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Why Geim Never Patented Graphene
gbrumfiel writes "As we discussed on Tuesday, Andre Geim won this year's Nobel prize in physics for graphene, but he never patented it. In an interview with Nature News, he explains why: 'We considered patenting; we prepared a patent and it was nearly filed. Then I had an interaction with a big, multinational electronics company. I approached a guy at a conference and said, "We've got this patent coming up, would you be interested in sponsoring it over the years?" It's quite expensive to keep a patent alive for 20 years. The guy told me, "We are looking at graphene, and it might have a future in the long term. If after ten years we find it's really as good as it promises, we will put a hundred patent lawyers on it to write a hundred patents a day, and you will spend the rest of your life, and the gross domestic product of your little island, suing us." That's a direct quote.'"
Can't they just patent it anyway, and sue him instead?
He could at least have mentioned which "big, multinational electronics company" he spoke with.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
That's a threat to abuse the legal system.
Do that, and he'll spend the rest of his life and gross income fighting interminable libel suits.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
I don't get it, he is Russian born and works in Manchester, England. Are they saying $2.2 trillion (nominal GDP of England in 2006) isn't enough to win a patent war? My god, if that's the case, then what is?
to abandon patents altogether. They simply don't do what they're supposed to do (protect inventions and especially the small inventor) but are wonderful weapons for the large corporation and patent troll to assault everyone else with. Especially those that push the envelope. Which is why we'll only see more of this in the future.
This is as fine example as any about how patents help the small business and/or lone inventor.
Y'know, just asking. If this isn't a demand with menaces, it sure the hell ain't kippers.
The interesting part of this is the use of the patent system to prevent an inventor patenting their invention. (You know damn well that the company WILL file patents in ten years anyway and will make gob-loads of money, prior-art not withstanding.) The sole value of a patent system is to ALLOW the inventor to patent their invention. It serves no other function. (The other theoretical value of properly documenting an invention has long-since given up the ghost.) That we now have a verifiable, demonstrable example of patent inversion shows that the system as it stands must be replaced.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
As said in the freely available e-book "against intellectual monopoly". I didn't write it, but it's well worth a read.
It would be hundreds of patents of specific use of Graphene, not of Graphene itself.
What Geim needs to do is open a small production facility, produce this Graphene and sell it to different companies / research institutes, see what they can come up with.
--
Oh, as to patents, all patents should be abolished.
You can't handle the truth.
...Sony. Sounds like the kind of scummy win-at-all-costs, screw-everyone-over attitude the company has had the past couple of decades.
't mind that kind of thing. The subject leads into the text, so it works pretty well.
His patent would have been for using scotch tape to peel graphene off graphite after several iterations of placing the tape on an SiO2 wafer. IANAL, but he can't patent graphene itself; if someone comes up with a better way (and there are now many better, commercially viable ways) to make it, his patent would be worthless.
Indeed, his IP is worthless now because other researchers leapfrogged him in ability to make high-quality, high throughput graphene a long time ago. Case in point, he runs a company called "Graphene Industries" that sells little flakes of his stuff for about $1000 each. By contrast, there are companies such as this one (I am not affiliated with them) that produce graphene via CVD, which is a well-known semiconductor process, for probably a very small fraction of that.
Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Corporations, and their masters have become absolutely powerful and absolutely evil. The only thing more absolute is people's denial and greed.
How many people have sold themselves out into corporate slavery?
Now, go as your told, boy.
It also has the largest surface-to-weight ratio: with one gram of graphene you can cover several football pitches (in Manchester, you know, we measure surface area in football pitches).
Can someone put this in terms of American Football fields please? Or perhaps school buses will work...thanks.
We should start a new Slashdot and return control to the geeks. It actually wouldn't be that hard to get some users to
You CANNOT patent basic elements: Graphene is a form of carbon.
However, you CAN patent a process for using graphene.
Go ahead and mod this post DOWN !
Yours In Akademgorodok,
Kilgore Trout
The dude seems to know where his towel is.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
A soccer field (BrE: football pitch) is 105 by 68 meters, or exactly 0.714 hectare. It's about one and a third U.S. football fields, which are 360 by 160 feet, or 0.5351 ha. So yes, 1 gram of graphene would still cover several football fields (in Indianapolis, you know, we measure surface area in football fields).
isn't his research funded by public money?
Maybe patents use to work 50 years ago. Now it is always the case that the company with deeper pockets always gets its way one way or the other. What really gets to me is the hypocrisy of people saying 'patents protect innovators'. They do not. Patents do anything but protecting innovation.
