UdoR wrote:
The question of obviousness is topic of maybe the most impassionate discussions regarding patents. I believe that you will find any aspect of any “new” invention somewhere in the world in some form of disclosure.
I might be a bit cynical, but my impression (granted, from software patents) is that patent authorities don’t bother either with checking prior art or checking for “obviousness”. Instead they leave it to the industry to complain about patent applications. After all they make money out of granted patents. Lots of such patents have been granted (or sometimes stopped at the last moment) in the software area.
Just like in a Donald Duck comic
Brilliant!
kwlf wrote:
Arguably its rarely going to be worth patenting something that can’t be made to work, even if the patent is accepted.
Typically the patent attorney understands something different in the word “executable” than the engineer does.
From an engineer’s point of view, something is executable when functionality has been proven, typically by way of a fully functioning prototype. From patent’s point of view it just has to be credible that the “raw idea” will be executable in some technical form (all the rest is added by a good patent attorney). So bigger firms who make use of the latter point of view often already file patent applications when there is only an idea (that solves a problem, but not in a prototype state). Most of these patent (applications) might end as desk drawer paper. But if some are among them where it is of utter importance to be those three months ahead of the competitor, then it may be worth the effort.
And there are ways to later add the description of the prototype when it’s finished 
Airborne_Again wrote:
patent authorities don’t bother either with checking prior art or checking for “obviousness”. Instead they leave it to the industry to complain about patent applications
Well, sort of, yes
One thing nearly 90% hated was interacting with the customers , so this seems to be something that people with brains also appreciate :)
Maybe that is one of the consequences of poor customer service. Customers have a low threshold for getting angry. It will however depend on what business you are in. Industrial B2B they would be polite. Retail, much less so.
kids these days
They are a bit different each generation. What I see today is that the younger generations are much less eager to get a “good” education than my generation. Before it was important to get a good education to get a good job. Rather old fashioned, straight and strict actually. Today it seems it’s more about doing stuff in life to become a happy person and have a “meaningful” life, whatever that means to each person.
People become chefs instead of engineers. They become YouTubers instead of teachers. Or they may very well become teachers, not because it is a “steady and good job”, but because it gives them “purpose”. In general jobs in the handycraft category also seems “in” today. Yet, the younger generations doesn’t seem to care all that much about what is “in”, they do what they want.
I kind of like the way they think
LeSving wrote:
I kind of like the way they think
Yes!
Unless they live in a society with a high redistribution factor (high taxation, and high benefits) or have wealthy parents, they will end up in the gutter financially. Some will enjoy it, and then a varyingly painful realisation will set in
Eventually ignoring your market value is a losing strategy, even where the taxpayer supports it. A good friend in Italy did the usual Italian thing of going to school on government scholarships until he was 35, he has 3 or 4 master degrees that were seemingly created around the professors whimsical interests. It was good while it lasted, in combination with overindulgent parents – his father was a plumber, and made a good living. Now at age 44 he’s never had a real job and lives off his more sensible girlfriend who works as an executive assistant in the pharmaceutical industry, complete with her almost useless master’s degrees (they met at school). He is embarrassed by all this but at this point I’m guessing it’s his lot in life. He’ll inherit his parents house some day, built along with two others by his very hardworking grandfather with his own hands, on a plot of land he struggled to buy post-war, and that will be it.
Peter wrote:
Unless they live in a society with a high redistribution factor (high taxation, and high benefits) or have wealthy parents, they will end up in the gutter financially
You mean unless they live in a civilized world? In a poor society that would be the case, but then we don’t live in a poor society. If that was the case, then the younger generation would have a different attitude, more like the attitude of my generation perhaps. The other side of the coin is professionals (doctors and engineers) from third world countries, immigrating to a first world country to drive taxis and work in the local grocery shop.
The youth are smarter than we give them credit for, and much more adaptable than older people.
They are indeed (I have two sons, both pretty successful in getting into business, with a bit of parental help originally) but you still need to work to be successful.
I stand by what I have said. Luck does not fall into your lap by itself. You have to get your fingers out and create it. Well, there are well documented exceptions but most of us would need a lot of surgery to take advantage of them
