Top 100 Patent Quotes
#1. The United States owes a great debt to its inventors. Far from being grateful to them, it places every obstruction in their way and makes it enormously difficult to secure a patent.
Preston Sturges
#2. There was always some savior out in the wilderness, some senator, some patent, some institute, some cell.
Claire Vaye Watkins
#3. The best lesson that any people can learn is that there is no patent cure-all which will make the body politic perfect, and that any man who is able glibly to answer every question as to how to deal with the evils of the body politic is at best a foolish visionary and at worst an evil-minded quack.
Theodore Roosevelt
#4. When you find a diamond that belongs to nobody, it is yours. When you discover an island that belongs to nobody, it is yours. When you get an idea before any one else, you take out a patent on it : it is yours. So with me : I own the stars, because nobody else before me ever thought of owning them.
Antoine De Saint-Exupery
#5. The 1850s proved to be the decade of the most prolific patent litigation in America's history. Lincoln himself was involved, as well as his most three prolific cabinet members: Chase, Seward and Stanton.
Darin Gibby
#6. Hope is a strange invention - A Patent of the Heart - In unremitting action Yet never wearing out
Emily Dickinson
#7. There's an ongoing competition by global companies across all areas from products, technology development and hiring talented people to patent disputes. The market is big and opportunities are wide open, so we should find out new businesses that Samsung's future will hinge on.
Lee Kun-hee
#8. With the rise of software patents, engineers coding new stuff - whether within a large software company or as kids writing smartphone apps - are exposed to a claim that somewhere a prior patent is being infringed.
Jonathan Zittrain
#9. When we speak of the perfection of art, we must recollect what the materials are with which a painter contends with nature. For the light of the sun he has but patent yellow and white lead - for the darkest shade, umber or soot.
John Constable
#10. A patent, or invention, is any assemblage of technologies or ideas that you can put together that nobody put together that way before. That's how the patent office defines it. That's an invention.
Dean Kamen
#11. And since nothing whatever happens to us outside our own brain; since nothing hurt us or gives us pleasure except within the brain, the supreme importance of being able to control what goes on in that mysterious brain is patent.
Arnold Bennett
#12. To tell you the truth although it would put £500 in my pockets to specify my own patent rails, I cannot do so after the experience I have had.
George Stephenson
#13. We were proposing, in a sense, that the rest of the world be made safe for American ideas, as they adopted intellectual property rights that gave patent protection to our very innovative economy.
Jeffrey Sachs
#14. The patent system was established, I believe, to protect the lone inventor. In this it has not succeeded. ... The patent system protects the institutions which favor invention.
Ernst Alexanderson
#15. My favorite antibiotic for smearing on infected cuts is a prescription preparation called mupirocin (brand name Bactroban), which is available in ointment or cream form. The clear ointment, which is older and off patent, costs $10 a tube. The white cream, which the drug company created when the
Elisabeth Rosenthal
#16. While the proximate ground of discrimination may be of another kind, still the pervading principle and abiding test of good breeding is the requirement of a substantial and patent waste of time.
Thorstein Veblen
#17. A Patent is not a license to make money, it is a license to prevent others from making money.
Kalyan C. Kankanala
#18. We think we have solved the mystery of creation. Maybe we should patent the universe and charge everyone royalties for their existence.
Stephen Hawking
#19. The the relationship between the prime minister and the monarch is very much a personal one and when it comes to the constitution of the Order of Australia, which is headed by the monarch, this is governed by letters patent, which are a matter between the prime minister and the monarch.
Tony Abbott
#20. I resent violence or intolerance in any shape or form. It never reaches anything or stops anything. A revolution must come on the due installments plans. It's a patent absurdity on the face of it to hate people because they live round the corner and speak a different vernacular, so to speak.
James Joyce
#21. I'm wearing my good shoes, the patent leather ones with the bows ; and my red jacket with the yellow ducklings; and white socks. You don't go to Athens everyday after all.
Eugenia Fakinou
#22. Now Stan and I were still working in secret at that time but, because of this development, we had to inform the University of Utah because we thought that they might need to take patent protection.
