On Mon, Aug 26, 2013 at 11:33 AM, Eric Deren <[email protected]> wrote: > I still have yet to figure out why folks unabashedly slam Joe. Yes, there > are patent trolls and yes, there are serious problems with our patent > system, but after evaluating the entire situation after the Yeti deal > collapsed (which was unfortunate), it seems to me that, in general, Joe is > the "little guy" that the best parts of our decrepit patent system support. > > Before the Yeti thing, his patent basically kept several large studios from > outright stealing his work and giving him no compensation for it. Isn't > that the ideal situation for patents? Protecting the little guy from the > big conglomerate corporations?
It's because Joe has a patent that's pretty general on how to mathematically parametrize hair on a 3d surface, which not so much something that's he "invented" but more of a description he's figured out of the way to replicate on a computer what nature does on your head. It simply isn't true that everyone who writes a hair system is necessarily stealing his work, other people could come to the same conclusion without looking at this work. that's how patents are: you have <process to do something>, then you qualify it with a specific field, and boom, you've got a patent. There are patents for "drawing... on a computer". You can't patent drawing, but you could do it if you qualify it with "on a computer". It's really a case of running to the patent office early in CG history before anyone else could and not so much of the little guy with a brilliant innovation that needs to be protected from evil conglomerates.
