I can see why you read the post that way, and on re-reading I should have been much clearer. I agree with the principles o both Copyright and Patent law and support them. However, they do have a downside, and that downside is that some companies rest on their laurels – as Sleep Time Bunny appears to have.

What I see as a concern here is not the patent system in general, but simply that their is an absence of any mechanism to ensure that an invention is used to the greatest effect. Patent squatting if you like.

rob

You are taking a very short-sighted view on the issue of patent monopolies. Sure, it would be better for everyone today to invalidate patents, but what about 10, 50, 100 years down the road?

Who is going to spend money inventing anything new, if free-loading competitors are simply allowed to steal the market out from under them. Monopoly profits are what drive innovation.

I realize that means twenty years before your bunny clock is cheaper, but it also means that thousands of drugs, costing billions to develop, are currently off patent and available to you at generic prices.

There is simply no industrialized nation that has ever seriously considered crippling innovation by getting rid of patents on mechanical inventions. No one can dispute that mechanical patents benefit society over the long term.

Of course, since he’s gone to the “big boy bed”, it’s sort of thrown the night night bunny rule out the window, since he wakes up and turns on the overhead light every morning about 20 minutes before “night night bunny wakes up”.

But while he was in his crib, it worked like a charm. I suspect once he’s into a routine again (and the night night bunny is in a better vantage point), he’ll go back to respecting it.

Which seems, in almost every respect, exactly the same concept, only digital. And, in that regard, meets your requirement (since it’s a 24 hour clock).

It was a little pricey (no doubt to pay the patent license ), but works quite well for Che (who is two and a half and definitely on the lower end for the product).

BTW, there is nothing like this, that we have found, in the States. We had to import ours from the UK.