3D illustration of rubber stamp with the text patented. IP law and intellectual property patent concept
Great creators know that patents are mostly a human video game of sorts that they are required to partake in. They create things because they have a disease of the soul that makes them feel sick if they’re not creating things. Patents are not necessary for a resourceful creator’s success.
Great products that are used by millions of people generally allow us to discover new ideas, concepts, and problems that we couldn’t have seen before without their existence.
Take for example the case of the meteoric rise of the Shrimp industry and its derivative inventions.
In 1949 James Lapeyre stepped on a piece of shrimp and the skin came undone from the shrimp. He used this knowledge and invented the world’s first shrimp peeler and blew up and unlocked the capability of the shrimp industry.
Millions of pounds of shrimp were being pulled into the peelers and the conveyor belts started rusting from the salt.
The resultant invention was plastic modular conveyor belts which were rolled into Intralox, a billion dollar company, that has changed the way conveyor belts are manufactured and optimized. Intralox now services 60,000 customers.
“In 1949, Intralox founder J.M. Lapeyre[3][4] invented an automatic shrimp-peeling machine [5][6] that changed the industry. J.M. patented his shrimp peeler and 190 other inventions during his lifetime. He also founded four companies — all based on his inventions. Intralox, one of those four companies, registered the first patent for modular plastic belting in 1970.”
The basic idea is that distributed products with lots of users cause new problems to emerge.
The future is a world where patents don’t exist, where the consummate creators can build on top of previous inventions without the nuances of having to close licensing deals with emotional figureheads.
Patents are government granted monopolies of the previous century that humanity must overcome.
Read the latest blog post on marketing, the macro, and tech.