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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."
If I'm building an atomic bomb, the threat of being hit by a patent lawsuit seems somewhat lower than, say, the threat of being bombed into a metaphor.
Plus, this is just the patent office. Now if the _IRS_ were involved...
So the cold war was really just about patent infringement?
Of course I didn't RTFA.
Next up in the North Korean six Party talks:
USA: But we patented it, you're building the bomb in violation of our intellectual property!
North Korea: Well now that's finally a sound argument. We'll stop then. Have a nice day.
*white peace doves are sent flying*
It's good to finally see the patent system serving a purpose. Protecting us from nuclear terrorists. There's no way they couldn't infringe at least one patent!
nuff said
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
How does this work?
"You are infringing on my patent, the nature of which I can't disclose. Hand over money!"
pay up before you kill us
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
What about when the patent runs out? Why even patent it at all, and risk the information being leaked. Better to just keep it secret. It's not like anybody building a nuclear bomb is worried about getting charged with patent infringement.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
If I've got an atomic bomb, I'm not going to pay any attention to your patent lawsuit.
As should be pretty obvious from all the other people who got atomic bombs.
Obvious to anyone, except evidently the retarded capitalists, lawyers or bureaucrats who shared the most secret and dangerous info in the world with an office whose primary mission is publishing technical info, for no use whatsoever except increasing the risk of proliferating the weapons.
Patent dementia. The kind of thing communists mean when they say "capitalists will sell the rope for the nooses to hang them".
--
make install -not war
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.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
The atomic bomb is many years ago. Anything patentable should either be prior art or has patent expired. And isn't to 'share knowledge' (many many years later) the patent system's objective? How can knowledge be shared if hidden? And how would patent infringement handled??
Did they remember to patent the detonation? Or the destruction? Fallout? Or would the mushroom cloud fall under copyright law?
The Admin and the Engineer
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.)
Request your free CD of my piano music.
It'll be a brave lawyer who threatens North Korea with patent violation. ;)
The nuclear chain reaction was patented in the UK in 1934 by Leo Szilard. To guarantee secrecy it was later transferred to the British Admiralty, but by 1938, Szilard had lost faith that chain reactions were feasible and recommended the patent be withdrawn. In January 1939, when he learned that fission had been observed in uranium, Szilard sent an urgent telegram to the Admiralty telling them to disregard the cancellation.
I'm not sure (but would love to know) if the UK passed Szilard's patent, (along with all the rest of our nuclear secrets), to the US Manhattan Project. Certainly Szilard never collected on his original patent and his attempts to get money out of his patents from the US government came to nothing.
You develop a brand spanking new technology, say one that allows a government to instantly disarm the entire population of another country and cause the inhabitants to welcome your soldiers by throwing flowers at their feet.
Since other countries just might want to utilize this invention, ignoring all IP infringements, following the normal patent process of publishing is not very practical.
You at the same time, do not want your competitors to be able to use your IP to underbid you, therefore you want to patent it.
Another reason why there might be patents would be simply for the benefit of the researchers involved.
The members of the Manhattan Project were all research scientists and engineers. Technically, what they accomplished was nothing short of amazing. They went from brand new basic physics and science discoveries to deployable weapons in just a few years. And while the principal players were already working in the physics world, they weren't able to publish the results of their work because it was top secret stuff.
It is only speculation, but it could be that the scientists and engineers were allowed to publish their work through patents that wouldn't see the light of day and could be kept under lock and key. They get to add numerous patents to their CVs and account for their years of work without revealing the inner workings of the weapons to the world. At least that could have been the intent. A few spies managed to compromise a lot of the information and the USSR exploded their own, copycat weapon shortly after the end of WWII.
"Attention, people of the earth, I have 100 nukes, and now I control the world. Mwahahahahaha! Hold on, phone call. What do you mean I am violating your intelectual property? Oh great, no, no need to sue, I'll surrender those nukes and be back with hydrogen bombs in a while. You say those are patented too? Oh great! How about biochemical weapons? I'll tell you what, screw world domination!"
...for someone to give us a good ol' "someone set us up the bomb" joke for this one? I haven't had enough caffeine to attempt funny this morning.
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/documents/0700_706_03_b.htm
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.
Dekker Dreyer
What a brilliant Republican contingency plan! In the (likely) event that the Democrats retake the White House, the trial lawyers who fund the Democratic Party will demand the (military?) enforcement of the patents that the Iranian theocracy is breaking! Absolute genius!
(j/k, I think...)
On second thought this rule barring patentablity makes perfect sense. The act was passed in 1954 after much of the initial development work was performed. This would essentially lock the technology up by having all of the initial work covered by their modified patent system and then barring future patents in the area.
Hey! I resent that! The UK owns its own weapons completely. To be fair, we don't seem to be in complete control of the launch codes, but I'm sure when we call up america and ask for them nicely the old yanks'll just hand em right over, right?
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?
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
You mean all that info is stored somewhere in a Patent Office?. I thought you had to break into some maximum security complex to get at it, and then just to a part of it. But there, in some dusty patent office, there is that lot of interesting info. Reminds me of the end scene of "Raiders of the Lost Ark".
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
If you think the law is silly, here is why it exists: A government contractor develops a product, on their own(w/o being paid directly by the government), that has classified applications, the government can give you a contract to work more with it, but in the process classify the product. So you can still get a patent but its for classified work. An important note is that if you are under contract from the government, nothing you do for that contract can be work done towards a patent. This is so the government isn't funding the development of patents, and so the government can facilitate movement of ideas easily throughout contractors.
