Another cool story: when the first bi-color red/green LEDs showed up at Radio Shack in the early 1990s, I designed a PWM circuit to implement a battery-life indicator that would glow green with a full charge and slowly fade through yellow to red as the battery discharged. The patent committee at Dell was paying $1000 bonuses for disclosures at the time, but I couldn't get them to buy into this one. There were objections to the effect that it was trivial, or some such reasoning. I agreed, and left the meeting with no hard feelings. No harm in trying, right?
Hold on a minute, are you slating Dell for not patenting something that is indeed trivial, or for not using your idea in their products? Because the former should be applauded.
I think the point isn't that they didn't think it should be patented, more that they really weren't interested in that level of detail generally.
It is trivial but lots of trivial things put together can make for the improved user experience that distinguishes products you can charge top dollar for from the sort of mass market machines Dell turn out.
At the time the bonuses were being handed out, engineers were running pretty much whatever they could think of up the flagpole. Nobody was concerned with the ethics of the situation. (In my defense I pitched only four disclosures at them, out of which only one was accepted for filing.)
Today, if you have a problem with the USPTO's policy of rubber-stamping trivial, obvious, and abstract patents (and I most certainly do), the proper targets for venting are your Congressmen. It's safe to say they don't read Hacker News (hint, hint).
