patents

You often hear people explain away the lack of evidence for homeopathy and other "natural" treatments by saying that oh, Big Pharma can't patent plants and natural treatments, so they're fighting them and trying to get them banned. How much truth is there to this? Is it really impossible to...

A patent gives protection in a closed market, for example when you fabricate a bike and sell it in the country where the patent was filled. If someone else wanted to replicate your bike on another country your protection extends in to them (at least the first world economies) by the Paris...

We've had some patent-related discussions here before, and the last time around, there was some discussion about how hard it could be to determine if an application was "woo or not". Since then, I've come across a few weird patents, and patent applications, that I thought it might be interesting...

In the commentary of 27 July 2007, Mr. Randi wrote: The subject matter of the commentary to which Mr. Randi links is actually described in the April 19, 2002 edition of Swift, and it has nothing to do with perpetual motion. It is a silly idea, and a silly patent, yes; but it is not related to...

On the front page of today's Grauniad: Scientists find way to slash cost of drugs OK, producing cheaper drugs may be desirable, and what is proposed here may be legal, but is it "ethical", and is it sustainable? What they seem to be proposing is to let "Big Pharma" spend money developing new...

Here's a slightly modified version of an e-mail I just sent Randi about the "Bogus Patent Claim" from this week's commentary. We've been amusing ourselves at the Canadian Patent Office with the US patent application 20040161257 that was referenced in this week's commentary. The agent in charge...

So, here I was, working on my paper that I'm hoping to present at TAM V, when I run across a new application for a Motionless electromagnetic turbine. This is interesting in that it directly references the Motionless electromagnetic generator (US Patent 6 362 718) that Randi has discussed in...

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220060195313%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20060195313&RS=DN/20060195313 http://techdirt.com/articles/20060831/144251.shtml If I'm reading this patent application correctly...

I was recently reading about the invention of Velcro and it delta'd with the discussion on "patenting the obvious" on Randi's commentary. The story IIRC goes that the "inventor" of Velcro was out hunting with his dog in the woods, and when he got home had to remove countless seeds stuck to his...

Mr. Randi's lead-off commentary pertains to a patent issued to a device that, in Mr. Randi's humble opinion, is a device that has already been invented: Actually, Mr. Randi is quite wrong. The patent in question is No. 6,945,666. It includes three independent claims, of which Mr. Randi quotes...

The U.S. Patent database includes one patent naming Marcel Vogel as an inventor: No. 4,134,066. (This is not a prime number.) The Patent Office does not have all patents on line, however. The database only goes back to 1976. So if you do a search for all inventions patented by, say, "Thomas...

United States Patent #6,665,867 December 16, 2003 Self-propagating software objects and applications

from: http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2003/20030811_patent/default.htm 4Cornes looked more specifically at an Australian company that has some wide ranging patents over 'junk' DNA.

I'm surprised there's been no mention in the forum about Uri's patent for a "Reality" TV adoption show, which you can read here...