In some narrow cases I see the value in patents motivating financial investment in original research. But most of the time this does not apply.
Optical pulse oximeters are an obvious incremental thing, and with zero knowledge of the space I don’t think it’s crazy to believe these would have come into existence on the same time frame with or without the existence of patents.
Virtually everything humans create or “discover” is an inevitability. We’re all just memetic LLMs, remixing stuff with mildly differing levels of variance. Originality is quaint pre-industrial human myth.
That said, Apple would have absolutely done the same thing if they had the patent. So I have zero sympathy for either party.
Don’t hate the player, hate the “artificially granted ownership over progress” game.
Optical pulse oximeters are an obvious incremental thing, and with zero knowledge of the space I don’t think it’s crazy to believe these would have come into existence on the same time frame with or without the existence of patents.
Virtually everything humans create or “discover” is an inevitability. We’re all just memetic LLMs, remixing stuff with mildly differing levels of variance. Originality is quaint pre-industrial human myth.
That said, Apple would have absolutely done the same thing if they had the patent. So I have zero sympathy for either party.
Don’t hate the player, hate the “artificially granted ownership over progress” game.