As we’ve discussed in class, the best ideas are ones that seem obvious after they have been executed (like a blinking cursor). To warrant a patent, an invention must be “nonobvious” so that it took a true innovator to come up with the idea. Herein lies a strange contradiction: if it was obvious, why did no one think of it before? Should the inventor not get a patent? But obviously no one did think of it before, so why shouldn’t he? But how can you patent an obvious idea?
Robert Silvers patented his method of creating photo mosaics because it seemed “nonobvious.” Now we look at his work (and the subsequent work of others) and the idea seems painfully obvious: by making a picture a pixel, it only makes sense that you can make a larger picture out of these pixel-pictures.
In this way, hindsight is not a fair way to evaluate patents. We can argue today that Robert Silvers’ invention does not warrant a patent because photo mosaics seem obvious to us. However, the only reason it seems obvious is because Silvers patented the idea. Silvers used math and technology to write the algorithm that pieces these images together, so I see no problem with giving him credit, since he wrote the code. The only problem that could arise is if someone came up with the idea first and failed to patent it—in which case, you snooze, you don’t get a little “TM” next to your invention.
I completely agree that at the time he had a case, but I also think that he can't monopolize such a large thing forever. He's not really creating something, so much as doing it for the first time, if that makes sense. It's not like he's taking a fresh perspective on something so much as he's synthesizing a bunch of old ideas and making them into something that he's going to try and patent-hoard later.
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