Crash Patents

I finally took time to watch Crash Course's Part 4 on "Patents, Novelty, and Trolls" (previously I mentioned the series starter, and episode 3 on copyright). As the name implies, this episode attempts to teach people about the current state of patent law.

Stan begins by covering the basics of patents - what is eligible. Since this is a beginner course, he simply mentions that natural sequences (genes) are not patent-eligible since Myriad and moves on. Would that the world were so simple. Likewise, the concept of "nonobvious" is kind of easy to describe at a simple level but once you start digging into it the waters quickly get murky. Ditto for the video's treatment of trolls, and Stan acknowledges as much.

The episode covers utility, design, and plant patents. That last one was new to me. I didn't realize you could get a special kind of patent on a grafted plant growth. Apparently very few of these things issue in any given year, but they do exist.