Examples of Progress

Mainframes started using 64bit processors in 1961.  SGI Irix graphic workstations started using 64bit processies in 1991.  The Nintendo 64 launched in 1996 with a 64bit processor.  AMD releases a 64bit processor for servers and desktops.  When Apple launched the iPhone 5S with a 64bit processor in 2013, that is progress, not innovation.  There was no leap of the imagination that phones would eventually get 64bit processors.  The question was when it would happen.  With most technologies, you can't release it too early or too late.  You have to time the release correctly.  Eventually, all phones will run 64bit processors.  Likewise, having the first 64bit watch or microwave is not innovation.

Once mini-computer technology took off with the launch of various ARM devices, it is not innovation to stick an ARM processor in anything that you can conceive of.  Now that you have tiny and cheap SoC systems, people want "smart" everything.  Someone is going to make a smart watch.  Someone else is going to make a smart picture frame.  Someone else is going to make a smart camera.  Someone is going to make smart thermostats and smart smoke detectors.  SoCs will be everywhere.  It is not innovation every time someone puts an SoC into something that didn't have an SoC before.  That is progress.  The innovation is the design of the first SoC that started to be used with smartphones like BlackBerry (did you think I was going to say the iPhone?)

A pattern should emerge in these examples.  Having an idea, like SoC, is an innovation.  Different arrangements and designs of the SoCs are innovation.  Slapping an SoC in every inanimate object you can find is not an innovation; it is progress.  Designing a unique user interface for the SoC is innovation.  Innovation is the seed of progress.  Once someone comes out with a great innovation, that spurs off progress to make that initial innovation better.  Both the innovation and the progress are important.  Someone needs to make progress.  It just doesn't take as much effort and research to make progress.  Progress should not be patentable and you shouldn't be sued for making progress.  That is one of the major problems with the US Patent system.