Google Files First Solar Patent, Builds R&D Team 118
bizwriter writes "Google has moved beyond investing and using solar power and has started on serious R&D work in the field. Its first patent application in solar energy technology just became public, and the company is staffing a new R&D group 'to develop electricity from renewable energy sources at a cost less than coal' at 'utility scale.'"
Renewable? Hah! (Score:5, Funny)
The Sun has a limited supply of hydrogen fuel. If we start depending on solar, in a few measly billion years we'll be depending on hydrogen imports from undemocratic planets. And the chance of a meltdown within 5 billion years or so is pretty much 100%.
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Re:Renewable? Hah! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Renewable? Hah! (Score:4, Funny)
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Link? (Score:1)
That is a solar patent? Does the summary have a wrong link or something?
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Perhaps somebody can shed some light on this problem?
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Nope. But it's the same link in the article too!
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TFA has the wrong link too. It's called "journalism".
Probable real patent. [uspto.gov] The claims describe a relatively simple control system for aligning mirrors, not exactly requiring incredible R&D investment to come up with. Considering its content is practically irrelevant to the article's hype, no-one gave two shits about fact checking it.
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BACKGROUND
[0002] A heliostat solar energy system generally includes a number of heliostats configured to reflect light into a receiver. The resulting heat can then be converted into power. Use of heliostats as a source of solar energy often requires receiver temperatures of nearly 1000.degree. C., which in turn requires sunlight to be reflected from the heliostats into the receiver at high concentrations.
SUMMARY
[...]
By using a camera scheme to control the orientation of individual heliostat mirrors, a closed-loop heliostat control system can be provided that ensures that sunlight is reflected from each heliostat into the desired receiving location. Given the available speed of image processing, errors in the heliostat reflection can be controlled on a real-time, or near-real time basis. Such a system allows concentrated sunlight to enter the receivers for a large fraction of the day in order to provide sufficiently high temperatures for the creation of solar power.
Another attempt (Score:1)
Google' is really interested in clean energy. It invested in Makani Power that targeted high altitude winds (these winds potentially being a source of energy cheaper than coal). Wasn't bloombox too talking about google as its beta customer?
Good luck with the new venture.
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Google's also been really involved in enhanced geothermal, one of my favorite techs. For those not familiar, here's [renewableenergyworld.com] a good rundown of its promise and pitfalls. Namely, it's baseload, works basically anywhere on the planet (all that changes is the required depth of the borehole), is renewable with virtually no environmental impact, and can provide thousands of times more power than we currently consume. At the same time, it's not widespread currently for one main reason -- not that it doesn't work, but th
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In a word, no. Plate tectonics are driven by mantle plumes two thousand miles deep and hundreds to thousands of miles in diameter. Geothermal boreholes don't even pierce the crust. To call the amount of heat extracted from the Earth's mantle by a geothermal plant insignificant is playing it safe; there are more accurate words like "infinitesimal" or "undetectable". It can really only affect the temperature of the (solid crustal) rock in the immediate vicinity of the plant. The magnetic field, of course, is
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The amount varies widely depending on the location and the tech -- one study I saw in Iceland put the average emissions there at 122g/kWh. but with a range of 4-740kWh. The further you move toward EGS and away from conventional geo, and thus move away from the volcanic hot spot areas and into deeper strata, and using your own injected water instead of existing hot water, in general, the less CO2 is released. Also, closed-loop EGS appears to be the next big thing, which has basically no emissions.
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Two other notes: one, the geothermal plant isn't creating the CO2, only providing an alternate route up to the surface. Such areas generally have high rates of natural CO2 seepage on their own. The depth of the reservoir and the strata above it affect how long it will be before the depletion of the subsurface CO2 will have the effect of reducing surface CO2 flows (anywhere from days to millions of years), but in the long run, any CO2 emitted by the plant is CO2 not emitted by other means. And two, some n
Re:Another attempt (Score:5, Funny)
I just hope they can maintain interest longer than they did with their Power Meter API, which was just deprecated.
