Patents Quotes

• 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

  Taken, Ideas, People

  Challenges and Strategy Memo, May 16, 1991.

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• 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

  Long, Would Be, Economic

  "An Economic Review of the Patent System". Book by Fritz Machlup, U.S. Senate, Subcommittee on Patents, Trademarks and Copyrights, Study No. 15, p. 79-80, 1958.

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• This is the patent age of new inventions for killing bodies, and for saving souls. All propagated with the best intentions.

  Lord Byron

  Birthday, Soul, Age

  Lord Byron, Donald A. Low (2013). “Byron: Selected Poetry and Prose”, p.170, Routledge

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

  Richard Stallman

  Fighting, Malaria, Mosquitoes

  Newsforge, September 09, 2004.

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• With their souls of patent leather, they come down the road. Hunched and nocturnal, where they breathe they impose, silence of dark rubber, and fear of fine sand.

  Federico Garcia Lorca

  Dark, Silence, Soul

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• The software patent problem is not limited to Mono. Software patents affect everyone writing software today.

  Miguel de Icaza

  Writing, Today, Problem

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• I think software patents are a bad idea. Many patents are given for trivial inventions.

  Larry Wall

  Thinking, Ideas, Corny

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• I make more mistakes than anyone else I know, and sooner or later, I patent most of them.

  Thomas A. Edison

  Funny Inspirational, Mistake, Creativity

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• You should be innovating so fast that you're invalidating your prior patents.

  Elon Musk

  Should

  "Elon Musk Makes A Great Argument For Why Tesla Doesn't Need Patents To Be Successful" by Rob Wile, www.businessinsider.com. June 12, 2014.

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• A country without a patent office and good patent laws is just a crab, and can't travel any way but sideways and backways.

  Mark Twain

  Country, Law, Office

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• 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

  Thinking, Research And Development, Ideas

  "How James Dyson Makes the Ordinary Extraordinary". Interview with Shoshana Berger, www.wired.com. November 19, 2012.

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• I always recommend, if you can, to patent or protect whatever your idea is. If you can't, you have to make your best judgment. Sometimes people don't get anywhere because they sit on something, so afraid to reveal it. And yet, in the reverse, sometimes if you expose something too widely, you can risk losing it.

  Lori Greiner

  Ideas, People, Risk

  "Think You Can Pitch? Creatives Break Down Their Art". "Talk of the Nation" with Neal Conan, www.npr.org. January 31, 2012.

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• We think we have solved the mystery of creation. Maybe we should patent the universe and charge everyone royalties for their existence.

  Stephen Hawking

  Thinking, Mystery, Royalty

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• The US patent system adds the fuel of interest to the fire of genius in the discovery and production of new and useful things

  Abraham Lincoln

  Fire, Discovery, Add

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• Patents are like fertilizer. Applied wisely and sparingly, they can increase growth. But if you apply too many chemicals, or make patents too strong, then you can leach the land, making growth more difficult.

  Alex Tabarrok

  Strong, Land, Growth

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• We took nothing from anybody. We gave a great deal to the world. The only thing keeping us alive is our brilliance. The only thing that keeps our brilliance alive is our patents.

  Edwin Land

  Alive, World, Brilliance

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• Great minds don't think alike. If they did, the Patent Office would only have about fifty inventions.

  Scott Adams

  Science, Thinking, Office

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• When we began Qualcomm, it had become quite clear that it was very important to patent new ideas.

  Irwin M. Jacobs

  Ideas, Important, Clear

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• 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

  Freedom, Ideas, Light

  Letter to Isaac McPherson, 13 Aug. 1813

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• Don't fight the patent, fight the infringement.

  Drew Curtis

  Motivation, Inspiration, Fighting

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• If I could patent 'being real', I think I could own that.

  Tupac Shakur

  Real, Thinking, If I Could

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• Congress shall have Power . . . to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Time to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

  James Madison

  Education, Art, Writing

  Thomas Paine, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (2017). “The Origin of the Nation: Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Bill of Rights and Other Amendments, Federalist Papers & Common Sense: Creating America - Landmark Documents that Shaped a New Nation”, p.508, Madison & Adams Press

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• If NATURE has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea... No one possesses the less, because every other possess the whole of it. 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

  Creativity, Thinking, Light

  Letter to Isaac McPherson, 13 Aug. 1813

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• That reminds me to remark, in passing, that the very first official thing I did, in my administration-and it was on the first day of it, too-was to start a patent office; for I knew that a country without a patent office and good patent laws was just a crab, and couldn't travel any way but sideways or backways.

  Mark Twain

  Country, Science, Law

  Mark Twain (2012). “Three by Twain: Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and A Connecticut Yankee In King Arther's Court”, p.63, Graphic Arts Books

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• That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Freedom, Moving, Men

  Thomas Jefferson (1900). “The Life and Writings of ...”

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