The Rush To Patent the Atomic Bomb

dooling writes "In case you were thinking of building your own atom bomb, you may want to weigh your intellectual property liability. It seems there are over 2000 patents covering the atom bomb. To avoid publishing the patents, a central tenet of the patent system, "the project made use of an obscure law whereby patent applications could be filed but no one would actually look at them or evaluate them. They would just be stamped secret and stored in a vault at the patent office." The irony here is that while all the patents were essentially stored in the same place at the patent office and written to be understandable by any engineer, the Manhattan Project worked diligently to compartmentalize knowledge, using code names for just about all aspects of the project and keeping tight security on all information. It seems the patents were filed to give the U.S. government an essential monopoly on the burgeoning nuclear industry and protect it against others who might patent similar technologies later."

Comments

Where's the editor?

[Anonymous Coward]

To avoid publishing the patents, a central tenant of the patent system, The word is tenet, as in canon, rule, orthodoxy, creed, etc. I think.

No more atomic weapon patents

[CajunArson]

Yes this story is mostly for historical amusement, it has very little significance. Also, remember is applies to patents from the ORIGINAL Manhattan Project era. If you go out an invent a novel invention useful solely for atomic weapons you won't get a patent on it today: From the MPEP

706.03(b) Barred by Atomic Energy Act [R-2] - 700 Examination of Applications
706.03(b) Barred by Atomic Energy Act [R-2]

A limitation on what can be patented is imposed by the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. Section 151(a) (42 U.S.C. 2181(a)>)No patent shall hereafter be granted for any invention or discovery which is useful solely in the utilization of special nuclear material or atomic energy in an atomic weapon.

The terms "atomic energy" and "special nuclear material" are defined in Section 11 of the Act (42 U.S.C. 2014).

Sections 151(c) and 151(d) (42 U.S.C. 2181(c) and (d)) set up categories of pending applications relating to atomic energy that must be brought to the attention of the Department of Energy. Under 37 CFR >*1.14(d)1.14(d)Director))

    And for the record I AM a registered patent agent.

At Least One Of Those Patens Was Declassified

[MichaelCrawford]

Saddam Hussein really was working on Weapons of Mass Destruction - up until the first Gulf War at least.

I read a Scientific American article (sorry, I don't have a reference) about what weapons inspectors had uncovered, including copies of the declassified patent for an improvement to the Calutron.

Calutrons are large mass spectrometers used to refine Uranium. They are very simple in principle, but in practice they work very poorly. At first the Manhattan project tried to improve them - resulting in this patent - but after the war they abandoned it for the far more efficient Uranium Hexafluoride gas centrifuge.

I guess the Calutron was considered so obsolete that no harm was forseen in declassifying its patents.

Calutrons require massive amounts of electricity. To avoid suspicion, Hussein ran power cables hundreds of miles underground to the Calutron facilities.

If you don't believe me, I have a photo of one of Hussein's Calutrons (courtesy of the IAEA) at the end of this section of my essay Kiss Your Sorry Ass Goodbye! The Atom Bomb Is Gonna Fly.

(And yes, I was surprised myself to find that domain available.)

Re:Secret patent?

[sir_eccles]

In the UK at least, it works thusly... Every single patent application goes through one special office with a locked door and a big heavy safe to be vetted for National Security purposes. Most things will just get a cursory glance but if you mention stuff like radar, munitions, nuclear power etc it will get a closer look to see if it poses a risk. It may or may not then get published. Still gets searched and examined I think. I would assume any infringement proceedings would take place in closed session.

Making of the Atomic Bomb

[dekkerdreyer]

The reason for patenting ideas about the Manhattan Project are well explained in The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes which is a fantastic read. Nearly 1000 pages and Amazon is selling it for less than $15. The covers the recent history of modern science better than any textbook I've found.

Re:Just like the Yanks....

[Oktober Sunset]

Actually the UK scientists simply remembered all the experiments and did them again when they got back home, making the UK the 3rd nuclear state, they then tricked the US into going them their H-bomb research, after their own H-bomb failed, by building a giant A-bomb (the biggest fission bomb ever made) and pretending it was a H-bomb, so who's the shmucks now eh?

Re:Terrorism

[Foobar of Borg]

Building it in a country which doesn't have patent treaties with nuclear weapon producing countries would do the job.

Well, there is also the fact that the patents have loooong since expired. Unlike copyrights, patents still have sane terms. It's 20 years from filing now. I think it was 17 years from the time of the patent grant back in 1955, which was when the patent shown on the NPR site was granted.

Re:Mutually Assured Patent Destruction

[Daniel Dvorkin]

I think you're thinking of Little Boy. Fat Man was the plutonium-implosion bomb detonated over Nagasaki, and those are hard to get right. Little Boy was the gun-type uranium bomb detonated over Hiroshima, and you're right, those are absurdly easy to build if you can get the refined uranium.

Re:Mutually Assured Patent Destruction

[Adambomb]

Hope no one tells them about neutron bombardment and enriching techniques...

It's happened before heh