Martin Fleischmann
#23. Human bipolarity was both the binding force and the driving energy for all human behavior, from sonnets to nuclear equations. If any being thinks that human psychologists exaggerate on this point, let it search Terran patent offices, libraries, and art galleries for creations of eunuchs.
Robert A. Heinlein
#24. As the commercial confrontation between [free software] and software-that's-a-product becomes more fierce, patent law's going to be the terrain on which a big piece of the war's going to be fought. Waterloo is here somewhere.
Eben Moglen
#25. This does not mean that every copyright must prove its value initially. That would be a far too cumbersome system of control. But it does mean that every system or category of copyright or patent should prove its worth.
Lawrence Lessig
#26. Whatever may be the pros and cons of going to the public theatre, it is a patent fact that it has undermined the morals and ruined the character of many a youth in his country.
Mahatma Gandhi
#27. Patenting tends to get people's juices flowing when you put the word 'gene' and the word 'patent' in the same sentence. And understandably so. This is stuff we're carrying around - all of us - inside all of our cells. Should somebody be able to lay claim to it?
Francis Collins
#28. A man who has spent most of his adult life trying out a series of patent medicines is always an optimist.
P.G. Wodehouse
#29. Food is the very heart of freedom. How can people be free if they can't feed themselves without getting sued for patent violations?
Daniel Suarez
#30. The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying.
John Carmack
#31. As for democracy, the men of sense among us knew what it was, and I perhaps as well as any, as I have more cause to complain of it; but there is nothing new to be said of a patent absurdity-meanwhile we did not think it safe to alter it under the pressure of your hostility.
Thucydides
#32. Love is a verb. When it becomes a noun, it's over."
from "The God Patent" by Ransom Stephens
Ransom Stephens
#33. There is a patent conflict between the need to reverse or at least to control the impact of our economy on the biosphere and the imperatives of a capitalist market: maximum continuing growth in the search for profit.
Eric Hobsbawm
#34. When we began Qualcomm, it had become quite clear that it was very important to patent new ideas.
Irwin M. Jacobs
#35. Don't fight the patent, fight the infringement.
Drew Curtis
#36. There is a patent office at the seat of government of the universe, whose managers are as much interested in the dispersion of seeds as anybody at Washington can be, and their operations are infinitely more extensive and regular.
Henry David Thoreau
#38. Is Bliss then, such Abyss, I must not put my foot amiss For fear I spoil my shoe? I'd rather suit my foot Than save my Boot
For yet to buy another Pair is possible, At any store
But Bliss, is sold just once. The Patent lost None buy it any more
Emily Dickinson
#39. Don't stop at the first no. You have to be a risk taker. If there weren't room for creativity, the patent office would close down.
Debbi Fields
#40. He was a loner with an intimate bond to humanity, a rebel who was suffused with reverence. And thus it was that an imaginative, impertinent patent clerk became the mind reader of the creator of the cosmos, the locksmith of the mysteries of the atom and the universe.
Walter Isaacson
#42. I would have had my patent long, long ago, and it would have run out long, long ago. I would have made, maybe, $100.000, much less that the patent has brought me now.
Gordon Gould
#43. Bureaucracies excel at performing tasks that must be done consistently whether the people assigned to them are brilliant performers or bumbling fools. You can't always count on having Albert Einstein in the patent office, so you design its procedures to work even if you hire Mr. Bean by mistake.
Charles Stross
#44. Biopiracy (is) biological theft; illegal collection of indigenous plants by corporations who patent them for their own use.
Vandana Shiva
#45. When hot dogs like Mr. D'Amato or the Republican apologist Roger Ailes say that Whitewater is worse than Watergate, it's because they're suffering from a disease. It's called bull-imia, and it's the regurgitation of patent hyperbole.
Anna Quindlen
#46. I make more mistakes than anyone else I know, and sooner or later, I patent most of them.
Thomas A. Edison
#47. Mission of mercy, he said, straightening up, his voice so cold, he could have owned the patent.
Tara Janzen
#48. I think you would find almost anyone who stands up for their patent rights has been called a patent troll.
Nathan Myhrvold
#49. How Long Before Monsanto Try to Patent The Milk of Human Kindness
Dean Cavanagh
#50. People equate patents with secrecy, that secrecy is what patents were designed to overcome. That's why the formula for Coca-Cola was never patented. They kept it as a trade secret, and they've outlasted patent laws by 80 years or more.
