Patents Quotes - Page 6

When we can drain the Ocean into mill-ponds, and bottle up the Force of Gravity, to be sold by retail, in gas jars; then may we hope to comprehend the infinitudes of man's soul under formulas of Profit and Loss; and rule over this too, as over a patent engine, by checks, and valves, and balances.

Thomas Carlyle

Ocean, Loss, Technology

Thomas Carlyle, G. B. Tennyson (1984). “Carlyle Reader”, p.44, CUP Archive

57 Copy quote

Show source
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

Stupid, Reading, Technology

6 Copy quote
... semantics ... is a sober and modest discipline which has no pretensions of being a universal patent-medicine for all the ills and diseases of mankind, whether imaginary or real. You will not find in semantics any remedy for decayed teeth or illusions of grandeur or class conflict. Nor is semantics a device for establishing that everyone except the speaker and his friends is speaking nonsense

Alfred Tarski

Real, Illusions Of Grandeur, Class

17 Copy quote
When God created man and woman, he did not take a patent. That's why any imbecile has been able to do so ever since.

George Bernard Shaw

Sex, Men, Able

15 Copy quote
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

Hands, Years, Wind

"Knee Deep in John Carmack". Interview with Billy "Wicked" Wilson, November 11, 2000.

15 Copy quote

Show source
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

Thinking, Sea, Shoes

Sylvia Plath (2008). “The Bell Jar”, p.113, Faber & Faber

6 Copy quote

Show source
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

Taken, Research, World

"Championship: Opening up the ivory tower" by Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette, www.businessinsider.com. October 11, 2011.

35 Copy quote

Show source
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

Next, Steps, Reason

7 Copy quote
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.

Emile M. Cioran

Smile, Other Worlds, Deep Thought

118 Copy quote
I've never filed a patent lawsuit. I hope never to file a patent lawsuit. That may be unrealistic, but it would be great if I could avoid doing it... Lawsuits are a ridiculous way to do business.

Nathan Myhrvold

Would Be, May, Way

6 Copy quote
Is Bliss then, such Abyss, I must not put my foot amiss For fear I spoil my shoe? I'd rather suit my foot Than save my Boot -- For yet to buy another Pair is possible, At any store -- But Bliss, is sold just once. The Patent lost None buy it any more --

Emily Dickinson

Shoes, Feet, Boots

Emily Dickinson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Emily Dickinson (Illustrated)”, p.601, Delphi Classics

4 Copy quote

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

Nathan Myhrvold

Games, Apples, Microsoft

"Nathan Myhrvold's Patent Investing Returns Are Still Lousy" by Nathan Vardi, www.forbes.com. June 19, 2012.

5 Copy quote

Show source
Making money from enforcing patents is no more wrong than investing in preferred stock.

Nathan Myhrvold

Investing, Making Money, Preferred Stock

4 Copy quote
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

People, Giving, Damn

4 Copy quote
Every piece of software written today is likely going to infringe on someone else's patent.

Miguel de Icaza

Pieces, Today, Computer

7 Copy quote
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

Rights, Leader, Liberty

4 Copy quote
I'm so excited about school. I'm such a shameless student. I laid my clothes out last night, just like I did before my first day of first grade, with my patent leather shoes and my new lunch box. I hope the teacher will like me :)

Elizabeth Gilbert

Teacher, School, Night

Elizabeth Gilbert (2010). “The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims”, p.44, A&C Black

4 Copy quote

Show source
Except in very narrow cases, where there's breakthrough science that needs patent production, worrying about competitors is a waste of time. If you can't out iterate someone who is trying to copy you, you're toast anyway.

Eric Ries

Worry, Trying, Needs

5 Copy quote
Genius is its own reward; for the best that one is, one must necessarily be for oneself. . . . Further, genius consists in the working of the free intellect., and as a consequence the productions of genius serve no useful purpose. The work of genius may be music, philosophy, painting, or poetry; it is nothing for use or profit. To be useless and unprofitable is one of the characteristics of genius; it is their patent of nobility.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Music, Philosophy, Useless

25 Copy quote
The cigar-box which the European calls a 'lift' needs but to be compared with our elevators to be appreciated. The lift stops to reflect between floors. That is all right in a hearse, but not in elevators. The American elevator acts like a man's patent purge-it works.

Mark Twain

Science, Men, Europe

Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.98, Courier Corporation

4 Copy quote

Show source
Consider the black widow spider. It's a timid little beastie, useful and, for my taste, the prettiest of the arachnids, with its shiny, patent-leather finish and its red hourglass trademark. But the poor thing has the fatal misfortune of possessing enormously too much power for its size. So everybody kills it on sight.

Robert A. Heinlein

Power, Sight, Black

Robert A. Heinlein (2014). “Stranger in a Strange Land”, p.230, Hachette UK

19 Copy quote

Show source
...These healers...my intellect has been unable to assimilate their theories....But their facts are patent and startling; and anything that interferes with the multiplication of such facts, and with our freest opportunity of observing and studying them, will, I believe, be a public calamity.

William James

Believe, Dark, Opportunity

4 Copy quote
From 'the lesson of the moth': and before i could argue him out of his philosophy he went and immolated himself on a patent cigar lighter i do not agree with him myself i would rather have half the happiness and twice the longevity but at the same time i wish there was something i wanted as badly as he wanted to fry himself

Don Marquis

Philosophy, Wish, Half

9 Copy quote
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

Abuse, Corporations, Individual

7 Copy quote
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

Brother, Dark, Soldier

Smedley Butler, Mark Twain, Bertrand Russell (2015). “War is a Racket!: And Other Essential Reading”, p.52, The Forlorn Press

66 Copy quote

Show source