active contact lens, video tattoos and patents

http://www.electronicsweekly.com/Articles/2008/01/30/43036/contact-lens-led-array-aims-for-in-eye-display.htm

I love to say I told you so, and this one goes right back to 1991 when I invented the active contact lens (see http://www.btinternet.com/~ian.pearson/web/future/contactlens.htm). Back then, it looked like Moore's law would make it feasible around 2030, but then mid 90s Texas Instruments invented their micromirror, and I redesigned the lens to use a group of three lasers and a raster scanner mirror. This one in EW looks nothing like that, but still demonstrates the general principle of using a contact lens as a display platform. I still think my basic design will eventually win out.

A related topic is the active skin concept, http://www.btinternet.com/~ian.pearson/docindex.htm, which includes the idea of video tattoos. Today I learned about http://www.core77.com/competitions/GreenerGadgets/projects/4673/ which replicates our video tattoo idea pretty well.

I have no idea whether the owner of this saw the idea on my site and re-hashed it or started it from scratch. Both happen often, and I am now well used to students passing off my work as their own and even asking me to do it for them. But actually, I think that most inventions are independently invented many times. We are all exposed to the same sorts of information and we then make deductions from that, and our creativity as engineers is almost always built on that of our predecessors, just as Rutherford (I think), the great physicist, said that he could only see great things because he was standing on the shoulders of giants.

For that reason, I think that the patent system has now outlived its purpose. People will invent stuff all over the world now within weeks of each other, and there is no longer a need for financial incentive to do so. The idea that someone should now have an exclusive right to an idea just because they got to the patent office first seems wrong now. I think that the system needs adjusting at least. I think that if someone files for a patent, it should stay secret for a period of say 6 months after filing, and if anyone else files or discloses a similar idea, or publishes one anywhere independently, even informally in a blog, then the idea should be considered a public domain invention and no-one should be given exclusivity. Such a system would prevent a great many abuses that we have seen such as one-click ordering, which are blindingly obvious to everyone, except apparently the US patent office.