Just out of spite go to the corp's direct competitor(s), and let them know exactly who said what. Then offer to help said competitor(s) get a jump on things.
Hell - I'd do it just out of spite; the original corp gets bitch-slapped, competitor(s) get a Nobel Prize-winning scientist's name in their press releases, and while you still have to stupid patent issues, at least the evil is more diffuse (among competitors), and therefore less of a threat at large.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Inform the ignorant, please. I thought patents expire after a pre-set amount of years.
How does sponsoring it keep it alive for longer?
TFA asks: "Finally, are you one of those Nobel prizewinners who is going to go crazy now that you've won? "
The interviewer probably didn't know that Dr. Geim won the Ig Nobel for levitating a frog.
Between that and the fact that he cited saving taxpayer's money as a reason behind not filing a patent and his Friday experiments (which led to the scotch-tape on graphite) discovery, I think I have a new hero.
Do you also complain when someone says "American" when they mean something from USA? The rest of the world knows the difference, people just don't care enough to make the distinction when it is the norm to speak of something with the "incorrect" term.
It's also bullshit. Yes, they might be able to tie him up in court, but it would cost them more than it would cost him. That's why companies often pay up rather than fight patents that are weaker than his might have been. Cheaper to license or purchase the patent, unless the owner is insanely greedy.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I give up - hwat is the diff between UK, GB and England.
Don't they all have the same ancestors? Neanderthals?
What?
Patent System: A system put in place to be manipulated to protect corporate IP while stifling competitive innovation.
Legal System: A corporate asset which is manipulated to keep innovative products from being competitive.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
Or more likely pest eradication. Vermin like representatives at this "multinational electronics company" should be removed from the planet without remorse.
Y'know, just asking. If this isn't a demand with menaces, it sure the hell ain't kippers.
I recommend you read this.
Okay, let's look at the rest of the post.
The interesting part of this is the use of the patent system to prevent an inventor patenting their invention. (You know damn well that the company WILL file patents in ten years anyway and will make gob-loads of money, prior-art not withstanding.) The sole value of a patent system is to ALLOW the inventor to patent their invention. It serves no other function. (The other theoretical value of properly documenting an invention has long-since given up the ghost.)
They weren't preventing him from patenting the invention in any way. Just saying that he wouldn't benefit from that so much to make the cost worthwhile (and would probably need to pay some court fees to get his money). Two very different things.
Also, the ide of patent system is not to allow the inventor to patent inventions. It is not that recursive. The idea is to allow him to benefit from it. Again, he might have benefitted from it but it would probably have been too much trouble to be worth it from.
As for documenting... It is long-since given up ghost... BECAUSE of the patent system. If we go back to "Everything you want to protect must be a business secret" mentality, it will probably come back. Do you want "Company A invented something, patented it, didn't really find any use for it and 20 years later others get to use it" or "Company A invented something, didn't really come up with any uses but kept it secret 'just to be sure'... And that's it."
That we now have a verifiable, demonstrable example of patent inversion shows that the system as it stands must be replaced.
We have one new anecdote.
England is simply the country of England.
Great Britain is geographically the island that encompasses England and Scotland. Politically it can also include Wales as well.
The UK is the inclusion of Great Britain, Wales, the many smaller isles around Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
libraries of congress!
how many times do i have to say it? the relevant unit of measure is libraries of congress and is always libraries of congress no matter what the subject matter. or maybe beowulf clusters of libraries of congress
get it right please!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Counter-intuitively, this actually presents a case for stronger patents. A strong, easily enforced patent would allow Geim to secure licenses from companies using graphene without a long or expensive legal battle. Strong patents give individual inventors and startups the leverage they need to compete against established players.
Weak patents favor large, established companies. A single weak patent isn't very useful, but a thousand weak patents can destroy a startup competitor or force a settlement with a large one. The result is that large, established companies will tend to accumulate huge portfolios while preventing startups from flourishing. Startups will tend to hope to be bought up by established companies rather than try to compete on their own. And that's exactly what we see today: comparatively few new, large companies and a lot of established players with large patent portfolios that buy up new competitors and engage in low stakes patent litigation with each other that routinely ends in status quo-preserving settlements and cross-licensing agreements.
Note that strong patents are not mutually exclusive with tougher examination and stricter patentability standards. We can do things like reform the written description and enablement requirements so that patentees are forced to write narrower claims that only cover what they actually invented and not just whatever they could brainstorm or dream up without actually nailing down the particulars. Such reforms are not incompatible with making patents stronger and more easily enforced.
that wouldn't be NXP by any chance ? They are situated in Nijmegen, where Geim is also situated. Plot - thickens.
