Matt Reeves new take on Batman with Robert Pattinson, introduced a lot of new elements to the character.
One notable one being the first movie or show, which features Batman using contacts, which act as cameras, capable of recording everything he does and also face matching people he sees.
Two technologies are used for this, with the face matching tech being arguably around today.
The second one has been in discussion for years, where many think the world is only a decade or so out from contacts which can serve as video cameras.
What makes this interesting though is it’s already patented.
Sony in 2016 filed a patent for contact lenses, which can record what people see.
Samsung and Google already filed similar patents also.
Those three companies filed with some different wording choices and use cases in the patent, but all three have one big thing in common.
None of them have actually made it work yet.
This brings up an interesting case, where if someone can patent science fiction.
Right now, if anyone goes on Google Patents, they can find multiple patents for time machines, jet packs and a variety of other technology that’s all a hundred years out or completely impossible.
That being said though, small and large companies still try to get these blanket patents on fairly obvious ideas, without any actual specifics on how they’d work or just an explanation any amateur engineering student can figure out.
Biggest example of patent abuse, the Wright Brothers.
The Wright Brothers were the first people to create a working plane, with figuring out how to do wing warping, but that wasn’t the only thing they had a patent on.
The biggest was a general patent in the US, which gave them a legal monopoly on all airplanes made.
Issue was outside the initial brilliance of the Wright Brothers, not much happened there, where Glenn Curtis had to lobby to change their patents to make competitive airplanes.
This happened and was just one example of an idea that was over a thousand years old getting a patent in an extremely general sense.
The next was the creation of TV, with Philo Farnsworth versus David Sarnoff.
Philo Farnsworth was the actual inventor of the TV and figured out how the tech work, but David Sarnoff who’d later create NBC sued him for years buying competing patents.
Sarnoff acquired patents which were extremely vague and really just covered the basic ideas of a TV that anyone could figure out, but was enough it ultimately ruined Farnsworth.
For the Batman, they mentioned a tech which will eventually happen with camera contact lenses, but it’s a point on how it’s just such an obvious idea, can anyone really get a patent on it at this time?
I’m not an engineer, but looked at the patents Sony, Samsung and Google have.
All are attempts to corner the market, by claiming the rights to do things like have contacts with electronics in them, microchips and no actual explanation for working, but just a bold attempt to get a monopoly.
It’s really this odd thing, which shows just due to someone filing a patent for a ship that goes to space, it doesn’t mean they actually invented it.
And I’m actually a patent holder myself and pro some form of IP, but this is just nuts.