I had one only patent idea.
I spent months working on it but thankfully didn’t spend any money.
I looked around when I started and there was nothing on the patent database that was even close.
after six months I decided I had a solid idea and I would start spending money on it to pursue it
I took one last look at the patent database, and three months prior, someone had registered the VERY SAME idea in whatever they called the pending acceptance thing.
I scoured through their patent 10 times and it was precisely, accurately identical.
how!?
it physically hurt.
I spent a week dragging my self into work, dragging myself home, my billion dollar idea was done.
in retrospect I probably couldn’t have done everything that was needed to make it happen. The one who did it happened to work for a very large company at the time.
but what puzzled me is how could me and this random person from California who worked for a Japanese technology company have precisely the same idea?
it was then that I asked myself the question:
what if 1000 people in the world had the same idea at the same time?
what if 100,000 people had the same idea within a two month time span?
what if very few people have the means motive and opportunity – particular being fastest/efficient to carry out a patent ?
and then I was fine. because then it was simply an idea that was reasonable given a particular context.
and the same condition can be true for ideas that arise independently.
The idea that they had to evolve from each other or be copied is easier to understand but not necessarily the case.
for example, did logos and tao copy one another?
conceptually similar, mostly interchangeable.
there were trading routes so there’s no reason ideas wouldn’t trade too.
but they don’t have to.
[responsivevoice_button voice="US English Male"]