If you search Espacenet using the key words “Quantum Computing” it returns 155,000 results!! Clearly, I have not read them all this afternoon. At a very low legal fee of ~ $6,500 per patent that is ~one billion dollars’ worth of fees for the patent attorney community.
Alice, Bob and the Cat have served them well. They have made a quantum leap in income. Would you like some dinner?
–
–
Reason suggests that it is not possible to come up with 155,000 totally original ideas and concepts beyond the state of the art. There must be redundancy and perhaps overly zealous patent agents have awarded their national home grown talent with a facile grant. Some of these applications cannot be worth the paper they are written upon.
Never mind the quality measure the tonnage. No wonder there is a forestry problem…
I have long speculated that the whole intellectual property (IP) / patent arena is due for a big clean out / dose of salts. It is overblown and over stuffed. The inventive steps are often really trivial, and not “quantum leaps” in understanding.
To generate new IP against the petabyte background already filed might be tricky. When I last looked, I thought many so called unique ideas were very derivative and the inventive step even obvious to me as a non-expert pikey in his shed.
Sooner or later there is going to be some big blow out tests in court. Or you can have a Samsung – Apple – “we’ll sell you ours if you sell us yours” swapsies.
Were I an investor looking at that very basic survey of landscape I would not be champing at the bit (excuse the pun).
Dreamyoga 