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A comment on Hedge Fund Wants to Use Atomic Clocks to Beat High-Speed Traders. Parent comment

Re:Hedge Fund Wants to Use Atomic Clocks to Beat High-Speed ... by beezle on Monday July 11, 2016 @12:22PM (#12072129)
"As obvious as the idea seems in hindsight" And the "obvious" should not be patentable. And of note, this technique has been done before in the past in different market and theirs is only an adaptation to the current equity markets.
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Re:Hedge Fund Wants to Use Atomic Clocks to Beat High-Speed ... by nycdatasci on Monday July 11, 2016 @01:36PM (#12072745)
I'm conflicted on whether or not a patent should have been granted. I've worked in equity execution for about a decade and do feel that this is novel.

On the other hand, this is a clear case of using the patent system to secure and persist an inefficiency in the market. It's hard to measure the cost of such an inefficiency to institutional investors (mutual funds, pensions, endowments, etc) but I suspect that it is well into the billions annually.

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