[…] And if you do manage to think of something truly unique, chances are that someone is probably thinking a similar thing to you at that very moment. In fact, some of the most important thinking in history was being conceived by different people, in very different places, at virtually the same moment in time. The telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell, right? At virtually the same time Elisha Gray patented his design (more examples of these occurrences here and here). […]

@ Alphast:

The difference is that Dumont did a public display in France taking off the plane from a field in 1906 (there are photos of it, you can look up), while there’s almost no documentation from Wright’s 1903 flight.

The Wright Brothers simply got a patent first, since Dumont never applied for a patent in the US. You just have to prove you are the first person to fill the patent, not the first inventor.

Yup, Europe has a much saner system right now. Let’s hope that the EU is a bit more resistant to corporate lobbying than US government which is a government of the people, by the people and for the corporate interest which doesn’t really give a flying fuck about the people. ;)

Oh, and I bet that for every great discovery out there there is at least one very pissed off scientist who came up with a better and more elegant solution but failed to publish/patent it first. :P

Which is the reason software is copyrighted in Europe, instead of being patented (at least until the lobbyist in Brussels manage to pay enough money to our MEP’s to make them reverse their votes)…

Byt the way, in the list of simultaneous inventions, there is one very famous missing: the piston engine plane was invented practically the same day by the Wright brothers and Santos Dumont respectively. Though the Wright bros eventually managed to prove they were 24 hours ahead, it was very tight.