6 ms·

The patent getting snatched up by cosmetics and then re-discovered almost 50 years later makes me wonder how many cool advancements have been lost to industries

The patent getting snatched up by cosmetics and then re-discovered almost 50 years later makes me wonder how many cool advancements have been lost to industries that couldn't find any value from them.

tibbon 8y ago
MDMA was originally patented 1912/1914 by Merck, but wasn't really applied for human usage until Dr Shulgin was working with it over 50 years later.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- vole 8y ago
  A similar thing occured with LSD. It was only manufactured by Sandoz until the patents expired and the quantities manufactured exploded.
tinus_hn 8y ago
In many fields there are waves with the patent expiration cycle, for instance 3D printing or VR. As the patents expire there is a flurry of new research, everyone obtains new patents and it becomes impossible to create viable products again, until the patents expire and the cycle begins again.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- TimTheTinker 8y ago
  That's very interesting, especially considering that patents were originally created to incentivize people to publish details of inventions so they could be publicly known and accessible in perpetuity. To better uphold their original purpose, perhaps the patent rights period should be shortened to 6 years or thereabouts.
  - briandear 8y ago
    Their patent didn’t last 50 years; shortening the patent period would have had little effect in this case.
    - TimTheTinker 8y ago
      I was commenting on the patent cycle in general, not the dry water patent in particular.
  - gutnor 8y ago
    Patents are only a problem for technologies with successful application. Ideally, once you have covered the R&D cost, it should be free for all. Technologies without successful application is the interesting case. With patents, like in this case, they are locked for a while, but at least someone can pick them up. The alternative is to become lost in the archive of some R&D department. That said, that's difficult to say. We have patents, companies haven't had to find a way to live in a modern world where obfuscation, secrecy are the primordial part of their DNA. Would we have had OSS before, or not at all? I guess that NDA and anti-compete contract laws would be much stricter maybe at a stifling level, medieval guilds style.
    - btilly 8y ago
      Ideally, once you have covered the R&D cost, it should be free for all. Not unless the R&D cost includes all of the R&D into unsuccessful products that didn't get productized. Also complicating the debate is pharmaceuticals, where you're also covering the cost of FDA approval, clinical trials, etc. Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_drug_development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_drug_development this cost comes out to several billion per successful drug among established players. (A single drug is several hundred million, but most drugs fail.)
      - perl4ever 8y ago
        It seems like an unjustified, kind of Panglossian, assumption that all of the unsuccessful research was necessary and that the returns from patents are exactly equal to the necessary costs. Markets are powerful optimization machines, but that is too often taken dogmatically to prove we are in the best of all possible worlds.
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  Steam engines. Light bulbs. Radio. https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-constraining-role-of-ip-and-patents-1-case-study-of-steam-engine-innovation/2010/09/05?cn-reloaded=1&cn-reloaded=1 https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-constraining-role-of-ip-a...
will_brown 8y ago
Look at the patents held by Univerisities, very few will be utilized commercially. On the other hand oil companies notoriously bought up patents for the express purpose of keeping them from being used in commercial application.
hcknwscommenter 8y ago
Your comment implies that innovation was impeded in other industries because cosmetics "snatched up" the patents. I'm not so sure. Typically, academic and institutional researches DNGA* about patents. As a nascent technology shows commercialization potential, there is incentive for the patent holders to find some way of monetizing. I would imagine (but admittedly do not know) that a cosmetics patent holder would have little reason to refuse to license to some entity operating in a very different field.
- smsm42 8y ago
  You are assuming the original patent holder still exists and holds the patent. And it's not held by some patent troll aggregator whose sole purpose in life is milking their large patent portfolio and who has no problem refusing to grant license on any of the individual patents if the applicant can't pay whatever they want, and have no incentive to undermine their portfolio profitability and their market worth by offering these licenses too cheap.
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago
  > I would imagine (but admittedly do not know) that a cosmetics patent holder would have little reason to refuse to license to some entity operating in a very different field. That's not really the problem. The problem is that you have entrepreneurs at the early stages of looking into developing something who discover that it's patented. Just the overhead (paying attorneys) to negotiate a patent license can be thousands of dollars, more if you want to negotiate a good rate. Nobody wants to pay that at Stage 0 before you even do the legwork to determine if there is really a promising product there. But determining that can itself cost many thousands of dollars and nobody wants to do that before knowing they can secure a patent license at a reasonable rate, so you have a chicken and egg problem. Meanwhile there are many promising alternative avenues of research that aren't already encumbered by patents, so people go there instead and come back when the patent is expired.
CaptainJustin 8y ago
That reminds me. There is a great talk from someone at Mozilla (Something about making an org that lasts 1000 years?). In the talk the idea is presented that things kept secret are eventually lost. This was fascinating to think about. It's been few years since I heard that talk and I now have seen a few examples of this around me.
- baxtr 8y ago
  Sounds interesting. Do you have a link or something?
- _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
  Was it someone from Mozilla, or the Long Now Foundation?
- yesenadam 8y ago
  So readers may be surprised to find that this story does indeed explain a number of secrets, some of the important techniques that have been used by magicians onstage. Perhaps I may be considered guilty of breaking ranks and betraying trust. Actually, there’s a long, important tradition of magic being recorded and published. As my good friend Jay Marshall...has said for many years, "If you want to keep something a secret, publish it." Once in print, information is often filed, forgotten, or dismissed. Publishing a secret takes away its cachet and causes it to be overlooked. Every illusion that I’ve discussed in this book has already been explained in books. – Jim Steinmeyer, Hiding the Elephant Human life is so far a game of cross-purposes. If we wish a thing to be kept secret, it is sure to be transpire: if we wish it to be known, not a syllable is breathed about it. This is not meant; but it happens from mere simplicity and thoughtlessness. – Hazlitt, On Depth and Superficiality
briandear 8y ago
The patent was on file. It wasn’t like it was “lost.” The patenting is orthogonal to being “lost.” Someone could easily go prowl through old patents hunting for “new” discoveries if they were so inclined.