The parent isn't funny, and while insightful probably fits, I think a category of depressing should be an option.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
>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 late.
Yeah right, Russians DID care...
... this is why we haven't seen an Apple iBomb yet.
Have gnu, will travel.
Patent documents are legal documents. Language needs to be explicit. How else will you evaluate the patent without being able to interpret the words for what they are - not what they clandestinely mean? For instance, do you think you would be allowed to write a legal document with substituted words and then argue that the words really mean something else? This would establish a bad precedent as now words can be generalized beyond their original intent.
they spent my taxpayer money on this? hmm. i guess it is probably ok that private companies are not making bombs. the government should instead classify the patents relating to "explosives" as illegal for anyone to own, including the government. we don't need nuclear bomb patents. conventional weapons are plenty.
-- Betting on the survival of the media industry is a serious risk. I advise investing elsewhere.
The PhDs involved need to patent and publish. It's really that simple.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
then no, they didn't spend your money on this. You do realize that private companies do make bombs? that there are very few 'government' manufacturing facilities, right?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
They blundered quite a bit when it was discovered that the design of the U-boats that Germans used in WWI came from the patents filed by an American engineer.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Clearly any of the patents on the early bomb designs have long since expired. Nitpicking the summary blurb.
I'd force you to accept my patent claims, whether they are legit or not.
What's the point of a secret patent? Isn't the point of patents to prevent infringement of the creator's intellectual property? How can somebody else possibly avoid infringing on that intellectual property if the fact that somebody owns that intellectual property is a secret?
And does this open the door to lawsuits in which the defendant had no possible way of knowing that they were doing anything wrong? Scary.
who patented chain-reaction in England and assigned the patent to the Admiralty as World War II was getting underway.
yes, the nuclear chain-reaction is patented.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Dictator: I am going to build nukes! All other countries will given into my demands! Get on it.
Defense Secretary: Uh yeah, little problem here.
Dictator: What? We got the uraniam & stuff.
Defense Secretary: No, it's not that.
Dictator: Don't worry! Bush is busy in Iraq. What?
Defense Secreatary: Uh, it's about the patents. We legally can't build one.
Dictator: Oh darn, guess we won't be building one. We still have those bio-weapon plans around?
I saw the Headline and thought "Rush to patent the atomic bomb? What would the top Canadian power trio want with the rights to atomic weaponry?" But of course, I'd forgotten that they probably want to update their light show for their current Snakes and Arrows tour (part 2).
that'll be it.
"..and the things that he fears is a patent to be held against him"
read what article?
Travelling forward in time at a rate of 1 second per second.
That patents developed from government-sponsored research should belong to the public (i.e. the government), and not to the companies doing the research?
Patenting the Atomic Bomb seems a little retro. I mean, just look at all the men who have applied for all these patents: Merkin Muffley, General Buck Turgidson, General Jack D. Ripper, Major T. J. Kong, even three people who weren't even Americans applied for these patent Dr. Merkwürdigliebe, Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, and Alexei de Sadesky.
The one thing I Can't seem to figure out is why several of these patents involve the patenting of fluoride in drinking water signed by General Ripper.
/POE
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
The Manhattan Project was actually run by the University of California. It's the only way Oppenheimer would accept running the program. He told the military that the only way he would be able to get the people he needed was if it was an academic institution running it.
UC not only ran the Manhattan Project start to finish, it also ran the Los Alamos and Livermore laboratories until the last couple of years.
Operating in an academic environment, I could very easily see that the researchers would be valued and their welfare looked out for by finding ways for them to "document" their contributions without releasing the information to the world through regular publishing channels.
It was a different government then. Except for the part where they set up camps for Japanese-Americans.
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
Patenting the bomb could be almost as good as world peace.
1.Patent bomb.
2. Wait until Dick Tater builds own bomb.
2. Send cease and desist notices.
3. Dick Tater ignores these.
4. Send planes full of lawyers.
5. Dick Tater shoots lawyers.
6. Good enough result.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Patents do nothing to prevent you building something for your own use using your own materials. They only protect the inventor from you pursuing a commercial interest in the invention.
So, if you want to build your own atomic bomb a la The Manhattan Project, be my guest. Nobody is going to file a patent suit against you (although I would worry deeply about NRC, ATF, DHS, FBI, NSA, and many other three-letter organizations that would be interested in you).
We apologise for the inconvenience caused by our technician giving you the self destruct codes by mistake. Rest assured they have been suspended, without pay.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Odd ,that the patent office would allow a patent on a military application. If you read the laws concerning patents, you cannot patent anything of national security. Any patent that is granted on inventions used by the government for national security are invalid and unenforceable. I don't recall the actual wording, but that is the net affect. So I wouldn't worry about patents on Atomic bombs, however, anyone considering building one might want to read up on the "Nuclear Boy Scout". Google it. It' hilarious, although I predict he will have health problems someday. Enriching radioactive isotopes in your garage with no shielding isn't terribly farsighted behavior.
I'm sure that the random third world dude trying to put together an A-bomb is going to say "oh fuck, it's patented" and throw his hands up in dispair... :|
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
"UC not only ran the Manhattan Project start to finish, it also ran the Los Alamos and Livermore laboratories..." Let me tell you, as a former LLNL employee, that place could be a genuine NIGHTMARE to work at. Never in my career had I encountered so many adult infants concentrated so heavily in one place at one time. They had absolutely no idea of what it is like to try to work to a deadline, much less within budget constraints - perish the thought of trying to come in UNDER budget. It is a wonder that anything of any value ever exited there in a timely fashion.
... i would just nuke the patent office.