OT: Slashdot FIX the fucking LOGIN (Score:1)
For the love of GOD, Slashdot, fix the login popup to STAY ON THE ARTICLE BEING READ.
What's the point of having a fancy Ajax Web 2.0 "popup" login if it just redirects you to the main page afterward???
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For the love of GOD, Slashdot, fix the login popup to STAY ON THE ARTICLE BEING READ.
What's the point of having a fancy Ajax Web 2.0 "popup" login if it just redirects you to the main page afterward???
What's the point of having an account if you post as AC?
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What a waste. (Score:1)
Solar is doomed by the amount of land it requires to make "utility-scale" energy available for anything, by its intermittance, and by the fact that the sun ultimately must go down. This is a chimera, but they will spend a lot of money chasing it.
It's politically incorrect on Slashdot to say these things anymore, but they will be no more successful here than anyone else is -- i.e. ultimately not at all. The people at Google are all energy users, not producers, and they haven't really internalized that.
Re:What a waste. (Score:5, Informative)
Solar is usually about an order of magnitude more land-dense than hydroelectric (when you include the area taken up by the reservoir), and about on par with coal (when you include the land taken up by the coal mines required to fuel the plant and the few decades it takes life to regrow on them after an exhausted mine is abandoned)
Daily intermittence is readily countered by a wide range of factors.
* Thermal storage
* Pumped hydro energy storage (works with any type of power; already widespread in China for day/night demand averaging) (does not require a river or a large impounded area!)
* Integrated peaking (you already have a thermal power plant; adding a supplemental source of heat for when demand exceeds supply costs you almost nothing)
* The natural correlation between solar intensity and power consumption (night is off-peak, sunny days have more AC load, etc - -it's not perfect, but it's a nice start)
* Generation-source diversity (wind, solar, tide, wave, etc do not all line up with each other in terms of what generates when)
* Long-distance HVDC power transmission lets you take advantage of the fact that the sun doesn't set in all places at the same time.
* Smart grids and demand-flexible industry allow to shift when power is drawn to when it's abundant.
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I have a question related to location. . .
I think that solar has a lot of potential in places like TX, NV, CA, NM, AZ, etc.
Here in Ohio, we just came off a stretch during the spring where in 2 months we had like 5 days of sunshine. It wasn't just Ohio either; most of the United States East of the Mississippi was being affected by this cloud cover all at the same time for those two months.
There are companies building solar power plants in Ohio. I just don't understand how that makes any sense? If we convert
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Part of the answer is that not all solar requires full sunlight. They don't produce the most power but they are able to produce some. That was also his point with the long haul HVDC lines and smart grids allowing you to shift between where the power is produced and where it is used.
Re:What a waste. (Score:4, Interesting)
Let me start you off with this [youtube.com]. Tell me when you see the whole US clouded over.
A particular Ohio city is not an island (btw, there has never been a time in recorded history when a city in Ohio has had only five days of sun in 2 months). Ohio is connected on a grid to the rest of the country. The regional grids are increasingly being connected over longer and longer distances by high power runs. It doesn't matter if your particular area is cloudy, because somewhere else isn't.
A single wind or solar plant has a lot of randomness. A large number of them, spread out over a large region, have very little randomness. Also, FYI, but the time a power plant is down for is already built into its cost equation. That's known as the "capacity factor", and is a key element in economics planning for power plants.
Secondly, the grid *already* has to handle fluctuations. Not only fluctuations in supply -- yes, conventional power plants go down too, both for maintenance and for unexpected failures -- but even moreso due to demand. Demand fluctuates wildly, and a demand fluctuation is no different than a supply fluctuation. We deal with this by having "peakers" available. These are power plants that can rapidly scale their production up or down depending on the needs of the grid. One of the great things about solar thermal is that it basically comes with a built-in "peaker"; all you need is a natural gas burner, and you've got your backup at almost no extra charge. The turbines are already there, the transmission, etc.
