I watched Woody Norris do a fascinating talk on TED last night. He’s invented a device that focuses sound like a laser focuses light. Speakers are messy. They send the signal out to anyone near the speaker. Woody’s device effectively “beams” the sound to whoever it’s pointed at. So yes, if you start hearing voices in your head, you might not need to call the psychiatrist just yet…
After watching this, I found an interview with Woody Norris on Makezine that I thought was interesting. In particular, I found his advice on patents interesting:
I think a lot of inventors are paranoid about sharing their work for fear that it will be stolen. This is a near pathological problem among inventors. File a patent and get over it. You can file a provisional patent with an attorney for $1,000, or you can do it yourself for $80 if you can’t afford an attorney. Then you can talk about it. Expose it. If you are not willing to do this, you don’t really believe in your invention–you are just kidding yourself. I have never had a company steal one of my inventions in over 40 years of doing this; companies are scared to death of being sued. So do your work, get your patent, and then sell it. Stop making excuses.
The patent system can be downright ridiculous and I think it needs major reform. However, Woody Norris talks about it here in a way that reminds us of its purpose: to encourage inventors to publish good ideas by offering them a legal entitlement to receive compensation when others use those ideas. I wonder if start-ups like Cambrian House might end up eventually replacing the patent system. They solve exactly the same problem in a way that seems much more responsive and fair.