Patents quotes
80 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
"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."
"My aim is: to teach you to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense."
"Marconi is a good fellow. Let him continue. He is using seventeen of my patents."
"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."
"We think we have solved the mystery of creation. Maybe we should patent the universe and charge everyone royalties for their existence."
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside patents — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"You should be innovating so fast that you're invalidating your prior patents."
"The US patent system adds the fuel of interest to the fire of genius in the discovery and production of new and useful things"
"Hope is a strange invention - A Patent of the Heart - In unremitting action Yet never wearing out"
"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."
"Probably the last man who knew how it worked had been tortured to death years before. Or as soon as it was installed. Killing the creator was a traditional method of patent-protection."
"There is no patent recipe for getting good citizenship. You get it by applying the old, old rules of decent conduct, the rules in accordance with which decent men have had to shape their lives from the beginning .. fundamental precepts, put forth in the Bible and embodied consciously or unconsciously in the code of morals of every great and successful nation from antiquity to modern times."
"The issue for patents for new discovers has given a spring to invention beyond my conception."
"If I could patent 'being real', I think I could own that."
"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."
"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."
"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 --"
"An invention is something that was "impossible" up to then that's why governments grant patents."
"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."
"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."
"Know your stuff. Have an angle. Know how to grow business, how to develop products, have patents and an undeveloped market that could be huge."
"Patent law holds us back, in every which way, shape or form. There is place for it, in physical products, in pharmaceuticals, but in software in particular, there is no place for it."
