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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!
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
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".
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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.
It sounds like they were more interested in having prior art to invalidate someone else's future patents in future rather than the patents themselves. A bunch of documents stored at the patent office would be great for this since they obviously couldn't take the usual prior art route of publishing. Getting a patent would be bad too, since that would be published.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
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.
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.
What would make you think that the US Government would halt their work because someone had a patent on it? They would simply declare it a state secret and continue. They didn't need anyone's permission to invade Iraq. The whole thing is a big bizarre. I think it was just misguided thinking at the time, or perhaps those involved thought that a patent would stop the government... my how times have changed.
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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
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?
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.
The US government has defended the UK against the Nazis and Communists and defended Taiwan against the crypto fascist Chinese 'Communists'. Plus the've helped the world resist Islamofascism. I'm not going to say that they always did the optimal thing, but I do think that they acted mostly in good faith and mostly backed the right side. In fact I'm seriously considering moving to the US at some point. I think it's frankly bizarre that some US citizens don't see this, given that US foreign policy is decided democratically and therefore partly by them. Maybe those US citizens would be happier somewhere else ;-)
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Here's the link to November 1, 1917 NYT article, btw. Sometimes Google search is too cool. http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9905E1DC113AE433A25752C0A9679D946696D6CF&oref=slogin
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
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?
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.
In answer to your questions, allow me to clarify this highly misleading quote from the summary:
'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."'
Top-secret government projects, like the Manhattan Project and the F-117 Nighthawk are, in fact, documented at the USPO in a protected vault, but they are documented as patent applications, not actual patents. If other entities develop technology which might infringe on patents related to the projects, the government asks the USPO to open whichever application is related. It's more "proof of prior art" than anything else. Once the actual patent is filed, the technology becomes public knowledge, so anyone else who applies for a patent on that technology will find their patent rejected along with good documentation of exactly why.
Scary? A little. But it's hard to think of any better, viable way to protect classified technology.
...the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
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.