DearDiary.2004-03-03
Does any one else see this as being fundamentally wrong? Let's take the intellectual property debate to its most absurd conclusion. I here by submit a patent to AnewGo for the O2 molecule. Any one who benefits commercially from O2 must ask me for a license. I will use all proceeds to make my self rich. --DavidSiegel
Goog one David The life process is heaviy dependent on carbon nanotubes in many ways, significantly in mitosis , the cellular division process. I suppose all living things will need to pay NEC to grow. --JimScarver
I wonder how the world would change if we dropped all copyright patent laws in the world. All trade marks, brands, lyrics, ideas, products processes, tools, names, anything and everything becomes public domain.
There would be no incentives for me to hide in my closet developing a better mouse trap because if I ever managed to come up with some new innovation anyone could copy it the next day and start improving on it. Of course, I could then copy their innovations if I thought they were real improvements. So why not pool our collective creativity with anyone else who is interested in making better mousetraps? Then we could all make the best state of the art mouse trap and try to see who can make them cheaper. If I come up with an innovative production process for our state of the art mouse trap, then my competition could copy it the next day and start improving on it.
So, does this completely shut down the incentive to innovate or does it encourage collaborative innovation? How could I convince the consumers of mousetraps that mine was significantly better than my competition, since he can exactly copy it down to the packaging and brand name? If I used a red package and he used a blue one, he would switch to red as soon as he realized red mousetraps are more appealing. Or he might scale down his operation a bit and sell only blue mousetraps to the consumers who preferred blue.
In this economy companies are forced to produce exactly the right number of units of exactly the right product as cheaply as physically possible. Then they must sell them at exactly the right price to exactly the right people. Now, if every person on the face of the earth were employed under such a system, there would be no poverty anywhere on the face of the earth. We could raise and feed a family of four on about 15 hours of work a week. ---DavidSiegel (Still dreaming of ways to save the world) (I am sure this discussion is nothing new, just new to me.)
I disagree with you on almost all of your points, DavidSiegel.
First off, as Carbon Nanotubes are not naturally occuring molecules (you do not find them in the depths of space, floating on the surface of the ocean, etc), they are indeed patentable.
Second, even if they were to occur naturally but are rare (like diamonds), the process to make them is patentable, and that would allow their patent holder to then charge other people/companies to use any process that appears very similar to their process licensing fees.
Now, the reason we grant patents is so that the entities that develop new things earn a "reward" period where the developer is considered the "owner" of that patent. They can sell it, license others to use it, or use it themselves. This then makes developing new things a simple Risk Versus Reward matter for Big Business, and allows the individual or Small Business to profit from their own hard work (and possibly grow into a Big Business). If Big Business didn't have to pay others to use their hard work, everyone would suffer. New developments would slow down, because there would be little reward to developing something new. Why invest in developing or research when you can just copy other company's products? Let them waste their money trying to develop it, and as soon as they have it working, you then take the product and produce it, and you can charge a cheaper price for it, because you didn't sink all that money down to develop the product in the first place.
Remember, patents expire, and when that happens, those patents become public domain. So at worst, you have something that has to be known for one or two generations before it can be used "freely" by all. So, at worst you have a minor drag on the knowledge of the WE.
The fact that patents expire has the beneficial effect that Businesses are spurred on to find new patentable properties, to try and maintain their "edge" or revenue stream, that they are going to lose when their patent enters into the public domain.
That is not to say that there isn't silly patents awarded. They certainly are. But silly patents (patenting electricty or the process of natural counting, for example) get turned over in court as soon as someone tries to enforce them.
Patents themselves are good for their creators and the process of creating new applicable knowledge or products.
Just think... you cannot patent the human heart. But an entity can patent the process for growing a new human heart. Because of that, many venture and research businesses are pursuing various technologies to do so. As we get closer to being able to feasibly do so, even more companies and people invest into those venture and research businesses. Money is the lifeblood of research. If it wasn't for patents, then the only research done would be entirely on the government dole (done for government needs, real or political) and by the oddball inventor or charitable investor. Patents provide us with an entire business layer on top of that world, and that means more things discovered, and faster discoveries. Even if it is only in how to keep the bubbles in you beer longer, or to have better foaming in your shaving gel. But the better we understand such things, the better we understand related things. For instance: the actual processes of fires and the gases around them, and therefore, how to make homes and businesses be more resistant to fire and therefore save more lives (via less fires or by allow more time to evacuate from a buring structure before it becomes unsurvivable).
As long as a patent isn't enforcable for too long a frame of time, I think we gain more then we lose.
---StarPilot
Carbon nanotubes are a natural part of the life process. They are not unique to the laboratory or rare in nature. Patents have a good side and a bad side. If NEC research is responsible for the technology then they deserve the patent. Shame on US for not delevoping the technology in the public domain. -- JimScarver
Jim, where do you get the idea that carbon nanotubes are a natural part of the life process? When does the human body (or any mammalian body) make a carbon nanotube (CNT)? What naturally forms CNT? In all my following of nano-tech, nowhere have I ever found mention of them occuring naturally. Merely some early theorizing that it would be possible for carbon to be exist in such a configuration (which could be used by a challenger to any patent on carbon nanotubes as "prior art"). If you want CNT to be in the public domain, such as O2 and O3 are, then you need to trot out these naturally occuring CNT examples and make it known... if NEC's patent is purely on CNTs.
And again, there are several patents on making diamonds and crude oil, artifically, despite the fact that diamonds and crude oil are naturally occuring material (and crude oil is the result of the natural processing of vegetable remains over time, technically making it a natural life process). Again, you can still patent how to make a naturally occuring product.
Now, when they get around to making bucky balls, I will be curious if they can be patented. Or just the manufactoring process can be patented, as bucky balls have serious "prior art" instances in the public domain. ;)
---StarPilot
Oops, I'm thinking of microtubules, not carbon nanotubes, sorry. microtubules have similar properties but are made of protiens, not carbon. sorry. http://www.life.umd.edu/CBMG/faculty/wolniak/wolniakmitosis.html
I do believe nanotubes and buckballs occur naturally at random in soot formation.
ToDo
<tasks> [ ] Move all this patent talk off to some form of patent wiki page of its own. </tasks>