New York Times: Edison's light bulb not essentially original

Further to the IPBiz challenge to readers, two people (Barry and Doug) correctly identified the inventor referenced by the New York Times as being Thomas Edison. Doug identified the invention as the light bulb.

Both correctly realized that IPBiz was not referring to a recent invention, and that the NYT was capable of raising issues with the work of Thomas Edison. Here's awesome praise to their insight.

From the previous post:

The New York Times reported on "the opinion of experts to the effect that the invention as described in the claim was not, in fact, anything essentially original upon which the inventor could claim a patent." There is also text "it did not rise to the dignity of an invention."

Another interesting issue is just who the experts were.

Separately, in Innovation and Its Discontents, Jaffe and Lerner refer to Edison and the light bulb in the following way: Edison was granted the basic patent on incandescent lighting in 1880. Now, surely Edison's invention was about as novel as they get. [p. 49] [See Is the Jaffe/Lerner Analysis of Patent Law Correct? ]

Jaffe and Lerner are wrong on Edison and the light bulb on so many levels it is tough to know where to begin criticism of their naive writing, that is perhaps more in line with a third grader doing a book report on a book he didn't read. Obviously, they didn't check out the New York Times.