeLa cell line as a precedent for what happened with the Mo cell line. The fact that no one had sued over the growth or ownership of the HeLa cell line, he said, illustrated that patients didn't mind when doctors took their cells and turned them into commercial products. The judge believed Moore was unusual in his objections. But in fact, he was simply the first to realize there was something potentially objectionable going on. ~ Rebecca Skloot

Creation is not a moment of inspiration but a lifetime of endurance. The drawers of the world are full of things begun. Unfinished sketches, pieces of invention, incomplete product ideas, notebooks with half-formulated hypotheses, abandoned patents, partial manuscripts. Creating is more monotony than adventure. It is early mornings and late nights: long hours doing work that will likely fail or be deleted or erased - a process without progress that must be repeated daily for years. Beginning is hard, but continuing is harder. Those who seek a glamorous life should not pursue art, science, innovation, invention, or anything else that needs new. Creation is a long journey where most turns are wrong and most ends are dead. The most important thing creators do is work. The most important thing they don't do is quit. The ~ Kevin Ashton

If people don't get paid for their inventions, that's not a good thing. In the case of many patents, there are people who aren't in a position to take them to the next level. If you don't enforce your rights, no one is going to enforce them for you. ~ Nathan Myhrvold

In liberal society we claim that freedom of speech is sacred and therefore has an absolute character. But we know (or should know) that "free speech" inhabits a structured space: not only is "hate speech" legally forbidden in liberal societies, but there are also laws protecting the circulation of copyrighted material, and the reproduction of trademarks and patents without explicit permission. ~ Talal Asad

For a decade, makers of AIDS medicines had rejected the idea of lowering prices in poor countries for fear of eroding profits in rich ones. The position required a balancing act, because the companies had to deflect attacks on the global reach of their patents, which granted exclusive marketing rights for antiretroviral drugs. ~ Barton Gellman

It's not healthy for patents to be used to stop other people from doing business. ~ Jerry Yang

The days are over when technology can be advanced in laboratories by individual scientists alone. Now you need an army of lawyers to negotiate the hazardous terrain of interlocking patents. Unless we find a solution to the problem of interlocking patents, the patent system may actually impede the very innovation it was designed to encourage. ~ Ha-Joon Chang

Patent leather wedges-they were big when I went to prom! ~ Candace Bushnell

You know, hon, after Stephie died, we never really talked about her." she says, her hands tight around the cart handle. "There's a lot of pain there. Still. I guess we feel like we failed her. Like maybe if we were home instead of away at college, we could've done something to fix her. Something my patents and the doctors and her boyfriend missed. Sometimes I think I don't have the right to talk about her. Like at the end, I don't know her well enough to say anything. So much of her life became secret. She spent all of her time with her boyfriend, and when she was home, her nose was buried in her diary. I swear that diary was her best friend, even more than Megan."
"Did you ever read it?" I ask.
"No."
"Not even after she died?"
Aunt Rachel shakes her head, removing an eggplant from the middle row and pressing her fingers against its flesh. "To this day, I don't know if I would've, either. We never found it, Delilah. It's like she just ... took it with her. ~ Sarah Ockler

It is a myth that the free market breaks down national barriers. The free market does not threaten national sovereignty, it undermines democracy. As the disparity between the rich and the poor grows, the fight to corner resources is intensifying. To push through their 'sweetheart deals', to corporatize the crops we grow, the water we drink, the air we breathe, and the dreams we dream, corporate globalization needs an international confederation of loyal, corrupt, authoritarian governments in poorer countries to push through unpopular reforms and quell the mutinies. Corporate globalization - or shall we call by its name? Imperialism - needs a press that pretends to be free. It needs courts that pretend to dispense justice.
Meanwhile, the countries of the north harden their borders and stockpile weapons of mass destruction. Afterall, they have to make sure that it is only money, goods, patents, and services that are globalized. Not a respect for human rights. Not international treaties on racial discrimnation or chemical and nuclear weapons or greenhouse gas emissions or climate change or - God forid - justice.
So this - all this - is Empire. This loyal confederation, this obscene accumulation of power, this greatly increased distance between those who make the decisions and those who have to suffer them.
Our fight, our goal, our vision of another world must be to eliminate that distance. So how do we resist Empire? ~ Arundhati Roy

He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. ~ Thomas Jefferson

There is nothing called as cheap patents. Anything cheap is not worthwhile. ~ Kalyan C. Kankanala

My aim is: to teach you to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

Forget land, buildings, or machines-the real source of wealth today is intelligence, applied intelligence. We talk glibly of "intellectual property" without taking on board what it really means. It isn't just patent rights and brand names; it is the brains of the place. ~ Charles Handy

People are getting patents on things that are too general. ~ Jerry Yang

The payment made by a manufacturer to a patentee for the privilege of using the patent process, is usually termed, in commercial language, a rent; and under the same head must be ranked all extraordinary qualities of body and mind. ~ Nassau William Senior

"Patents make our product defensible." The optimal number of times to use the P word in a presentation is one. Just once, say, "We have filed patents for what we are doing." Done. The second time you say it, venture capitalists begin to suspect that you are depending too much on patents for defensibility. The third time you say it, you are holding a sign above your head that says, "I am clueless." ~ Guy Kawasaki

If you're a large corporation, you can afford to pay the money to register patents, but if you're an individual like me, you can't. ~ Larry Wall

You know, in China, they say, come on over, we'll build the plant for you. Of course, then they steal your patents, but the reality is that they are aggressively trying to take our jobs. Every other country is. They know that to have a middle class, you have to make things. ~ Debbie Stabenow

Biopiracy (is) biological theft; illegal collection of indigenous plants by corporations who patent them for their own use. ~ Vandana Shiva

We don't name God; God reveals His name to us. We don't have the right to exercise authority over God. God copyrights, He trademarks, He patents His name. ~ Mark Driscoll

An unproductive truth is none. But there are products which cannot be weighed even in patent scales, nor brought to market. ~ John Sterling

Hope is a strange invention - A Patent of the Heart - In unremitting action Yet never wearing out ~ Emily Dickinson

Patent Good and Public Good merge more often than you can imagine. ~ Kalyan C. Kankanala

My red patent-leather, 5-inch peep-toe slingbacks are not mere shoes. They are fine art. They make me feel tall. They make me feel sexy. They make me feel powerful. I call them my 'special-day shoes.' ~ Nancy Lublin

Patents are basically rights to try and develop a commercial product. ~ Craig Venter