Craig Venter
#51. [Economists' advice] is something like patent medicine - people know it is largely manufactured by quacks and that a good percentage of the time it won't work, but they continue to buy the brand whose flavor they like.
Barbara Bergmann
#53. Jack was well loved in this community Which was a patent lie. But being dead had done wonders for his reputation.
Maggie Stiefvater
#54. The people - could you patent the sun ?
Jonas Salk
#56. God bless the man who first invented sleep! So Sancho Panza said and so say I; And bless him, also, that he didn't keep His great discovery to himself, nor try To make it, as the lucky fellow might A close monopoly by patent-right.
John Godfrey Saxe
#57. Patent monopoly creates a lot of problems. It allows the patentee to charge the maximum to consumers. This may not be a problem if the patented product is a luxury item, like parts that go into a smartphone, but can violate basic human rights if it involves things such as life-saving drugs.
Ha-Joon Chang
#59. Beauty, however, must here be understood in its original meaning: as the glow of the true and the good irradiating from every ordered state of being, and not in the patent significance of immediate sensual appeal.
Josef Pieper
#60. You can't patent a recommendation to eat lots of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and whole grains. So there's no incentive for industry to invest in such research and no incentive for researchers to study and validate such claims.
T. Colin Campbell
#61. More probably, foolish preachers, by always telling you how much Christianity will help you and how good it is for society, have actually led you to forget that Christianity is not a patent medicine. Christianity
C.S. Lewis
#62. These healers ... my intellect has been unable to assimilate their theories ... But their facts are patent and startling; and anything that interferes with the multiplication of such facts, and with our freest opportunity of observing and studying them, will, I believe, be a public calamity.
William James
#63. No patent medicine was ever put to wider and more varied use than the Fourteenth Amendment.
William O. Douglas
#64. I mistrust these people in music industry who can be everybody. This is where technology dictates to them. I mistrust that, that in somehow the chips capture the soul of a player, that's patent nonsense.
Elvis Costello
#65. And the reason is that until Wonder came along and figured out how to spread the idea of sliced bread, no one wanted it. That the success of sliced bread is not always about what the patent is like or what the factory is like, it's about can you get your idea to spread or not?
Seth Godin
#66. [About Poirot] The flamboyant moustaches, the sartorial elegance, the white spats and the pointed patent leather shoes all filled this insular young man with distinct misgivings.
Agatha Christie
#67. The human body is a magazine of inventions, the patent office, where are the models from which every hint is taken. All the tools and engines on earth are only extensions of its limbs and senses.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#68. But a patent is not a hunting license. Is it not a reward for the search, but compensation for its successful conclusion
Martin J. Adelman
#69. During the integration meetings between Sun and Oracle, where we were being grilled about the patent situation between Sun and Google, we could see the Oracle lawyer's eyes sparkle.
James Gosling
#70. I wish I could put a patent on that thing. That was so straight I had to lean over sideways to see the flag!
Gary Player
#71. The reforms proposed by the Patent Reform Act of 2007 are precisely the type of congressional action needed. The Act will remove obstacles to growth and restore balance to the patent system.
Viet D. Dinh
#72. If I could patent 'being real', I think I could own that.
Tupac Shakur
#73. Extraordinarily, Heaviside didn't bother to patent his invention. The patent was filed instead by AT&T, which had nothing to do with the discovery but nonetheless went on to become one of the largest corporations in the world thanks in large part to its unrivaled lead in long-distance telephony.
Bill Bryson
#74. Have you ever noticed that things that don't kill you make you weaker? And great minds don't think alike. If they did, the patent office would only have about fifty inventions. I started getting suspicious when I cried over spilt milk and the cashier took it off my bill. - Wally
Scott Adams
#75. My motivation for learning Japanese was to translate a chemical patent, a job that I had heroically (i.e., rashly) taken on.
Kato Lomb
#76. With their souls of patent leather, they come down the road. Hunched and nocturnal, where they breathe they impose, silence of dark rubber, and fear of fine sand.
