Why This Year's Physics Nobel Winner Never Patented Graphene
from the keeping-the-legal-profession-employed dept
Slashdot points us to an interview with Andre Geim, who won this year's Nobel Prize for physics for his work on graphene. As part of the interview, they asked him about patenting graphene:You haven't yet patented graphene. Why is that?It's certainly not an anti-patent statement (he sounds like he'd happily patent some uses of graphene), but it is illustrative of how companies view patents these days.
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.
I considered this arrogant comment, and I realized how useful it was. There was no point in patenting graphene at that stage. You need to be specific: you need to have a specific application and an industrial partner. Unfortunately, in many countries, including this one, people think that applying for a patent is an achievement. In my case it would have been a waste of taxpayers' money.
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Filed Under: andre geim, graphene, patents
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Wow - I'll bet he's a lot of fun at a party
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Merely as a side note, this material appears to be somewhere near the beginning of the learning curve for product applications, and that such applications are likely so far down the road that a patent issuing on the material would expire before it could even be infringed. Hence, I am inclined to believe that chosing not to file a patent application was a good decision.
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In private, and "high level" as this, corporate types *do* talk like gangsters.
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can't he put it in the public domain?
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Re:
This conversation illustrates a problem with patents. They don't defend individual inventors, they defend corporate interests.
In the end though, if this guy doesn't have an application for it, what does he need IP for? Why is he entitled to the financial future of graphene without taking any more financial risk?
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Re: Re:
This is not true. Look at all the high profile cases which companies like Microsoft and Apple are losing. Solo inventors and small companies do successfully defend their patent property rights. That is why these big companies are whining about litigation. They are getting their tails kicked.
Ronald J. Riley,
Speaking only on my own behalf.
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 - (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
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A good quote...
-Mario Savio, free speech activist. December, 1964
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Re: A good quote...
of the machine of government, let it go, let it go:
perchance it will wear smooth, certainly the machine will
wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a
rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps
you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the
evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the
agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.
Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine. What I
have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the
wrong which I condemn." From On Civil Disobedience
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Wait for patents
Early on the question of patents came up. My friends, knowing even less than I, always asked if I were patenting it. Operating on a shoestring I certainly did not want to spend any money at all that I did not have to.
Articles like this make clear the reality I noticed then: the patent doesn't matter until money is rolling in. Early on, when my project had no track record, why would I patent? Who would ever know or care unless it went somewhere? And if I became bigger than Apple, it would be all about who could afford the lawyers, and we'd take care of it then.
As it did not work out, I am sooooo glad I didn't waste any money trying to patent anything.
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Re: Wait for patents
Ronald J. Riley,
Speaking only on my own behalf.
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 - (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
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Re: Wait for patents
That's what imagination patents are all about! Ensuring that failed businesses get to reap the benefits of successful ones.
They wouldn't have actually worked in this capacity unless you had deep pockets or tight legal connections.
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Inventors do win with patents!!
Ronald J. Riley,
Speaking only on my own behalf.
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 - (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
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Re: Inventors do win with patents!!
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Re: Inventors do win with patents!!
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Re: Re: Inventors do win with patents!!
http://www.google.com/patents?tbs=bks:1&tbo=1&q=Inventor:+Ron+Riley&btnG=Search+Pate nts
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graphene patenting
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This baby is as old as the hills.
"An early detailed study on few-layer graphene dates back to 1962.[12]"
And there are other papers on the single layered graphene structures as well that are referenced in the wiki. References abound to 102b claims to the material they're using.
The thing is, people just recently started jumping on board because some people figured out that there were some useful properties of this old material that warrented further study.
And, like the guy told him, if the material is all that useful, then they will start cranking out applications for the various "inventions" utilizing the graphene material structure. He wasn't really being arrogant, he was telling the man what was going to happen.
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Patents and graphene
Unfortunately, if the guy HAD patented graphene, and sold it to a patent troll with deep pockets, he could have made a mint (and that is just wrong!).
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Re: Patents and graphene
Funny thought, if a guild of thieves amasses enough wealth, they can legitimize their trade.
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Re: Re: Patents and graphene
Actually it's supposed to promote progress.
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Patent nuclear war. With a huge "missile gap".
And this is a system that's supposed to promote innovation?
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Re: Why big companies want Patent Deform
Ronald J. Riley,
Speaking only on my own behalf.
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 - (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
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Graphene Patent
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Re: Graphene Patent
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Unethical Transnational Corporations
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."
"I considered this arrogant comment, and I realized how useful it was. There was no point in patenting graphene at that stage. You need to be specific: you need to have a specific application and an industrial partner. Unfortunately, in many countries, including this one, people think that applying for a patent is an achievement. In my case it would have been a waste of taxpayers' money."
Doesn't this tell how unethical big business has become?
Ronald J. Riley,
Speaking only on my own behalf.
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 - (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
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Re: Patents and graphene (Gene Cavanaugh, #12)-- And the High Temperature Superconductor.
One fact which comes through is that all the participants were, in hindsight, delusional. Most of the members of the leading teams came from either IBM or the old AT&T. The first was in the process of experiencing a market crash, due to the advent of small computers. The second was in the process of being split up, and was represented in the high-temperature superconductor race by people from both Bell Labs and BellCore, the research arm of the "Baby Bells." Both IBM and the Bell family of companies would shortly reach the understanding that Nobel-grade basic science was none of their business, and that their business in a competitive market was to translate existing technology into useful products. The laboratories which produced Nobel laureates would be gutted.
There was an enthusiasm for computers built out of Josephson Junctions, and this was supposed to be a lucrative market for superconductivity. Again, with the benefit of hindsight, there were a lot of people at IBM and AT&T who hated and feared microprocessors, and were prone to fantasize about anything which would bring back giant computers, which could conveniently have their own nitrogen-liquefaction plants.
Likewise, the enthusiasts of superconductivity were trumpeting its uses in electric power, transportation, etc., but they were all pure physicists, pointedly removed from the grotty reality of electric power engineering or automotive engineering. The concerns of the electric power people tended to have to do with peak load and with power outages, ie. what happens if a short develops between one power cable and the ground, due to a falling tree, or (one case I heard about) a raccoon (Procyon Lotor) deciding to go exploring inside a transformer substation. Likewise, it was well known among automotive engineers that the limiting factor on an electric car was and is the battery, not the electric motor. The conventional electric motor, operating at 200-300 volts, is good enough, and that was what railroad locomotives had been using for fifty years previously.
What it came down to was that superconductivity turned out to be a niche technology, and high-temperature superconductivity turned out to be a niche technology within superconductivity.
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Re: Re: Patents and graphene (Gene Cavanaugh, #12)-- And the High Temperature Superconductor.
Ronald J. Riley,
Speaking only on my own behalf.
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 - (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
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What if he had spoken to an NPE?
NPEs (Trolls) are not the problem. This story again shows that the main issue facing the patent system is the lack of a level playing field between innovative SMEs or small guys and Big Co. Because Big Co abuse the system, whereas NPEs use the system.
I have seen this sort of issue time and again over the past 15 years or so.
Big Co attempt to patent small guys out of the market. Three cheers for NPEs giving something back in the other direction.
If these Nobel Prize winners had sold their IP rights to an NPE (Intelectual Ventures?) their institution would be better rewarded for the R&D effort here. There are increasing numbers of graphene patents out there but not in the hands of these guys.
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Why Geim never patented graphene
The article also presents the patent networks of Samsung, Sandisk and Rice University; and a useful table of the top patent inventors with University affiliations - it is intruiging reading in light of this discussion!
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