how's this for a meta-ironic comment: when I read your first 2 sentences, I immediately thought of a joke that I was going to make along the lines of, "sorry I have a patent on systems allowing you to submit a negative amount of faith in something, pay up or shutup!"

Then I read your last 2 sentences. Too weird! Also goes to show, again, what a joke the patent system is. Multiple people can "independently" come up with the same "innovation", given reasonably similar skills and context.