> patenting the idea of taking photos against a white backdrop with certain ratios is ridiculous
Is that really obvious? I haven't studied the patent from top to bottom, but I did look at the claims, which seemed extremely narrow. I'm only an amateur photographer, so I can't rule out -- at least not on a brief reading -- that this particular combination of elements might produce some novel effect.
Anyway, of all the bad patents coming out of the PTO, this doesn't seem to me to be one of the ones to be most concerned about. It's extremely narrow, and on top of that, how would they ever detect infringement? Is there any chance they could tell, by looking at an image, that it was produced exactly this way? I rather doubt it.
The question I always come back to is, is the cost to society of granting a monopoly on this technique outweighed by the intellectual contribution of the idea? In this case, the cost seems so small that I'm not even sure it's worth my time to figure out whether there was any intellectual contribution at all.
The combination of elements is descriptive, not proscriptive.
There are clauses elsewhere in the patent that greatly expand the claims so you do not have to have copied the exact description in the claims to be infringing, as long as your setup is similar and is aimed at achieving the same end result.
Is that really obvious? I haven't studied the patent from top to bottom, but I did look at the claims, which seemed extremely narrow. I'm only an amateur photographer, so I can't rule out -- at least not on a brief reading -- that this particular combination of elements might produce some novel effect.
Anyway, of all the bad patents coming out of the PTO, this doesn't seem to me to be one of the ones to be most concerned about. It's extremely narrow, and on top of that, how would they ever detect infringement? Is there any chance they could tell, by looking at an image, that it was produced exactly this way? I rather doubt it.
The question I always come back to is, is the cost to society of granting a monopoly on this technique outweighed by the intellectual contribution of the idea? In this case, the cost seems so small that I'm not even sure it's worth my time to figure out whether there was any intellectual contribution at all.