tibbon 8y ago

MDMA was originally patented 1912/1914 by Merck, but wasn't really applied for human usage until Dr Shulgin was working with it over 50 years later.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
vole 8y ago
A similar thing occured with LSD. It was only manufactured by Sandoz until the patents expired and the quantities manufactured exploded.

tinus_hn 8y ago

In many fields there are waves with the patent expiration cycle, for instance 3D printing or VR. As the patents expire there is a flurry of new research, everyone obtains new patents and it becomes impossible to create viable products again, until the patents expire and the cycle begins again.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
TimTheTinker 8y ago
That's very interesting, especially considering that patents were originally created to incentivize people to publish details of inventions so they could be publicly known and accessible in perpetuity. To better uphold their original purpose, perhaps the patent rights period should be shortened to 6 years or thereabouts.
- briandear 8y ago
  Their patent didn’t last 50 years; shortening the patent period would have had little effect in this case.
  - TimTheTinker 8y ago
    I was commenting on the patent cycle in general, not the dry water patent in particular.
- gutnor 8y ago
  Patents are only a problem for technologies with successful application. Ideally, once you have covered the R&D cost, it should be free for all. Technologies without successful application is the interesting case. With patents, like in this case, they are locked for a while, but at least someone can pick them up. The alternative is to become lost in the archive of some R&D department. That said, that's difficult to say. We have patents, companies haven't had to find a way to live in a modern world where obfuscation, secrecy are the primordial part of their DNA. Would we have had OSS before, or not at all? I guess that NDA and anti-compete contract laws would be much stricter maybe at a stifling level, medieval guilds style.
  - btilly 8y ago
    Ideally, once you have covered the R&D cost, it should be free for all. Not unless the R&D cost includes all of the R&D into unsuccessful products that didn't get productized. Also complicating the debate is pharmaceuticals, where you're also covering the cost of FDA approval, clinical trials, etc. Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_drug_development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_drug_development this cost comes out to several billion per successful drug among established players. (A single drug is several hundred million, but most drugs fail.)
    - perl4ever 8y ago
      It seems like an unjustified, kind of Panglossian, assumption that all of the unsuccessful research was necessary and that the returns from patents are exactly equal to the necessary costs. Markets are powerful optimization machines, but that is too often taken dogmatically to prove we are in the best of all possible worlds.
dredmorbius 8y ago
Steam engines. Light bulbs. Radio. https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-constraining-role-of-ip-and-patents-1-case-study-of-steam-engine-innovation/2010/09/05?cn-reloaded=1&cn-reloaded=1 https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-constraining-role-of-ip-a...

