Patent Silliness

In this world we reward innovation by patent and trademarks allow us to know what we are buying.  When I was a child we all knew what cherios were, the smaller version of a saveloy.  Both cherios and saveloys were precooked sausages in a red skin.  Some years ago I noticed that butchers no longer sold cherios, they were now called "cocktail sausages", and now cherios is the name of a breakfast cereal. Maybe the loss was not large, some part of our lingusitic heritage declared illegal by some trademark examiner down in Wellington, but still it hurt, that words with everyday meaning could be claimed by multinationals as their own.

However the principle of liberal use of patent law being allowed in this way is disturbing.  Imagine if a motor vehicle manufacturer were allowed to claim that having the accelerator on the right foot, and the brake on the left were in some way its intellectual property.  Other manufacturers would then have to repedal their cars with the opposite convention.  Next another manufacturer claims accelerator on left and brake  on the right, claiming the previous decision as precedent.  Now manufacturers start making cars with hand controls for accelerator and brake while people steer with their feet.

We take it for granted that people who drive cars are licensed to drive all makes and models, but because of the crashes involving people putting their feet on the accelerator instead of the break people are licensed to drive particular models only.  In fact by this stage learning, or even trying to drive more than one vehicle becomes dangerous.

Conventions in user interfaces allow us to transfer the knowledge of the world from one instance to another.  Fortuantely no one has yet patented english so I don't have to write this blog in a language that I have only just made up!

Tony