> "If it's complex enough, and someone else did it first, there's no reason why it shouldn't be patentable the same as any other invention."
IMO a patent needs to go further than this. The whole point of the patent system is to preserve the incentive to invest in technologies. If I spent my life's fortune inventing GizmoWidget, and my neighbor can just reverse engineer one and set up his own factory... my incentive to invest is gone.
And these situations still exist - particularly in traditional engineering fields where the costs of prototyping, testing, and certification are enormous.
But really, what are the costs of sitting down for a few weeks and cooking up a new mathematical formula? I'd argue that being first to market while your competitors are scratching their heads is well worth the investment - given how little cost it presented to yourself.
IMO patentability should not be focused on how complex the system is or how trivial it was to derive - it should be based on how much it is reasonably expected to cost to develop. That is, after all, why the system exists.
IMO a patent needs to go further than this. The whole point of the patent system is to preserve the incentive to invest in technologies. If I spent my life's fortune inventing GizmoWidget, and my neighbor can just reverse engineer one and set up his own factory... my incentive to invest is gone.
And these situations still exist - particularly in traditional engineering fields where the costs of prototyping, testing, and certification are enormous.
But really, what are the costs of sitting down for a few weeks and cooking up a new mathematical formula? I'd argue that being first to market while your competitors are scratching their heads is well worth the investment - given how little cost it presented to yourself.
IMO patentability should not be focused on how complex the system is or how trivial it was to derive - it should be based on how much it is reasonably expected to cost to develop. That is, after all, why the system exists.