Patents provide minimal protection for individuals and significant protection for large corporations.
If a large corporation creates something and someone infringes the patent, the large corporation sues the person who's infringing until the person who infringed is broke.
If an individual creates something and a large corporation infringes the patent, the individual sues until the individual is broke, and the large corporation continues infringing on the patent.
http://improbable.com/ig/ig-pastwinners.html#ig2000
winning the nobel is of course impressive. winning the nobel AND the ignobel is beyond impressive
improbable research indeed!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Kill the "big company", with bullets, literally. There is no dialogue with the kind of company that says such things. You do not tell to the bad guy "please, do not shoot me!", you shoot him. Twice.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
The thing I don't get is why the 'big corporation' didn't go ahead and partner up with Geim so that the big corporation could use the patents against other big corporations? I mean, sure, if you just look at it as a game of inventor vs. big corp, the inventor is screwed. But there is more than one big corporation in the world - why wouldn't such a corp partner with a small inventor so that the big corp effectively controls the patent? Wouldn't that be cheaper than employing a hundred patent lawyers every day to fight the small inventor, and provide them protection against competitions from other big corps?
The system was broken long before software patents. This reminds me of RCA and Farnsworth.
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
Rather than look at this as a story about a big electronics company pushing around the little guy, I look at is as the right result reached, no matter by what means. I'm sick of seeing all of the patents that have been issued for things that were not really invented, just found to always exist and be useful. Perhaps they should be entitled to a patent on a fabrication method, on on a particular application (although that second one seems dubious), but not a patent on Graphene itself. That would be like suggesting basic elements could have been patented. Graphene is just a very common form of carbon that has long existed.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I happen to work on graphene (since 2005). The surface area of graphene is about 2600 m^/g. And that's counting both sides. So one side would be about 1300m^2. that's 13m times 100m. Definitely less than a football field -- American Football or soccer.
Why doesn't "Great Britain" *geographically* encompass Wales, also - isn't it all one island? If GB is the name for the island, as opposed to any of the political entities that share the island, isn't Wales also part of that island?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Patent wars are won all the time.
He got bluffed.
winning the nobel is of course impressive.
It is certainly not impressive to everyone, the awarding has become dubious and maybe even a bad joke. Not so much the science prizes, but the Nobel peach prize winners in the last 20 years or so have more to do with politics than peace. Examples include one to someone for making a scientifically inaccurate movie and last year's award to a President running two wars and escalating one, which they acknowledged was not for anything at all that he had done, but rather was for what they hoped he would do!
And in this case maybe the science prizes are starting to suffer the same fate. Over the years the science prizes have been awarded many times years later, after the research and insights have been seen to produce results. I'm not comfortable with this particular reward being given in this case for a new fad material that has great promise but is very thin on substance (yea, a bad pun).
So I'm really not trying to troll, but I take exception with your statement that "winning the nobel is of course impressive".
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
i wouldn't spend the rest of my life suing them... i'd spend a small fraction of it shooting them.
always will be political. additionally: ANY peace prize will be political, forever. any kind of peace is dictated according to terms. terms are always decided by processes that are political. therefore, the very concept of peace is essentially a political animal
since the peace prize is always political no matter what, then the prize will always bother someone somewhere. therefore, the existence of yourself, someone who is bothered by it, is simply a problem that has no solution. therefore your complaint has no merit, because there is nothing that can be done about your complaint: whiners and gripers will always exist in politics
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Almost 6 years ago I developed a somewhat fundamental technique in computer animation, and upon looking up prior work found absolutely nothing. I looked in the ACM and all the graphics journals I could find, and then I looked in the US patent database... nothing. Having this new capability and researching any prior work, I attracted interest from friends in the animation film industry and we started pursuing a patent, writing a business plan, and doing the whole startup thing. Of course, as many startups go, we were not overnight successes, and little by little the partners drifted off, leaving me the originator of the technique/technology earning any income I could find, while nursing the sizable patent bills. Keeping this post focused on the patent: it is very, very expensive. After 3.5 years, short by most standards, our US patent was awarded. However, you don't want protection only in the US, you need to get it internationally as well, and expressed in the language of each country/region (the E.U. is one region) you want protection. And because we're talking new technology, you can't just "translate", you need two independent native speakers of the other language that also know the field you're patenting within. First on of them translates part of the patent to the other language, and independently the other translates back to English and then the original inventor needs to verify that the essence of the patented concepts are correctly being maintained. This is hugely expensive. I did this for 8 international regions, with a 50 page original patent. Very few 'inventors' can afford such obsession - and that's exactly what it is, and what it takes to compete against the multinationals. I'm still going with this, the patent is alive, I'm slowly building something nice... but the patent bills keep me poor, and I'll never be able to afford to fight if someone infringes without a corporate backer that will probably screw me in the process... the world's corrupt. Live with it, but don't give up.
