Saturday, June 25, 2005

Detecting Novelty with Brain Sensors

I have noticed that whenever a novel idea occurs to me I feel a rush of excitement. I believe this emotion, if possible to detect with biometric sensors, could tell us when someone has thought of a new idea.

I have also noticed I feel excited whenever I suddenly understand someone else’s novel idea. Maybe we could detect if members of a jury in a patent lawsuit agree with an inventor’s claim that his or her invention is novel. Perhaps this would give us a more objective way to handle intellectual property claims.