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Comment by tbirdz | Hacker News Reader

As far as I am aware Patent Documents are public domain, and not subject to copyright, so if someone wanted a printed patent poster they could grab the document and take it to any large format printer and have it printed there cheaper than it would cost to order from retropatents.com, and they could do this for any patent they were interested in, not just the limited selection available at your store.

Does Retro Patents add anything unique? Or in other words, why should I order from Retro Patents instead of doing what I mentioned in the first paragraph?

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You're right but we have spent a lot of time cleaning and tidying up the designs and formatting the final piece of art.

I'd also add that our final product is of the highest quality and most local print shops couldn't give you the same service.

Saying that there is an original patents page on the site for this purpose. We're happy if you're hanging patent art either way :)

> have it printed there cheaper than it would cost to order from retropatents.com

Time is valuable, so is the design effort. If you could measure the value of those things, I'd say it's not really cheaper to do it your way (for many people).

What, exactly, would you print? The whole patent? A drawing or diagram? Which one(s)? Without the context of a title and subtext?

Our society encourages most people to be lazy & unimaginative, who then would rather pay a bit more money to get something readymade than go through all the steps you outlined. Same reason why all those recurring subscription cooking ingredient boxes are so popular.

This is wonderful, because if it weren't the case it'd be much harder to start a business. So congrats to the founders of that website on capturing money by firing up Photoshop and copy pasting some patent diagrams.

Do you drive all the way to the farm to get your groceries? Or do you get them at a grocery store?

Convenience adds value.

I grow them in my yard.

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