Federico Garcia Lorca
#77. The cigar-box which the European calls a 'lift' needs but to be compared with our elevators to be appreciated. The lift stops to reflect between floors. That is all right in a hearse, but not in elevators. The American elevator acts like a man's patent purge-it works.
Mark Twain
#78. I had removed my patent leather shoes after a while, for they foundered badly in the sand. It pleased me to think they would be perched there on the silver log, pointing out to sea, like a sort of soul-compass, after I was dead.
Sylvia Plath
#79. Folks with their wits about them knew that advertisements were just a pack of lies - you had only to look at the claims of patent medicines!
Frances Parkinson Keyes
#80. One reason I never patent my products is that if I did it would take so much time, I would get nothing else done. But mainly I don't want my discoveries to benefit specific favored persons.
George Washington Carver
#81. Shoes are a good starting point. I've become quite fussy about them! A patent pair of Sonia Rykiel oxfords have become invaluable.
Jessica Raine
#82. Lincoln said that the Patent Office adds the flame of interest to the light of creativity. And that is why we need to improve the effectiveness of our Patent Office.
Jay Inslee
#83. In 1411, the French Crown granted a patent declaring that only the cheese of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon could be called Roquefort cheese.
Mark Kurlansky
#84. I didn't really want to patent it because, for one, I don't like software patents, and, two, if you patent it, you make it public. Even if you don't know someone's infringing, they will still be getting the benefit. Instead, we just chose to keep it a trade secret and not show it to anyone.
Jessica Livingston
#85. When God created man and woman, he did not take a patent. That's why any imbecile has been able to do so ever since.
George Bernard Shaw
#86. Einstein didn't invent the theory of relativity while he was multitasking at the Swiss patent office.
quoting, David Meyer, a cognitive scientist at the University of Michigan
Winifred Gallagher
#87. When we can drain the Ocean into mill-ponds, and bottle up the Force of Gravity, to be sold by retail, in gas jars; then may we hope to comprehend the infinitudes of man's soul under formulas of Profit and Loss; and rule over this too, as over a patent engine, by checks, and valves, and balances.
Thomas Carlyle
#88. Startups do not need cost effective patent filings, they need a strong IP system to help them succeed.
Kalyan C. Kankanala
#89. Too bad I can't afford to patent it.
I can make a fortune.
But again,I have a fortune.
-Batman, Year One comic.
Frank Miller
#90. There is no other world. Nor even this one. What, then, is there? The inner smile provoked in us by the patent nonexistence of both.
Emil Cioran
#91. Troy's deformities lay deep down from a woman's vision, whilst his embellishments were upon the very surface; thus contrasting with homely Oak, whose defects were patent to the blindest, and whose virtues were as metals in a mine.
Thomas Hardy
#92. There are little elements in a person's life, minor fibers that become unintentionally tangled with our personality. Sometimes it's a patent phrase, sometimes it's a perfume, sometimes it's a wristwatch.
Sloane Crosley
#93. Massachusetts, like Queen Elizabeth, encouraged salt making through the granting of monopolies to those who showed the skill to produce salt cheaply. The colony granted Samuel Winslow a ten-year monopoly to employ his ideas on salt producing, which is considered the first patent issued in America.
Mark Kurlansky
#94. Patent battles have become a strong catalyst for mergers, reducing competition in various domains. The largest corporations, with gigantic patent portfolios, routinely enter into cross-licensing agreements with their largest competitors.
James Gleick
#95. Who owns the patent on this vaccine?'
'Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?
Jonas Salk
#97. Except in very narrow cases, where there's breakthrough science that needs patent production, worrying about competitors is a waste of time. If you can't out iterate someone who is trying to copy you, you're toast anyway.
Eric Ries
#98. My very first publication was an estimator - this was a statistical procedure - a kind of invention. My father got a patent and started a business; it wasn't successful, but maybe I have some of him in me.
Robert J. Shiller
#99. If you want to wear nude, go with suede or a beautiful leather, please, if I see one more nude patent stiletto on the carpet I feel like I'm going to kill somebody.
Jaime King
#100. With a few honorable exceptions the press of the United States is at the beck and call of the patent medicines. Not only do the newspapers modify news possibly affecting these interests, but they sometimes become their agents.
Samuel Hopkins Adams
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