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Comment by babypuncher | Hacker News Reader

I think this is true on an individual level, but a lot of high tech innovation is only possible with hundreds of engineers working together full time for years. Nobody is inventing EUV lithography in their garage, someone had to spend hundreds of millions of dollars assembling the necessary talent and providing the resources needed to get it done. That someone expects a return on their investment, otherwise they will find something else to do with their capital.

What we really need is much more strict requirements for what qualifies as a truly unique innovation worthy of patent protection. None of this BS about virtual shopping carts on eCommerce sites, or playable minigames on video game loading screens.

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I also think a shorter duration and/or a cap on total royalties would be useful. Like 10 years and 10x initial r&d investment, instead of "forever" and "infinite".

> I also think a shorter duration and/or a cap on total royalties would be useful. Like 10 years and 10x initial r&d investment, instead of "forever" and "infinite".

For what it's worth, patents are limited to a 20 year duration. This is (was) fine in some slower moving industries, but completely ridiculous for something like consumer electronics or software.

https://www.businessinsider.com/how-a-22-year-old-makes-micr....

> Sam Zeloof, a 22-year-old American, produced a chip with 1,200 transistors

This is an impressive feat to be sure, but to compare it to modern EUV lithography is like comparing a crossbow to an ICBM

Why can I not reply to the person below me?

Regardless, anyone could do this type of fabrication in their garage given removing the legal and technical barriers that keep EUV technology behind lock and key.

What that guy is doing in his parents garage is not EUV lithography. He's doing what early IC manufacturers first accomplished in the 60s, only with the benefit of 50 added years of knowledge in the space and decades old equipment that never would have been affordable to the average tinkerer when this technology was cutting edge.

The idea that the risk of patent infringement is the only thing preventing him from building a chip comparable to a modern Intel or AMD CPU in his garage today is absurd.

That’s not actually true. Setting aside the fact that to build an EUV lithography system costs over one hundred million dollars (a single system ships from ASML in 40 shipping containers and has over 100,000 parts) [1], Sam Zeloof could legally build one tomorrow if he was able - he just wouldn’t be able to sell it unless he licensed patents.

1. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/12/10/asmls-high-na-euv-lithog...

Exactly. It's not like it's literal magic. It's just knowledge and resources, which should be getting more abundant and cheap, not scarce and expensive.

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