6 ms·

On a completely different front, let's say the paper completely checks out and they have discovered this miracle. How strong are the patent protections on mater

On a completely different front, let's say the paper completely checks out and they have discovered this miracle. How strong are the patent protections on materials science? For example, if someone could replicate the effect with lead + gold, would that be considered a novel material which would not be subject to licensing? Is it the material itself or the method of production?

scarmig 3y ago
I'm sure it depends on jurisdiction, but in the US, you can't patent a material, only a method to make it. If I recall correctly, their patent for method covered a wide range of constituent elements, but left off gold. I would feel pretty bad for them if they genuinely discovered an RTP superconductor but that omission prevents them from becoming billionaires. But more likely the issue is that their current method has lots of room for improvement and someone else finds one that is substantially better. ETA: apparently wrong, can patent composition of very novel materials.
- NotYourLawyer 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - Fatnino 3y ago
    You're not my lawyer!
  - dang 3y ago
    If someone else is wrong and you know more, it would be great to share some of what you know so the rest of us can learn. But please don't post unsubstantive putdowns—they just make everything worse. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=share%20know%20learn%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - NotYourLawyer 3y ago
      Silently leaving incorrect information in place seems worse for the overall state of the thread than a quick note disputing it.
      - dang 3y ago
        I hear you - but there are two problems with that argument. (1) the internet is, to a first approximation, wrong about everything - so while posting "Wrong" tells us that you disagree with the GP, it doesn't tell us anything about who's actually right; (2) shallow dismissals like "Wrong" have a degrading influence on the threads - they don't just encourage others to post more of the same, but worse. Basically, either your comments are contributing to improving the discussion culture or they're worsening it - there isn't really any level ground. You can overcome both (1) and (2) by respectfully and substantively explaining why the other commenter is wrong. Then we all can learn something. Maybe (hopefully) even the other commenter can learn something. If you don't want to do that or don't have time, it's better to post nothing than to just post "Wrong". That way you don't have a negative impact a la (2), and per (1), the internet is wrong about everything anyway, so you're basically just leaving things the way you found them.
      - dredmorbius 3y ago
        Some indication of where to go for further information is preferable to none. Consider that HN has ~5 million MAU and that a comment without clarity is confounding many people. Writing and communications generally is a service to the reader not the author. If you don't have time to look up the precise source, a note along the lines of "I don't have time to find the direct link ..." or "I recall but cannot source ..." would help, along with where generally is the best direction to start looking. Returning to that comment later to clarify/expand is also useful. (I do both of these fairly often. And have written ... 612 ... comments with footnotes and references on HN to date: <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adredmorbius%20%22notes%3A%22&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...>.)
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
  That's kind of my thinking - there is almost no chance they stumbled upon nirvana + did it in the best or most efficient way. There must be many possible optimizations to the chemical structure + fabrication techniques. Is it possible that the inventors do not receive a dime of royalties?
  - neltnerb 3y ago
    I don't want to caveat a bunch of stuff with "IANAL" but I am not. However, they have told me what I interpreted to mean that if someone improves it but uses it then they need to license the underlying patent. That just makes sense, it's required in order to implement their concept. And in reverse the original company can keep doing whatever they want as long as it isn't covered by the referencing patent. Makes sense to me there too, if they come up with some other clever way to make it good enough more power to them. There's no reason for them to pay some other people who patented something they don't use.
- neltnerb 3y ago
  You can get a composition of matter patent (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_of_matter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_of_matter) for something shockingly novel, and this might be. It's super hard to find anything that would qualify, but I've been awarded them before for materials science research. You can write stuff down generally enough that it's hard to make small changes and get around it. I did a lot of "1-10%" stuff in the claims.
  - scarmig 3y ago
    Ah, teaches me to try to be lawyer :) The patent is here for reference: https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2023027536A1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2023027536A1/en And yeah, they left off Au.
    - neltnerb 3y ago
      Oh, that's weird. They missed all the other noble metals besides silver too. No platinum, rhodium... those things have really really interesting orbital structures, I'm surprised they're worth leaving out of something so tricky when it might be important. Strange. The only thing I can think of is that they did it and know that those noble metals don't work very well, and so they're getting everyone else to follow a wild goose chase down a very expensive rabbit hole while they already have a better approach. ... but the tech doesn't look that developed. Very strange.
      - appplication 3y ago
        > but the tech doesn't look that developed It could be that they found something incredible by chance and they’re at the limits of their personal capability to further understand and refine. The fact that they’ve known about this for over 20 years suggests maybe. It’s not a bad thing if they are, they’ve already taken one of the biggest leaps. New teams with fresh eyes and varied backgrounds will look at the problem space and undoubtedly see room for refinement.
        3y ago
- Terr_ 3y ago
