*Opposition by experts to the United States Patent Office, because supposedly everything useful has been invented.<ref>This opposition can be found in many forms, from weakening the strength of patents by small inventors today to repetition of a quote attributed to Charles Duell, Commissioner of the Patent Office, in 1899: "everything that can be invented has been invented." While Charles Duell never said such a thing and it doesn't reflect his position on patents at all, "this saying has been so often quoted that it has been gradually accepted as a truth, and thus being still repeatedly quoted again and again even by prominent scholars." [http://www.intertic.org/Policy%20Papers/Pretnar.pdf Bojan Pretnar, "Two Sources of Persistent Patent Controversy," p.4]</ref> | *Opposition by experts to the United States Patent Office, because supposedly everything useful has been invented.<ref>This opposition can be found in many forms, from weakening the strength of patents by small inventors today to repetition of a quote attributed to Charles Duell, Commissioner of the Patent Office, in 1899: "everything that can be invented has been invented." While Charles Duell never said such a thing and it doesn't reflect his position on patents at all, "this saying has been so often quoted that it has been gradually accepted as a truth, and thus being still repeatedly quoted again and again even by prominent scholars." [http://www.intertic.org/Policy%20Papers/Pretnar.pdf Bojan Pretnar, "Two Sources of Persistent Patent Controversy," p.4]</ref> |