Expired patents, tiny buildable bets.

Magnetic resonance wireless charging for moving warehouse robots

Plain English: Wireless charging, but it works over longer distances. It beams electricity through the air using magnetic waves, similar to how radio signals travel.

Automatic contactless charging docks that deliver power across air gaps to active fleets.

One-Click Checkout

Plain English: It's like having a store remember your address and credit card so you can buy anything just by clicking one button.

Amazon held a monopoly on placing an order with a single click using saved details. Its 2017 expiration unlocked checkout platforms like Bolt and Shopify Shop Pay.

RSA Cryptographic Algorithm

Plain English: It's like a padlock with two keys: one key is public and anyone can use it to lock a box, but only the owner has the private key to unlock it.

MIT's RSA patent restricted the core public-key cryptography algorithm in the US. Its release to the public domain in 2000 unlocked secure online banking and ecommerce.

Parcel Tracking with Email Notifications

Plain English: It's like a post office system that emails you a special link so you can check where your box is as it travels.

Describes storing customer emails and parcel tracking numbers, sending automated status updates via email as the package moves. Expiration frees notification triggers.

Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) 3D Printing

Plain English: It's like a computer-controlled hot glue gun that builds 3D toys and plastic parts layer-by-layer.

Stratasys held the core monopoly on plastic filament extrusion. Its 2009 expiration instantly birthed MakerBot, RepRap, and the entire consumer 3D printing revolution.

Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange

Plain English: It's like two people mixing paint colors in public to create a secret color that only they can identify, without showing their original colors.

Stanford's Diffie-Hellman patent controlled public key exchanges over public lines. Expiration in 1997 removed a massive tollbooth from early web confidentiality.

Active Reservation System for Venues & Events

Plain English: It's a digital coordinator that makes sure two people don't try to book the exact same tennis court or movie ticket at the same time.

Describes replicating a venue's local inventory database to an online active reservation server, managing distributed slots. Expiration opens event databases.

Live Restaurant Seat & Waitlist Visibility

Plain English: It's like a live digital map showing which tables in a restaurant are empty, eating dessert, or ready for next customers.

Describes table status tracking (table numbers, vacancy, seating progress) synced to reservation portals. Expiration opens real-time status access for local restaurants.

LZW Compression (GIF Patent Barrier)

Plain English: It's like a packing trick that finds repeated patterns in a picture and shrinks them so the file loads quickly.

Unisys shocked the early web by demanding royalties for GIF compression. The patent's 2003 expiration liberated meme apps and open-source browser rendering engines.

MP3 Audio Compression & Encoding

Plain English: It's a smart formula that shrinks high-quality songs into small computer files so they can be sent easily over the internet.

Technicolor's MP3 licensing program required royalty fees for all encoding/decoding products. Expiration in 2017 unlocked free audio tools, game audio engines, and podcast platforms.

Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) 3D Printing

Plain English: It's like using a laser beam to draw on a flat bed of powder, turning the loose dust into solid plastic pieces.

SLS allows printing of highly functional, complex nylon parts without support structures. Expiration in 2014 drove commercial machine costs down from $100k to under $10k.

Restaurant Queue Time Prediction

Plain English: It looks at how fast people are paying their bills and how many tables are empty to guess exactly when you will get a seat.

Describes combining central reservation, table management, and POS data to output highly accurate queue time predictions for specific dining party sizes.