Or did he already own the island?
A material that promising could generate enough money to fight off said corporate douchebag - while licensing the product to the douchebag's competitors.
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
If each of you have patents that the other needs, you make a sharing arrangement, this happens frequently between big players. Better, you make no product and license the patents you have and they need to use theirs, and they make the products. I'm pretty sure that's how the patent system is supposed to work for inventors, who are more interested in inventing than manufacturing and sales.
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
Yup, indeed. Patents are the modern and scientific equivalent of the "Mutual Assured Destruction" doctrine and its nuclear madness.
only much worse because during the cold war, the nuke-equipped countries kept showing off to each other only through weapon tests, nobody nuked small nuke-less countries on a regular basis just just to kill off competition.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Yes, Wales *is* part of Great Britain. GP is incorrect.
Great Britain = England + Wales + Scotland
So sit down, shut up, and don't question the ministry, Peasant!
Did nobody RTFA? Just before he was asked the patent question they were talking about him visiting Samsung in Korea and how they were showing him something done with graphene. The context was rather obvious that it could very well be Samsung - The Big Electronics Corporation.
I have an invention to prevent the patenting of inventions. While that may sound onerous, I suspect that it will actually alleviate a lot of the trouble we have been having with patent trolls and return patents to the realm of real innovation. I invented it last July but it doesn't seem that anyone has actually taken me up on the idea.
I propose that we create a database of all possible discrete elements and limitations that have appeared in all existing patents and any other documentation anywhere. Heck, people could even add any additional elements or limitations as they see fit. Then use a simple computer program to generate and "publish" articles with every possible combination of element and limitation. I know, we are talking about trillions and trillions of articles. The program could never finish.
Therefore, I also propose the following additional, optional features:
I realize that this would likely require more web document storage space than is currently indexed by Google. Therefore, I also propose the following additional options for storing and "publishing" the "articles":
Wales and England are legally one country --- have been ever since the english conquered us in the 1200's.
Why isn't Ireland called Minor Britain?
Patent offices have loads of work because of all these patents. Where two dogs fight over a bone the third one takes it. In this case thats the patent office. So to game the system, look to business processes as they can be patented too. Some small patent office, only setup for the sole purpose to spoil the patent industry, should patent patent-processes and sue every patent office that can be found. Also patent useless stuff of certain software parts that happen to be used also on the average patent office website. And gather funding of some small software companies behind a smokescreen. Than we sure see how the patent industry benefits from the thing called software patents and business process patents.It is ofcourse big news if a patent office loses suits on patents. Than put the news on Slashdot with some links to several patent office websites and than they have enough PR like there is no tomorrow...
I just would like to point out the irony that their paper on the initial Quantum Hall Effect measurement, one that verified that they did have a single layer graphene since it has a distinct QHE signature, was rejected by Nature and they have to "settle" for Science...
Now Nature is doing the interview...
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the 'social sciences' is: some do, some don't
In other words you discovered a mathematical algorithm, and proceeded to patent it.
I have absolutely no sympathy for your difficulties in attempting to monopolise mathematics and in all honesty for the good of wider society I would hope that your attempt fails. Unfortunately, it may very well succeed. And while that will probably not result in benefit to you personally, it will further damage the freedoms of intellectual thought and scientific inquiry in many countries across the world.
The benefits of rewarding you for your discovery are far outweighed by the costs to wider society. Neither you, nor anyone else should be receiving these patents.
May the Maths Be with you!
Well it's not even MAD. If you're a patent troll you have nothing to lose, so it's like terrorists can just run up to regular companies and hold the secretary at gunpoint and threaten to shoot, and that's sometimes enough for a "go away" settlement. And then of course the venue is the East Texas Court, and more often than anyone would like to admit, the troll extorts millions or hundreds of millions of dollars for an invention no one would consider remarkable.
So I guess if we're going to make a cold war analogy, the Afghanis are running wild and kicking ass, the superpowers are tiptoeing around each other and the regular people are scared or powerless to do much about it.