" A good way to understand the difference is to
consider a colony of ants. A naïve entomologist might seek to
understand the colony by examining the ants within the colony.
Individual ants, after all, deploy a vast range of behaviours, such
as collecting leaves, marching, etc. They are busy and fascinating
creatures. And yet you could spend a year, indeed a lifetime,
examining individual ants and learn virtually nothing about the
colony. Why? Because the interesting thing about ants is not the
parts but the whole. Instead of zooming in on individual ants, the
only way to understand the colony is to zoom out". From
Rebel Ideas, Matthew Syed, 2019
The modern patent system is less that 250 years old. This pretty
much coincided with the first Industrial Revolution. As we enter
the fourth Industrial Revolution, the way we need to think about
patents needs its own revolution. In 1950 (the start of the third
Industrial Revolution), the USPTO received c. 67.000
