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Comment by btian | Hacker News Reader

Patent for what? Changing temperature of screen? That will not be granted because there are plenty of prior arts.

Such as? Doing it automatically?

This is, in my book, real innovation.

There has to be more than merely an arbitrarily defined "innovation" to grant a patent, even in the US (http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/35/part-II/chapter-10).

"Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process"

You left off the rest of that sentence.

I didn't consider it relevant since it is ORed

"Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title."

You misunderstand it. All of those things listed are "subject to the conditions and requirements of this title." The next few sections are about conditions and requirements. That's the important part.

...none of which would seem to apply. What's the prior art? It's defiantly non-obvious or someone would have done it decades ago - color screens have been around for a long time.

If you were thinking of something else, I kindly ask you to make a point, instead of asking me to prove a negative.

You're conflating non-obvious and not caring.

Color screens have been around a long time, but staring at them all day has only recently become common behavior. And the solution to a problem can be obvious even if the existence of the problem isn't obvious.

In broad terms for a patent to be granted an invention must be unique, innovative and non-obvious.

I am not sure if f.lux is entirely non-obvious...

I would say that changing color temperature based on time of day (and location on the planet) as a means to reduce late-night eyestrain and fatigue is something non-obvious, yes. I never even thought about color temperature and the influence of it on your sleeping patterns (esp. late at night) until the guy behind f.lux came by.

is it so non-obvious that it requires the state guarantee decades-long monopoly to ensure f.lux can make a return on the significant research & development costs?

could we expect no more non-obvious apps like f.lux get made if the state doesn't guarantee decades-long monopoly?

You've changed the question from "is the invention non-obvious, in the sense that current law requires to grand a patent?" to "do you agree with current patent laws and the value of patents?"

interestingly, f.lux is also free, at least for me. i use it yet haven't paid a dime. so it doesn't exactly look like they're trying to make a profit.. and i'm glad for that.

> […] changing color temperature based on time of day […] to reduce late-night eyestrain and fatigue is something non-obvious

There are themes for text editors which have both a day and night version (and some users will without a doubt have setup cron to switch automatically).

There are also blue-blocking filters recommended to wear at night for improving your sleep rhythm.

Of course none of this means that the f.lux author can’t obtain a patent on something related to his software. The question is if it will hold up if later disputed.

f.lux is less obvious than 'click a button to buy/ship something automatically', but Amazon's one-click patent has been around since 1999.

Contextual color-temp changing is nothing new at all. Putting a GUI wrapper on it and publishing for two dominant consumer platforms is real innovation I guess.

Not to mention wrapping the whole thing in pseudoscientific claptrap.

Blue light's deleterious effect on sleep is well-established in scientific literature: http://justgetflux.com/research.html

F.lux is a very good program, but you'll note that the 'research' section of their own page indicates that they didn't come up with the concept itself, and once you understand that blue light exposure distorts circadian rhythms, this particular implementation becomes rather obvious.

Exactly. Nocturne, for instance, from the guy behind QuickSilver, was doing the same before Flux. http://code.google.com/p/blacktree-nocturne/

So, do you think redshift would exist if they hadn't seen f.lux?

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