But suppose someone had patented the idea of making a lightbulb using a filament of a material that wouldn't vaporize (but did not specify what that material should be).
Patent law handles that situation just fine. If something is commonly known it's not patentable. The usuall method of proving something was commonly known is to present prior art such as writings about the topic, but witness testimony can also be given.
Suppose someone had, prior to the development of Viagra, patented the concept of correcting erectile dysfunction by using drugs to dialate certain blood vessels (without specifying what drugs should be used). Should such a person have been able to sue Pfizer for patent infringement?
If they were the first to come up with the idea of using such a clock to measure longitude, they would have the ability to patent it for 17 years.
In 1728 when John proposed his idea for a Marine clock, the patent on creating such a clock would have alreay have expired.
The analogy isn't perfect. Suppose John Harrison had managed to build his clock faster. Should he have had to pay patent royanties?
That simply discourages people from sharing their ideas. If the idea is novel when they come up with it, then it's a novel idea.
"Novel" ideas which lack practical application are a dime a dozen. Thomas Edison noted IIRC that invention is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration (or maybe he said 1%/99%--the latter figure would probably be more accurate in any case). Overly-loose patent standards focus too much reward on the "10%"; if something is not done, the long-term result will be that inventors will focus their efforts on recording vauge ideas for which nobody will develop any practical application.
You idea is also unimplementable. How do we know what is going to be obvious in the future once technology that doesn't exist yet is common?
In many of the more egregious cases, by looking for analagous uses of existing technologies. Suppose someone finds out that a company is planning to release a refrigerator powered by replaceable metal hydride bottles; should a person be allowed to patent the concept of using a hydride-powered refrigerator to cool lemon-lime soda, and demand royalties from anyone useing it to keep that particular beverage cold? If the hydride power refrigerator wasn't well-known prior to the person seeking such a patent, he may well be the first person to think of using it for that particular purpose. I would argue, however, that the use of refrigerators in general to cool many beverages including lemon-lime soda was widely understood; even if nobody else had thought to use that particular kind of refrigerator to cool that particular beverage, the "invention" would have been thought of the moment it would have been useful (i.e. as soon as somebody who happened to have that sort of fridge happened to have some lemon-lime soda he wanted to cool).
Incidentally, very shortly after the Pentium FDIV fiasco, I pondered the problem of long division and happened to independently develop a practical method of rapid division which it turned out Cyrix had just patented (I did a patent search after confirming that my method worked). I don't know if any programs like PGP use the method, though it would be suitable for both hardware and software implementations (and would be quite excellent for something like PGP). Even though the idea behind that patent might not have been "obvious", I would guess that the inventor and I aren't the only two people to have thought of it.
I'm not a patent lawyer, but I suspect that patent wouldn't get approved in that form, or would get invalidated if it were.
There are lots of things that cause blood vessels to dilate. The vast majority don't seem to be very useful in erectile dysfunction. Which blood vessels do you need to dilate? Which ones do you need to contract?
If you leave it too vague, you won't likely get through the patent process, and if you do it's likely that someone will have tried something that fits within your vague description before and your patent will be invalidated.
If you make it too narrow, someone will find a way to accomplish the same goal without following your narrowly defined claims. Which is why there exists a wide variety of patented erectile dysfunction drugs.
A lot of people make the mistake of readin patent abstracts and thinking that the patent is extremely vage and broad. Patents are writen in very specific language and the meaning of their claims is parsed very carefully when determining if something violates them.
Read over the appeals court ruling in this case for a better idea of how the courts look at patents to see if they are being infringed upon. They go through the notes from the patent office on what was originially claimed and how it was narrowed down and more clearly specified while going through the long process of attaining the patent.
Patents aren't simply vague claims like some people act like they are.
Suppose someone finds out that a company is planning to release a refrigerator powered by replaceable metal hydride bottles; should a person be allowed to patent the concept of using a hydride-powered refrigerator to cool lemon-lime soda
I think you're going to have a hard time convincing anyone that using a new method of refrigeration to refrigerate a commonly refridgerated item is a novel idea. The new method of refridgeration might be novel and patentable, but using it for common purposes isn't novel even if you narrow the scope to lemon lime soda.
Incidentally, very shortly after the Pentium FDIV fiasco, I pondered the problem of long division and happened to independently develop a practical method of rapid division which it turned out Cyrix had just patented (I did a patent search after confirming that my method worked). I don't know if any programs like PGP use the method, though it would be suitable for both hardware and software implementations (and would be quite excellent for something like PGP). Even though the idea behind that patent might not have been "obvious", I would guess that the inventor and I aren't the only two people to have thought of it.
Well, if it was being used before the person who applied for the patent "invented" it's use, then that's prior art which would invalidate the patent.
That's not saying