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There's one interesting quote in the article: Musk: I can’t tell you much. We have essentially no patents in SpaceX. Our primary long-term competition is in Ch
by catch23 14y ago
There's one interesting quote in the article:
Musk: I can’t tell you much. We have essentially no patents in SpaceX. Our primary long-term competition is in China—if we published patents, it would be farcical, because the Chinese would just use them as a recipe book.
If your process/ideas are sufficiently complex, it reduces competition if you don't file a patent.
- cobrausn 14y agoOne of the supposed points of patents is that the inventor shares knowledge with the world in exchange for temporary monopoly. If the patent is not enforced (such as in China), then there is no incentive to file. It might be smarter, from a business standpoint, to just keep the knowledge to yourself.
- davidw 14y agoAs long as you can keep control over your organization. With anything significantly large enough, it's probably not too hard to slip a spy in.
- cletus 14y agoIt's actually worse than that. Tech companies routinely use a combination of patents, trade secrets and copyright to make the shared knowledge (patents) basically useless but an exceptionally good defensive and offensive weapon. I recall this came up with Intel and other companies reverse-engineering the Netburst bus. EDIT: removed point about first-to-file as prior art would largely invalidate such attempts beyond a very narrow time frame.
- statusgraph 14y agoMy (limited) understanding is you can still argue prior art to invalidate the patent. First to file would only come up if both SpaceX and a Chinese company had patents and went to court. The wiki article expounds a little: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leahy-Smith_America_Invents_Act#First_to_file_and_grace_period http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leahy-Smith_America_Invents_Act...
- enraged_camel 14y ago>>First to file would only come up if both SpaceX and a Chinese company had patents and went to court. If they went to court in the same country, you mean.
- _k 14y agoI've seen companies enter into a partnership with a Chinese company to manufacture niche products. A few years in, the partnership is stopped and the Chinese company copies everything, shows up on trade shows, etc. There's nothing you can do about it. Patents don't matter in China. Customers buy the products in China.
- Tuna-Fish 14y agoFirst to file doesn't work like that. Their patent would be struck down on prior art if they ever tried to use it.
- anonymouz 14y agoIf they keep it secret, it's usually not considered prior art (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_art https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_art).
- sehugg 14y agoApparently the Leahy-Smith Act allows trade secrets to be used as a patent infringement defense in some cases (IANAL): http://www.patentbaristas.com/archives/2012/06/20/bio-2012-everything-america-invents-act/ http://www.patentbaristas.com/archives/2012/06/20/bio-2012-e...
- ballooney 14y agoLots of industries do this. Patents are useful when it's obvious what your idea is, and where it's easy for people/competitors to have have a poke inside. Like a vacuum cleaner or a non-reflective mobile-phone screen coating, or one-click or something like that. But for industries where that's not the case, like rockets (my current) or to pick another example from a previous job, magnetic bearings for sub-sea tubo-machinery installations like natural gas compressors[1], it makes no sense to file a patent. It's much easier to keep it a secret, because it's not like your competitors are going to scuba-dive down to the compressor control cabinet, whip out a JTAG and see how you've implemented your control loop on an FPGA. Likewise, if you do patent it, it's very difficult to prove an infringement for the same reasons. So essentially, in industries where it's not the case that your competitors can see what you've done, secrets over patents is the norm, in my experience, and has been for while. [1] Mag bearings use electromagnetic stators and magnetic collars on the shaft to levitate the shaft inside a bit of spinning equipment. This means it's entirely non-contact, dramatically reducing wear, especially useful on difficult-to-service installations like sub-sea.
- greedo 14y agoThe problem then shifts from competitors using your patents to competitors actively engaging in industrial espionage. Considering how easily the JSF program was penetrated by the Chinese, I hope that SpaceX has well guarded data.
- davedx 14y agoIndeed. A friend just sent me this: "china can't compete because all their aerospace students are spies (joke from my chums in the physics department)"
- someperson 14y agoSpaceX have mentioned how seriously they take cyber security and with somebody like Elon Musk at the helm, I'm sure they're much better than Fortune 500 companies and the big aerospace companies.
- nova 14y ago
- jedc 14y agoA lot of companies choose to keep their intellectual property as "trade secrets" instead. (Like the Coke recipe, etc.) Just like SpaceX, it can often be better for the company than a patent. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_secret http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_secret
- neurotech1 14y agoRemember that "Theft of trade secrets" is a federal crime, and use of "stolen" information is subject to a major civil liability. This is why Boeing and Lockheed had to play nice and form United Launch Alliance for the EELV & Space Shuttle Support Contract. http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/eelv-program.htm http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/eelv-program.htm
- lavezza 14y agoThey formed United Launch Alliance (ULA) for EELV. They formed United Space Alliance (USA) for the Space Flight Operations Contract.
- InclinedPlane 14y agoNote that this has a double meaning. He's not just talking about "the Chinese" and their well known cavalier attitude toward intellectual property, he's specifically talking about the government of China, which is ultimately the operator of the Long March launch vehicles. Suing sovereign governments for patent infringement has historically not been a winning proposition.
- Osmium 14y agoPatents aren't my area of expertise. That said absurdity in the patent system isn't limited to the software world. This is second-hand info from someone who's had to file these patents, but I've heard you can get patents on metal alloys providing that you can state the exact reason why that specific alloy composition gives the property you desire. If a competitor then proves that the property is a consequence of some other effect, your patent is invalidated. So there's not much incentive to patent these things if keeping it a trade secret is a more viable alternative. It's frustrating when you're working on a problem you're 90% sure a better funded industry player has already solved. Maybe they solved it through trial and error, without needing or wanting to understand the fundamental science behind it, but you then have to re-discover their results before you can even make progress in the understanding. But it's that understanding that's essential for developing completely new materials for the future. It's not all that bad, but it's certainly sub-optimal.
- neurotech1 14y agoThe question being if they "efficiently" solved the problem already. They may have found a solution, although significant room for improvement exists.
- jvzr 14y agoMy father runs a company which has been in our family for 250 years. It weaves silk fabrics for luxurious furnitures for mansions and alikes (Versailles comes to mind). He's always told me that he'll never try to register its designs to any authority since the company's main competitors are the chinese, and that they do not care for forgein laws and registrations. Well, obviously. Surely, this is not suitable to every businesses, but I couldn't think at the time that this would apply to the space industry as well.
- sounds 14y agoThat company should do well. Chinese competitors may copy a design and try to undersell you – but you're countering by selling to the high end market (like Apple does). I hope the company does well! The really hard part is the supply chain. For example, Apple was hit by the "bad cap" problem when they went with the cheaper caps (stolen formula): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague#Industrial_espionage_implicated http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague#Industrial_esp... SpaceX appears to be producing so much of their design in-house that the suppliers don't yet play a major role. I'm going with the assumption SpaceX will be around long term, so that will be a challenge as they try to bring costs down even more. They're not selling to the high end market.
- netcan 14y agoWhat are the main differences between martian & earthling patent laws?
- danielweber 14y agoYou joke, but the largest export of Martian colonies will probably be patents. Frontier living tends to push envelopes a lot.
- shiftpgdn 14y agoShouldn't your phrase it as invention instead of patents?
- noonespecial 14y agoSo all the things that really should be patented, turn out to be better off left unpatented for competitive reasons. Nice.