Yeah, for me Segway has been a great lesson in how patents can hold back innovation. It was a niche player that prevented others from trying to innovate on the form factor for a number of years.
One of the dads at school runs a company that does a nanotech waterproof coating for electronics (backed by patents). I told him that it would be very useful for personal electric vehicles, like electric unicycles. He replied that they looked at that, but decided not to license the tech for that use, because there wasn't enough money in it.
i wonder what the world or progress in general would look like if profit-incentives didn't matter (as much as they do), and instead just "would this take us forwards as societies?"
or in a different way, what are we missing out on just because some people think stuff has to be profitable in order to be "good".
