I would be willing to bet that the inventor thought the same - "hey, here's a perfect invention - I'll be rich" - he might have even built a working prototype in his garage.

Then he spent $$$$ on getting the patent - this isn't cheap - my brother-in-law went thru this, and getting a lawyer and such, having it drawn up, written properly...it cost him $25k easily...

...and then this inventor probably shopped it around to the various mobility equipment companies. All of them likely said "no". It wouldn't surprise me to find that one or more of them came out with (or imported) a similar "invention"! That happened with my brother-in-law's invention...

Regardless, now these device manufacturers - if they haven't already - are possibly all scrambling to be the first to market with such an "invention", and hailing it as a welcome and needed innovation for the elderly and infirm. They'll make a ton of money off of it.

None of it will go to the inventor, and 20 years have passed where more than one person could have used this, and probably died in the meantime wishing for something like this every time they went to the restroom.

Don't say this is a fanciful flight - it happens; it happened with my brother-in-law. Toyota infringed on it, but he didn't have the money to fight it. He did manage to get Bell from importing an infringing device (settled out of court). Ultimately, what he gained barely covered what he spent over the years. This is how the patent game is played in some regard: If the "little guy" patents it, he doesn't get anything, unless he manages to market and produce it himself. Large players or other companies aren't interested, they can just "wait" - or go ahead and infringe and the original inventor can't do anything. Unless that inventor is another large company.

It's a very frustrating system for the lone guy working in his garage; it's no wonder that many of these guys just release things as open-source hardware, or in some other similar fashion. They know that if they don't, it will never get produced. If they try to produce it, Chinese manufacturers will copy it and sell it in no time. If they patent it, they'll spend a ton of money, and gain nothing - or large companies will just outsource it and import it, or infringe in other ways - or just sit on it, and wait for the patent to run out.

I wish it were different - but that's our patent system - it doesn't reward the small guy any longer.

On a different note - something that I wish could be automated would be a tool or something to help properly write patents. If you read enough of them, you realize that they have a very special, very convoluted "language" and "syntax" - specifically designed (?) to detail the invention and construction thereof of the invention, while detailing how it is fundamentally different from similar devices, how it improves upon them, and how each part works and interacts with other parts.

It seems like something that could be automated - or at least computer assisted? As it stands, to get these written requires experts in the field, patent attorneys, copy writers, etc - it isn't something an ordinary person can easily do without a ton of study (and they will likely get it wrong, causing the patent to be rejected, or worse - to pass with a ton of holes in it that can be exploited). As such, it is part of the process that makes getting a patent very expensive (the government fees and such are small potatoes - that isn't what makes getting a patent expensive, but rather the need for technical patent copy writers and drafting specialists for drawings).