will_brown 8y ago

Look at the patents held by Univerisities, very few will be utilized commercially. On the other hand oil companies notoriously bought up patents for the express purpose of keeping them from being used in commercial application.

hcknwscommenter 8y ago

Your comment implies that innovation was impeded in other industries because cosmetics "snatched up" the patents. I'm not so sure. Typically, academic and institutional researches DNGA* about patents. As a nascent technology shows commercialization potential, there is incentive for the patent holders to find some way of monetizing. I would imagine (but admittedly do not know) that a cosmetics patent holder would have little reason to refuse to license to some entity operating in a very different field.

smsm42 8y ago
You are assuming the original patent holder still exists and holds the patent. And it's not held by some patent troll aggregator whose sole purpose in life is milking their large patent portfolio and who has no problem refusing to grant license on any of the individual patents if the applicant can't pay whatever they want, and have no incentive to undermine their portfolio profitability and their market worth by offering these licenses too cheap.
AnthonyMouse 8y ago
> I would imagine (but admittedly do not know) that a cosmetics patent holder would have little reason to refuse to license to some entity operating in a very different field. That's not really the problem. The problem is that you have entrepreneurs at the early stages of looking into developing something who discover that it's patented. Just the overhead (paying attorneys) to negotiate a patent license can be thousands of dollars, more if you want to negotiate a good rate. Nobody wants to pay that at Stage 0 before you even do the legwork to determine if there is really a promising product there. But determining that can itself cost many thousands of dollars and nobody wants to do that before knowing they can secure a patent license at a reasonable rate, so you have a chicken and egg problem. Meanwhile there are many promising alternative avenues of research that aren't already encumbered by patents, so people go there instead and come back when the patent is expired.

CaptainJustin 8y ago

That reminds me. There is a great talk from someone at Mozilla (Something about making an org that lasts 1000 years?). In the talk the idea is presented that things kept secret are eventually lost. This was fascinating to think about. It's been few years since I heard that talk and I now have seen a few examples of this around me.

baxtr 8y ago
Sounds interesting. Do you have a link or something?
_emacsomancer_ 8y ago
Was it someone from Mozilla, or the Long Now Foundation?
yesenadam 8y ago
So readers may be surprised to find that this story does indeed explain a number of secrets, some of the important techniques that have been used by magicians onstage. Perhaps I may be considered guilty of breaking ranks and betraying trust. Actually, there’s a long, important tradition of magic being recorded and published. As my good friend Jay Marshall...has said for many years, "If you want to keep something a secret, publish it." Once in print, information is often filed, forgotten, or dismissed. Publishing a secret takes away its cachet and causes it to be overlooked. Every illusion that I’ve discussed in this book has already been explained in books. – Jim Steinmeyer, Hiding the Elephant Human life is so far a game of cross-purposes. If we wish a thing to be kept secret, it is sure to be transpire: if we wish it to be known, not a syllable is breathed about it. This is not meant; but it happens from mere simplicity and thoughtlessness. – Hazlitt, On Depth and Superficiality

briandear 8y ago

The patent was on file. It wasn’t like it was “lost.” The patenting is orthogonal to being “lost.” Someone could easily go prowl through old patents hunting for “new” discoveries if they were so inclined.