MORE "TECHNICAL" LIES FROM THE UK PATENT OFFICE:
(www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/23/uk_patent_system_a_joke)
The Register (UK) has a new story about how the UK Patent Office revoked a patent for electronically processing tips on restaurant bills, ruling that the invention was "technical", WITHOUT ONCE AGAIN WHAT THE BLOODY HECK THEY MEAN BY "TECHNICAL". Maybe the UK PO should use crayons for their logical reasoning. The inventor is upset because he had spent 100,000 pounds defending the patent, and then had to sell the patent to a patent broker. Well, you are fool if you spend so much money on an such patent in the UK.
PATENT DEAL BETWEEN GE AND AFRICAN AMERICAN INVENTOR
Wired Magazine online has a brief historical inventor news item. In 1923, African American inventor Garrett Morgan gets a patent on a three-section traffic light, which so interests General Electric that they pay Morgan $40,000 for his patent (which inflation-adjusted was good money back then.) GE goes onto to monopolize the traffic signal business for awhile.
