Latest Minelab Patent - 5th Feb 2015

[Qiaozhi]

Some bedtime reading ->

[CAS]

I have always struggled with the fact that you can patent a basic circuit principle like this. Fair enough if you want to develop an idea and keep the final circuit secret, cover the board with goop so no one can copy it but it means that companies that have the financial resources to hand can patent every conceivable idea (even if they never use it) so no one can develop anything new.

I also think patents should become void if the idea isn't used within 12 mths of the application.

[Davor]

IMHO patents should be void period. They became an instrument of halting the progress instead of an instrument of empowering it, as the basic premise of patents say.
We all have a free mode of IP protection that basically works equally well as patents, a copyright. Also it is good to know that patent is the only way you can lose your IP, and many brilliant minds lost even their lives "thanks" to the patents. For proper demotivation just google "Edwin Howard Armstrong" (the inventor of FM and many other beautiful things).