  > in the US, you can't patent a material I'm no patent lawyer, but there is literally a US patent-office category covering "material" for exactly this kind of invention. Section 505 - "Superconductor Technology: Apparatus, Material, Process". > This is the generic class for subject matter involving (a) superconductor technology above 30 K and (b) Art collections involving superconductor technology. Apparatus, devices, materials, and processes involving such technology are included herein. https://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/classification/uspc505/defs505.htm https://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/classification/uspc505/def...
  - scarmig 3y ago
    Yeah, apparently wrong. Not a lawyer, obviously, recovering physicist/current SWE.
    - lanstin 3y ago
      I have been SWE for 30 years. My youngest is off to college and I immediately enrolled in a masters program, apparently because I want to understand QFT which no amount of my own reading without doing much homework has enabled.
  - tadfisher 3y ago
    I'm assuming "Art collections" means something other than the common meaning, or else that's an oddly specific clause.
    - jxf 3y ago
      It means "art" in the broad sense of "prior art" (e.g. a creative endeavor), not art in the sense of MoMA or the Louvre. Though both kinds of art are beautiful in their way.
- baron816 3y ago
  It would be good for countries to put a bounty on these sorts of things. That would encourage this sort of research. Better yet would be to offer partial payouts for failed efforts if research is made public. This is probably more relevant for pharmaceuticals though.
  - appplication 3y ago
    The patent system sort of is the bounty for inventions. If you discover something new, you get first dibs at making money off if.
- zulban 3y ago
  Maybe success in life and science isn't about becoming a billionaire? Even so - if this works out, their prizes and paid speaking gigs will cover a very comfortable life if that's what they want. I'm not sure why they should be entitled to more than that.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    If it pans out I'd rather they become billionaires than your average tech bro.
    - neom 3y ago
      Hey Jacques, It's been fun watching your comments on this, you're very knowledgable. :) I had a question, I see some "we made a totally perfect/pure LK-99 it didn't work" - is pure/perfect what they should be going for, to me perfect/pure != correct, however I knew literally nothing about this subject till this week so I have no idea what I'm talking about. Thank you.
      - jacquesm 3y ago
        I really couldn't tell you what they should be doing, but I'd love for the original samples to be tested by another lab. That seems to me the easiest way to verify the original claims and reduces the uncertainty introduced by the lack of good process documentation and the chance that even the original researches do not quite know how they did what they did, assuming it is all true. The fact that that hasn't happened yet is the biggest source of my continued skepticism, at the same time my optimism is powered by the partial results of the other labs. It's a very strange combination of data, not unlike other things in the past that did not pan out but only time will tell which way it will all resolve.
  - spaceman_2020 3y ago
    I think a Nobel is pretty much guaranteed at this point. They'll make a ton of money either ways. Maybe not billionaire level, but they'll be venerated wherever they go, will be granted countless prizes, will sit on the boards of important companies, and have their pick of academic jobs - all of it entirely deserved, of course.
odyssey7 3y ago
Or what if AI assists in generating the discovery? “AI” meaning anything from a transformer model to brute-force breadth-first search with heuristics.
amrocha 3y ago
I hope they're as weak as possible. The worst possible outcome of a room temp superconductor being discovered is stifling innovation to make money off it
- mhb 3y ago
  The worst possible outcome of weak protection is not creating new materials.
- scarmig 3y ago
  I'm generally anti-patent, but if there were any valid case for patents, this is it. Long, hard labor to discover something entirely new that has massive uses for society. I'd rest my hopes on them not being dicks about it, not on them not getting benefit from it.
  - amrocha 3y ago
    Long, hard labor should be rewarded. And it is. They're receiving a salary, and now fame. That's more than enough.
    - yetihehe 3y ago
      > Long, hard labor should be rewarded. And it is. Why do people ask for raises though? It is somewhat rewarded, but some people don't work long and hard and still have more money. Those working long and hard, having a big useable result want to be rewarded a little more.
      - amrocha 3y ago
        Aren't these results mostly luck driven though? Lee and Kim were lucky to go to that university in Korea, lucky that their professor researched superconductor theory, and lucky that the professor's theory was correct. At the same time, other researchers around the world weren't so lucky. But because we don't know what's going to pan out without trying it out, the other researchers are just as integral to the process of discovery. Is it fair to reward Lee and Kim for their luck, and let everyone else get screwed? Wouldn't it be more fair to make sure everyone is appropriately compensated to begin with?
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> let's say the paper completely checks out and they have discovered this miracle. How strong are the patent protections on materials science? If it's literally a room-temperature superconductor, the present state of the law is irrelevant. China won't play by the rules. If Korea tries to corner it in the West, the rules will be replaced. (This would have been true had the inventor been French or American, too.)
- oaiey 3y ago
  Completely my train of thoughts. And it is not only china. Patents are based on laws and laws serve a society... If that does not work anymore (obviously after a long and broken process) the law changes.
  - defrost 3y ago
    Even without any change in law there'll be a seemingly endless swarm of "I can't believe it's not butter" almost the same varieties appearing and having to be knocked down (if possible) for infringement. As long as there's profit to be made that exceeds the cost of delaying legal action and any eventual fines levied against what may turn out to be near bankrupt shell companies.

