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Comment by nirvana | Hacker News Reader

Imagine if patents had been eliminated. They would have died once a big company like 3M got a sample back to their lab.

This company exists because they were able to patent their invention.

People say that patents are bad because everything relies on previous efforts. Well, they didn't invent silicon rubber. They didn't invent the volatile compound that allows their rubber to cure overnight. But they did invent a new thing.

Pretty analogous to software patents and combinations software-hardware patents like the iPhone's multi-touch.

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One of the major reasons that people oppose software patents specifically, rather than all patents: software already has copyright, while physical objects don't.

Also, even if a company like 3M did start making the stuff (and patents or no patents, they easily could by finding a different variation), do you really think that would put Sugru out of business, given the kind of community they've managed to build?

>Also, even if a company like 3M did start making the stuff (and patents or no patents, they easily could by finding a different variation), do you really think that would put Sugru out of business, given the kind of community they've managed to build?

Absolutely. If not put them out of business, it would completely cripple their future prospects. 3M has MASSIVE distribution. When Suguru finally gets to the store in their town, why would Joe and Jane buy from some brand they've never heard of when they've been using the 3M equivalent for a year and it's been working great?

I doubt it.

3M has invented and discarded more forms of sticky gooey junk than you can imagine. If it's not going to be sold in 50 gallon drums or has the guaranteed demand of adhesive tape, they're not interested.

Read about the guy who invented Post-It notes in 3M and what he had to do internally to get them to actually productize it. It's far more likely that these inventors are infringing 3M's patents than that 3M would be unable to replicate it without the sample.

Could you point me in the right direction to find out more about Post-It notes? The most in-depth thing I was able to find is this article, which hints at what you are talking about but doesn't go into the full details:

http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/frysilver.html

The reference section on the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-it_note#cite_note-0 has some good links:

http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/frysilver.html http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/f08e8a9a-fcd7-11df-ae2d-00144... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Fry

So it was actually two inventors at 3M. Spencer Silver discovered the low-tack adhesive in 1968 and spent 5 years promoting it as a product within the company. He eventually hooked up with Art Fry at 3M who recognized its utility for small notes. In order to get the company to recognize it as a useful product, (as I heard the story) they had to personally make the post-it pads and distribute them to the secretaries all around the company.

Eventually some executives got hooked on the notes. The initial product launch in 1977 was deemed a failure. It wasn't until 1980 that the product was re-launched successfully.

So even after the chemistry was done, 3M's own product developers had to do 8-12 years of internal evangelism to get this new product launched to consumers.

> Pretty analogous to software patents and combinations software-hardware patents like the iPhone's multi-touch.

Hardly. Software patents are a tangle of prior art, and software requires almost no initial outlay.

Too bad most software patents belong to either giant companies using them as a strategic hammer or patent trolls, then.

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