An important myth in our society is: Inventors make important stuff, Important stuff is patented and Patents equal money. Through Slashdot I came across this article in USA today
“Search for the most prolific inventors is a patent struggle Tuesday December 6, 8:44 pm ET
What living person holds the most U.S. patents? In this era of information and lightning searches – when patents are both more valuable than ever and a source of raging controversy – you’d think such a simple question would be easy to answer.”
The thing is what is it the most prolific US inventor was doing? Apparently floral related patents.
“Weder…has his name on 1,321 patents. Almost all have to do with items you’d find at a florist. Weder’s most recent patent – No. 6,962,021, granted Nov. 8 – is for a sleeve for holding a group of flowers. Before that, on Oct. 11, Weder was issued a patent titled, “Method of covering a flower pot.” On Sept. 20, he was issued a patent titled, “Method of covering a flower pot or floral grouping.””
While I am sure tha this is important stuff in Mr Weder’s business is it really the stuff that patent mythology should be about? Another example among the top patent holders was Mr Yamazaki
“…the USPTO database turns up 1,432 patents bearing his name, whupping both Edison and Weder. Yamazaki’s most recent patent, granted Nov. 22, was titled, “Reflective liquid crystal display panel and device using same.” His first patent, for a computer chip design, was granted in 1980. Yamazaki has averaged about a patent a week for 25 years.”
Can it be possible to invent something worth patenting every week for 25 years? The ideal of the patent as the icon of the industrial age seems to have moved along to another dimension…
Ok so I am not sure what this means. But it just seems strange. Not wrong, but strange. That patents are granted so readily. In the case of the floral patents – do all these patents really qualify as inventions? In the case of Mr Yamazaki, does an patentable increase of knowledge in society occur every week? For 25 years? Either we should interprete this to mean that the rest of us are bone idle, totally intellectually worthless or both. Or people like Mr Yamzaki and Mr Weder are their fields equivalents of Mozart.