scarmig 3y ago

I'm sure it depends on jurisdiction, but in the US, you can't patent a material, only a method to make it. If I recall correctly, their patent for method covered a wide range of constituent elements, but left off gold. I would feel pretty bad for them if they genuinely discovered an RTP superconductor but that omission prevents them from becoming billionaires. But more likely the issue is that their current method has lots of room for improvement and someone else finds one that is substantially better. ETA: apparently wrong, can patent composition of very novel materials.

NotYourLawyer 3y ago
[flagged]
- Fatnino 3y ago
  You're not my lawyer!
- dang 3y ago
  If someone else is wrong and you know more, it would be great to share some of what you know so the rest of us can learn. But please don't post unsubstantive putdowns—they just make everything worse. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=share%20know%20learn%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - NotYourLawyer 3y ago
    Silently leaving incorrect information in place seems worse for the overall state of the thread than a quick note disputing it.
    - dang 3y ago
      I hear you - but there are two problems with that argument. (1) the internet is, to a first approximation, wrong about everything - so while posting "Wrong" tells us that you disagree with the GP, it doesn't tell us anything about who's actually right; (2) shallow dismissals like "Wrong" have a degrading influence on the threads - they don't just encourage others to post more of the same, but worse. Basically, either your comments are contributing to improving the discussion culture or they're worsening it - there isn't really any level ground. You can overcome both (1) and (2) by respectfully and substantively explaining why the other commenter is wrong. Then we all can learn something. Maybe (hopefully) even the other commenter can learn something. If you don't want to do that or don't have time, it's better to post nothing than to just post "Wrong". That way you don't have a negative impact a la (2), and per (1), the internet is wrong about everything anyway, so you're basically just leaving things the way you found them.
    - dredmorbius 3y ago
      Some indication of where to go for further information is preferable to none. Consider that HN has ~5 million MAU and that a comment without clarity is confounding many people. Writing and communications generally is a service to the reader not the author. If you don't have time to look up the precise source, a note along the lines of "I don't have time to find the direct link ..." or "I recall but cannot source ..." would help, along with where generally is the best direction to start looking. Returning to that comment later to clarify/expand is also useful. (I do both of these fairly often. And have written ... 612 ... comments with footnotes and references on HN to date: <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adredmorbius%20%22notes%3A%22&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...>.)
0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
That's kind of my thinking - there is almost no chance they stumbled upon nirvana + did it in the best or most efficient way. There must be many possible optimizations to the chemical structure + fabrication techniques. Is it possible that the inventors do not receive a dime of royalties?
- neltnerb 3y ago
  I don't want to caveat a bunch of stuff with "IANAL" but I am not. However, they have told me what I interpreted to mean that if someone improves it but uses it then they need to license the underlying patent. That just makes sense, it's required in order to implement their concept. And in reverse the original company can keep doing whatever they want as long as it isn't covered by the referencing patent. Makes sense to me there too, if they come up with some other clever way to make it good enough more power to them. There's no reason for them to pay some other people who patented something they don't use.
neltnerb 3y ago
You can get a composition of matter patent (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_of_matter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_of_matter) for something shockingly novel, and this might be. It's super hard to find anything that would qualify, but I've been awarded them before for materials science research. You can write stuff down generally enough that it's hard to make small changes and get around it. I did a lot of "1-10%" stuff in the claims.
- scarmig 3y ago
  Ah, teaches me to try to be lawyer :) The patent is here for reference: https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2023027536A1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2023027536A1/en And yeah, they left off Au.
  - neltnerb 3y ago
