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Comment by rapnie | Hacker News Reader

Yes, I agree. I guess this technology isn't for everyone. This is a real bummer. They did not have to patent and trademark this method, which in principle is such a basic mechanism. Just had to productize their service really well so they'd take the lead in monetizing.

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I am alone and I put all my money, time and work into BR. Visible is only a small part. But I think everyone decides for themselves what is best. But thank you for the critical feedback.

Thank you for responding. Despite my criticism I'd like to say that the method is really working for me. So as an invention it is great.

I thank you for your criticism. This is the only way to move forward and I take it very seriously. Therefore I thank you!

Best regards from the Alps Renato

You put all your money, time and work into bolding the first few letters of a word?

Did you think of it? The author spent money, time, and work in R&D for a process that seems simple but is novel.

I disagree 100%.

This is amazingly innovative.

We have seen letter switching examples and how the brain will try to fill in the gaps.

This is superbly unique and justifiably a patent and trademark.

The demo works.

The rules may be simple. But as the old boat repairman story says, sometimes you need to know where to hit the hammer.

Please, please don't use this for evil.

Thank you very much for your answer. No, I will definitely use it for good. For sure.

Best regards from the Alps Renato

The only way to use a patent “for good” is to prevent someone else from patenting it and exploiting it.

If you’re serious, then release a copy-left license for the patent (but not necessarily your implementation/product/sdk)

Otherwise, just add your commercial licensing terms to your website already so people aren’t misled into thinking they’ll be able to do anything with this idea unless they pay you.

Agreed. I don’t think this deserves to be shown to HN given that most people here are strong supporters of free and open source

I agree with the criticism and this response! Glad to see you engaging in here. Go go go!

Plus without a patent it would be very easy to capitalize on this without compensating the guy for all the research and tuning his put into it. I think patents are ideal for new ideas that are super easy to steal/copy, right? Sure Academics working at the bleeding edge should patent for example but they're likely to have a little advantage by being the expert and actually knowing how to do the thing. But in this case the result may look simple but took ingenuity and time to produce just the same.

Just FYI, as I detailed in my top-level comment: While it is a really nice tool, it is already a few years old, so I'm not sure if it qualifies as innovative. See: https://web.archive.org/web/20190119032121/http://br.craftwo...

More info detailed at my top-level comment.

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