Beyond all of that, please read the bullet points at the bottom of my last note.
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>>Secondly, the grid *already* has to handle fluctuations.
Right. With coal, NG, or nuclear backstops.
It's not practical to build a 100% wind and solar grid, because the amount of overcapacity provisioning you have to do is pretty extreme. Variability in solar and wind plants is much much higher than at a coal or nuclear plant (which get a 90% capacity factor industry wide), and they run at much lower capacity factors than other power sources (around 10%-20%).
In other words, a 100MW solar plant is real
now with an order of magnitude more bullshiat (Score:1)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_cost_of_electricity_generated_by_different_sources
with a capacity factor of 25% solar pv is listed at ~$210/MWh, whereas "advanced" nuclear are listed at $113/MWh with a capacity factor of 90% which is probably only achieved in korea. (do they infer the "next" generation plants which will presumably be cheaper than all those 30year old plants all over the world).
look at the cost of wind! cheaper than nuclear! please take a look at http://www.makanipower.com/concept/maka
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Sorry, AC, you're trying to convince me of something that I've spent a long ass time studying (the cost of power).
I actually wrote part of the wikipedia page you just quoted to me. So, you know, thanks.
Estimates vary quite wildly by region and the person doing the estimation. Estimates can also involve a certain amount of crystal ball gazing - one of the reasons why some of the estimates instead of trying to predict the future, they look at costs of existing plants.
Go ahead and look at *all* the numbers on
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I don't really think you've addressed my questions:
That video you linked routinely shows anywhere from 25% to 50% of the US under clouds at the same time - that's a pretty big drop in supply.
"A particular Ohio city is not an island (btw, there has never been a time in recorded history when a city in Ohio has had only five days of sun in 2 months)."
Huh. Go look at the statistic for April and May of this year that we just got off of. Maybe 5 days isn't exactly the right number, maybe it's 10. The point is, it
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The key is that it's never all under clouds -- or even mostly under clouds. A particular area may have an unusually cloudy period, but the whole US does not. Factor in Canada and Mexico, and the ratio becomes even more stable. As for the "pretty big drop in supply" remark, I must remind you again that this is known as "capacity factor", and is already factored into t
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* Pumped hydro energy storage (works with any type of power; already widespread in China for day/night demand averaging) (does not require a river or a large impounded area!)
Come again? A large reservoir is exactly what a pumped storage plant needs. You need 200 m^3 of water per second to generate 1 GW. In fact hydro and pumped storage have limited application because of the limited number of places where you find a large body of water and a sufficient altitude difference for the exhaust/lower storage pond.
* The natural correlation between solar intensity and power consumption (night is off-peak, sunny days have more AC load, etc - -it's not perfect, but it's a nice start)
That's only true for warm climates. Here in northern Europe (52deg N) AC is less of a factor, and power consumption peaks in the evening and in winter (electric heating).
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That's a nonsensical statement. The amount of power produced relates to both volume *and* head.
Day/night buffers (like those used in China, like those to pair with solar) are several orders of magnitude smaller than those used on the large-head large-scale conventional hydro projects. Which is why conventional hydro projects take months or even years to fill.
You don't need *any* natural body of water with pumped hydro (although it's cheaper if there is
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I got my figures from Dinorwig [wikipedia.org], which has 500m of head, and was designed as a day/night buffer. Its storage ponds may not be as large as a conventional hydro installation, but at ~ 1 km^2 each they're not exactly small either.
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You're talking about a single plant that stores 1.4GWh, and it only takes up 1 km^2 each for its reservoirs. That's some really impressive energy density. Remember, Dinorwig is a plant designed to be able to jump-start the whole national grid ;) 2km^2 for that level of energy storage isn't bad at all.
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Correct PERMA-LINKY thing (Score:1)
I suspect the submitter came in through the search USPTO system.... I had to click "Next" several times to get to this entry.