    Oh, that's weird. They missed all the other noble metals besides silver too. No platinum, rhodium... those things have really really interesting orbital structures, I'm surprised they're worth leaving out of something so tricky when it might be important. Strange. The only thing I can think of is that they did it and know that those noble metals don't work very well, and so they're getting everyone else to follow a wild goose chase down a very expensive rabbit hole while they already have a better approach. ... but the tech doesn't look that developed. Very strange.
    - appplication 3y ago
      > but the tech doesn't look that developed It could be that they found something incredible by chance and they’re at the limits of their personal capability to further understand and refine. The fact that they’ve known about this for over 20 years suggests maybe. It’s not a bad thing if they are, they’ve already taken one of the biggest leaps. New teams with fresh eyes and varied backgrounds will look at the problem space and undoubtedly see room for refinement.
      - 3y ago
Terr_ 3y ago
> in the US, you can't patent a material I'm no patent lawyer, but there is literally a US patent-office category covering "material" for exactly this kind of invention. Section 505 - "Superconductor Technology: Apparatus, Material, Process". > This is the generic class for subject matter involving (a) superconductor technology above 30 K and (b) Art collections involving superconductor technology. Apparatus, devices, materials, and processes involving such technology are included herein. https://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/classification/uspc505/defs505.htm https://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/classification/uspc505/def...
- scarmig 3y ago
  Yeah, apparently wrong. Not a lawyer, obviously, recovering physicist/current SWE.
  - lanstin 3y ago
    I have been SWE for 30 years. My youngest is off to college and I immediately enrolled in a masters program, apparently because I want to understand QFT which no amount of my own reading without doing much homework has enabled.
- tadfisher 3y ago
  I'm assuming "Art collections" means something other than the common meaning, or else that's an oddly specific clause.
  - jxf 3y ago
    It means "art" in the broad sense of "prior art" (e.g. a creative endeavor), not art in the sense of MoMA or the Louvre. Though both kinds of art are beautiful in their way.
baron816 3y ago
It would be good for countries to put a bounty on these sorts of things. That would encourage this sort of research. Better yet would be to offer partial payouts for failed efforts if research is made public. This is probably more relevant for pharmaceuticals though.
- appplication 3y ago
  The patent system sort of is the bounty for inventions. If you discover something new, you get first dibs at making money off if.
zulban 3y ago
Maybe success in life and science isn't about becoming a billionaire? Even so - if this works out, their prizes and paid speaking gigs will cover a very comfortable life if that's what they want. I'm not sure why they should be entitled to more than that.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  If it pans out I'd rather they become billionaires than your average tech bro.
  - neom 3y ago
    Hey Jacques, It's been fun watching your comments on this, you're very knowledgable. :) I had a question, I see some "we made a totally perfect/pure LK-99 it didn't work" - is pure/perfect what they should be going for, to me perfect/pure != correct, however I knew literally nothing about this subject till this week so I have no idea what I'm talking about. Thank you.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      I really couldn't tell you what they should be doing, but I'd love for the original samples to be tested by another lab. That seems to me the easiest way to verify the original claims and reduces the uncertainty introduced by the lack of good process documentation and the chance that even the original researches do not quite know how they did what they did, assuming it is all true. The fact that that hasn't happened yet is the biggest source of my continued skepticism, at the same time my optimism is powered by the partial results of the other labs. It's a very strange combination of data, not unlike other things in the past that did not pan out but only time will tell which way it will all resolve.
- spaceman_2020 3y ago
  I think a Nobel is pretty much guaranteed at this point. They'll make a ton of money either ways. Maybe not billionaire level, but they'll be venerated wherever they go, will be granted countless prizes, will sit on the boards of important companies, and have their pick of academic jobs - all of it entirely deserved, of course.