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You've never worked with a patent attorney before, have you? One of the main goals is severability; you try to get both overly broad and highly specific claims in there at several levels so that if certain parts are deemed indefensible, other parts still remain.
This is pretty straightforward. Google went to patent attorney saying, "Here's what we're doing, in detail; we want it patented." Patent attorney did what patent attorneys do and made it into the above.
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That's the problem with the USPTO, in a nutshell.
Microsoft is hard on their heels it seems... (Score:1)
Microsoft has this week launched it's own solar power plants ( DSES - Delayed Solar Energy System),
"Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) has this week announced it's investment in two power plants based on the Delayed Solar Energy System (DSES) to power it's
Datacenters in Chicago and San Antonio. These systems burn a special fuel to generate electricity using a conventional steam turbine driving a generator to power their datacenters.
The innovative technology is called the Delayed Solar Energy System (DSES) and is
The REAL news... (Score:1)
google patents (Score:2)
Why? (Score:2)
I'm surprised no one has yet commented to this effect, but why would you want to use this patent? As I read it, the patent is for a very simple feedback control system for positioning of heliostats (mirrors). You put a camera on the collector, pointed at the mirror, and the camera controls the alignment of the mirror to center the point of highest intensity (the sun). Seems simple enough.
The first problem, this only works for a single mirror. That means you would need one of these light intensity sensor
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I just so happened to run across a discussion of intensity versus celestrial trackers the other day and the upshot was that on cloudy days the intensity trackers work much better. No one in the discussion spelled out why that was the case, but it was the result of empirical testing. My personal theory is that lots of water in the air can diffract the sun's rays enough so that the celestial position just doesn't line up with the effective position as seen from the ground.
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" The sun is a celestial object, and celestial objects are nothing if not predictable. Why bother with cameras at all?"
I've never heard of this and never thought of this, but holy crap.. "duh". You should've patented it. So much simpler than "tracking". All you would need is your long/lat info. Easily figured out with a cheap integrated GPS unit. Good thinking outside the box :-)
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I talked with an astronomer in Tucson who's designing a solar system to be cheap as coal, and he's gone through all the steps to at least figure out how to get to that price point using a movabl
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You know the layout of your plant, or at least you should. Why not just use a single camera, tracking the sun across the sky, and use that combined with a bit of geometry to determine the optimum placement of each mirror to follow it.
Because that requires, as you point out, precise knowledge of the initial and current position of all your mirrors. Doing this requires a really, really beefy support and foundation structure for each mirror, to the degree that it won't shift in wind or with ground subsidence
Not new news (Score:1)
The founders of Google are also the two principal investors in Nanosolar, a company that makes high efficiency low cost solar cells. They have been supporting solar development for year now so I don't know why this should be a surprise to anyone.
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They really don't.
They make very expensive solar cells at the moment - they haven't managed to scale production.
They have funding of over a billion dollars so far.
They hope to have production at 115MW/year in 'Fall 2011', with production of 20MW in 2011.
(this is on a background of them having announced capacities of around 1GW/year in 2008)
So - 100 dollars a watt or so for produced panels.
Current 'normal' solar panels are down to as low as about a dollar a watt, and falling, making nanosolars claims of $.6/
Google? Really? (Score:2)
Google is an advertising/search company! Okay, so they started up with the Android. And a self-driving car. And they've got numerous other projects.
But solar power research? When will the madness end!
Re:Evil (Score:5, Insightful)
all patent are not evil and this is exactly the kind of patent that the system was designed to encourage.
to develop electricity from renewable energy sources at a cost less than coal' at 'utility scale.'
This is not a good example of evil.
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Yeah, if using your R&D to build up a huge patent portfolio to lock others out of the market, or charge exorbitant licensing fees is what you're after, this is exactly what the system was designed to do.. to cripple innovation, and it's working like a dream. If the government wants to create and protect monopolies like this, then we should demand that it regulate the prices, and institute a 'use it or lose it' policy. Patent
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Unlike copyright, patents actually expire. In the extremely unlikely event Google coming up with something good, they get a short term monopoly on it. Good for them, and anyone else doing something in the physical world. A generation later, this is as good as public domain and anyone can implement it.
If they're locking away uber tech, it still doesn't matter. We miss out now, but our kids will have access. Unless you believe "my uncle's friend came up with a way to save fuel consumption but got bought out b
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So there should be a heck of a lot of innovation in China, right? They don't enforce copyright or patents over there. Interesting how most patents by Chinese people are registered in other countries.
Try getting some venture capital with a business plan of releasing all of your intellectual property immediately with no mechanism to earn royalties/fees.
A short-term, finite monopoly to a new invention is a good thing as that gives inventors a chance to capitalize on their work and gives them an incentive to ma
Re:Evil (Score:4, Interesting)
Except that if you read the patent application, it should be shot down. The patent essentially claims "use a camera protected from heat and some image processing software to feed a control system with inputs to control heliostat mirrors to get an optimal image."
There is absolutely nothing novel about that concept, unless they are using a novel method of image processing (which the claims do not appear to indicate; they talk about "measuring bright spots" which is all a camera can do in the first place) or a novel method of keeping the camera cool (which the claims also do not indicate).
Linking image processing to a control system has already been done, and just because it hasn't been done "for a heliostat" doesn't make it novel. So I would argue that this is indeed just the type of patent that should not be allowed.
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There is absolutely nothing novel about that concept, unless they are using a novel method of image processing (which the claims do not appear to indicate
See claim 5. The "based upon the determined error". Why patent the image processing to determine the error when it could and should be better maintained as a trade secret.
Patents that attempt to claim what is done are not valid. Patents that attempt to claim what is done, but in a much better, or even in a not-so-much-better but still novel way are patentable.
We hear about the patent system being broken, but my recent patent reviews have asked some good questions about what is being claimed. Since t
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So the patent should be on that method. "Based on the determined error" is how every single control system in the universe* works. In fact, claim 23 says "determine the error by comparing images," which is still a "what" and is an obvious "what"; if they want a patent then patent the method they use to compare the images, not stating that they are going to compare them.
While I agree that often people don't actually look at the claims in a patent, this patent still doesn't claim any "how" but merely "what."
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all patent are not evil
Yeah, they're backed with threats of initiation of violence, so they are.
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all form of societal organization are evil then since they are all backed with threats of initiation of some kind of violence. It is a valid philosophical position but it is not a pragmatic one.
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all form of societal organization are evil then since they are all backed with threats of initiation of some kind of violence.
Not at all - there are plenty of voluntary models.
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what happen in those model when an individual don't want to contribute anymore and use violence against his host society?
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what happen in those model when an individual don't want to contribute anymore and use violence against his host society?
Contributing is optional, but you won't get very far if you don't participate and exchange. If he initiates violence, self defense is always allowed. It's a matter of who starts the aggression, not lay-down pacifism.
The vast majority of people agree with the idea that it's not OK to start violence but it is OK to defend yourself.
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then we just don't agree on the definition of violence.
Mine is Violence : rough or injurious physical force, action, or treatment.
Yours seems to be : an unjust or unwarranted exertion of force or power, as against rights or laws.
If I use your definition we seems to agree. Violence less society can exist.
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Yours seems to be : an unjust or unwarranted exertion of force or power, as against rights or laws.
with the emphasis on unjust and without the last disjunction.
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Mine is Violence : rough or injurious physical force, action, or treatment.
Yours seems to be : an unjust or unwarranted exertion of force or power, as against rights or laws.