odyssey7 3y ago

Or what if AI assists in generating the discovery? “AI” meaning anything from a transformer model to brute-force breadth-first search with heuristics.

amrocha 3y ago

I hope they're as weak as possible. The worst possible outcome of a room temp superconductor being discovered is stifling innovation to make money off it

mhb 3y ago
The worst possible outcome of weak protection is not creating new materials.
scarmig 3y ago
I'm generally anti-patent, but if there were any valid case for patents, this is it. Long, hard labor to discover something entirely new that has massive uses for society. I'd rest my hopes on them not being dicks about it, not on them not getting benefit from it.
- amrocha 3y ago
  Long, hard labor should be rewarded. And it is. They're receiving a salary, and now fame. That's more than enough.
  - yetihehe 3y ago
    > Long, hard labor should be rewarded. And it is. Why do people ask for raises though? It is somewhat rewarded, but some people don't work long and hard and still have more money. Those working long and hard, having a big useable result want to be rewarded a little more.
    - amrocha 3y ago
      Aren't these results mostly luck driven though? Lee and Kim were lucky to go to that university in Korea, lucky that their professor researched superconductor theory, and lucky that the professor's theory was correct. At the same time, other researchers around the world weren't so lucky. But because we don't know what's going to pan out without trying it out, the other researchers are just as integral to the process of discovery. Is it fair to reward Lee and Kim for their luck, and let everyone else get screwed? Wouldn't it be more fair to make sure everyone is appropriately compensated to begin with?

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> let's say the paper completely checks out and they have discovered this miracle. How strong are the patent protections on materials science? If it's literally a room-temperature superconductor, the present state of the law is irrelevant. China won't play by the rules. If Korea tries to corner it in the West, the rules will be replaced. (This would have been true had the inventor been French or American, too.)

oaiey 3y ago
Completely my train of thoughts. And it is not only china. Patents are based on laws and laws serve a society... If that does not work anymore (obviously after a long and broken process) the law changes.
- defrost 3y ago
  Even without any change in law there'll be a seemingly endless swarm of "I can't believe it's not butter" almost the same varieties appearing and having to be knocked down (if possible) for infringement. As long as there's profit to be made that exceeds the cost of delaying legal action and any eventual fines levied against what may turn out to be near bankrupt shell companies.