I don't think we're disagreeing - just take my objection to its logical conclusion. If you violate somebody's patent, you'll get sent threatening letters. At some point a group of people ("government") will tell you you have to show up at one of their temple-like buildings ("courthouse") to plead your case to a man in a black dress (
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If you are free from ("laws") ,("government") ,("arrest") and ("prison") and you happen to be stronger why would not you use your force to raise on top of the others and to assure that your genes ("kids") stays there also ? You are hard wired to do this, why would not it be ethical to do so ?
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People who are without government are rarely without governance. Think of the distinction between Common Law and Statute Law. Heck, think of Homeowner-Associations, where many people voluntarily take on additional, often orthogonal, governance (not for me, but their choice).
As far as protection, I'd certainly go in with my neighbors for private security, just like I'd go in with them to get our damn road fixed (I personally pay more in car repair each year than filling the potholes would cost - multiply
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I'm not sure the vast majority of people actually agree with the "it's not OK to start violence" part. But leaving that aside, you end up in a semantic game. What is violence? Is breathing violent? No? Is second hand smoke violent? No? Then is spraying gaseous cyanide at people violent? Yes? Okay, so where's the crossover?
What about theft? Let's leave aside copyright infringement and theft of service and just talk about somebody taking your physical things. Is that violent? I don't generally thi
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What about theft? Let's leave aside copyright infringement and theft of service and just talk about somebody taking your physical things. Is that violent?
No, I don't think so. No harm is done to the body, and it's a situation that insurance can readily cover. But if you catch somebody taking your stuff, you'd be justified in taking it right back, even if it's in their hands. At that point, I suspect the average thug thief escalates to violence.
Yet it only has meaning if either every last person agrees th
Re:Evil (Score:4, Interesting)
IP patents may be an oxymoron, I agree. But what they do with a patent is the salient part. Squash competition, or donate it to some patent freedom pool? I'll await further details.
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So says you. Where's your proof? I've gained immeasurably over the last couple of decades because a few people chose to give away what they had. They have too in return (Hi Linus, RMS, L. Wall, ...).
Just go ahead and try to prove that would happ
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I've gained immeasurably over the last couple of decades because a few people chose to give away what they had.
That's great. One choosing to give away what they have is wonderful. If they chooseto give it away. Making it mandatory to give inventions away so you might profit is wrong, and removes the incentive for motivation. If you want altruism, be the inventor and give your stuff away. Don't assume others should too so you can "gain immeasurably" from their work.
Just go ahead and try to prove that would happen.
I asked Google to give up their IP and remain profitable. They declined. Prove you are not a moron.
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To quote Bugs Bunny: "You im-BEC-ile! You ultramaroon!"
Where was anyone suggesting anyone be forced to give anything away? Google would retain copyright on their stuff even if they donated its power to a patent troll fighting org.
Done with you idiot. You're shallow as a pane of glass.
PageRank is patented (Score:2)
Re:Evil (Score:4, Insightful)
Patenting software which physically is a long string of ones and zeros on paper is not what was intended. Symbols on paper are covered by copyrights.
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And why is it no one argues about the obviousness of an invention before it was invented? Could it be that before it was invented it was non-obvious and didn't exist yet?
Re:Evil (Score:4)
Two pieces of software do the same thing( VOIP). These two programs run on different hardware, do the same thing differently but with the same end result. Even though the two programs have different ones and zeros the first was patented and the second is in violation. In what world does this make sense.
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Software patents make sense. It is the way software patents are being implemented which is incorrect. Software patents should be reformed, but I'm not in favor of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
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What you are describing for software fits the open source model. I can make this part of the program better by making a module more efficient or replacing it entirely. This could not be done with closed and or patented software.
The changes that
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Patents don't protect the physical device they protect the idea of the device. How is the idea of a physical device different then the idea behind software, music, food, or other thoughts? Now the actual physical device is protected by regular property rights.
And that is the problem with the theory of IP rights. The reason property rights exist is because property is scarce. If I take your car you no longer have the car. If you come up with an idea and I learn about it doesn't force you to forget it. By giv
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