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I have no doubt that graphene will change the world, but as the article mentions, it may take a long time to get there. The thing that bothered me the most was

I have no doubt that graphene will change the world, but as the article mentions, it may take a long time to get there. The thing that bothered me the most was the mention of the patent race. Everything was "patent patent patent" - which means instead of a discovery in lab A spurring a totally new way of thinking in lab B, it restricts lab B from ever thinking that way. Without the race to patent every single minuscule discovery about graphene and its properties, advancing early discoveries could move at an exponentially faster pace. Don't grab the ball and run with it - grab it and keep it to yourself. I know all the arguments for patents, but I can't shake the feeling that they do nothing but stifle innovation and discovery by locking up research just when it gets interesting. (When the measure of success is how many patents are filed, not how many discoveries are made... or how you just beat the Chinese to filing a patent, I'm just a tad less hopeful.)

crusso 12y ago
which means instead of a discovery in lab A spurring a totally new way of thinking in lab B Without the patent system's protections, lab A would be unlikely to divulge its discoveries to lab B.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  That's fine, they're going to have to market their stuff some day.
  - Someone 12y ago
    That doesn't guarantee that the secrets come out. Counterexamples are Damascus steel and Roman concrete.
    - nitrogen 12y ago
      That doesn't guarantee that the secrets come out. Counterexamples are Damascus steel and Roman concrete. Both of those have been reverse engineered by now. We have the advantage of the scientific method and a robust (reverse) engineering culture that would keep secrets from remaining secrets for too long.
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
        staunch 12y ago
        The brightest minds weren't exactly hard at work at this.
      - cthalupa 12y ago
        Damascus steel has not been completely successfully reproduced to this day, though we're probably 95% of the way there. Though, it's not exactly a field with hordes of scientists looking to reproduce it.
        wyager 12y ago
        >Damascus steel has not been completely successfully reproduced to this day Because it sucks compared to modern knife steels. VG-10, S30V, or any other high-end steel beats the hell out of Damascus/wootz steel. If there were any serious benefit to Damascus steel, we would have certainly reverse-engineered it by now.
- DannyBee 12y ago
  So the grants they depend on require divulgence to get the grant. It's not like they are funding themselves ...
swamp40 12y ago
If you think provisional patents are stifling innovation, you should see what happens when you tell these researchers that they no longer have the possibility of getting incredibly filthy rich someday from their discoveries - because all patents have been eliminated and a new era of "share and share alike for the common good" is upon us.
- warfangle 12y ago
  Do the researchers themselves even own the patents -- or will the company/university they work for own the patents? You should see what happens when they realize they aren't ever going to become filthy rich someday from their discoveries... just like everybody else.
  - krschultz 12y ago
    They do actually own some % of it. They also do actually get filthy rich if the patent is worthwhile. The college I went to actually had two guys that invented most of the multi-touch technology that went into the original iPhone. Apple bought the patents out and the professor and doctoral student that had done the research made a good deal of money.
- baddox 12y ago
  I imagine lawyers being more upset about that than researchers.
- hyperbovine 12y ago
  Nobody I know in research is in it for the money. There are much, much more direct ways for technically gifted people to get rich--look up "quantitative finance".
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- locopati 12y ago
  Hell, yeah! Good thing Jonas Salk buttoned-up his polio discoveries so he could make mad cash. Oh, wait, he didn't. "There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?" - Salk
higherpurpose 12y ago
So much for standing on the shoulders of giants for progress. It's more like standing on your own shoulders.
hiou 12y ago
The problem with patents is not whether or not they should exist, but the massive friction involved in licensing them to others. If the patent system had more requirements or controls about requiring a fair system of licensing and ownership division it could serve its original purpose much better in my opinion.
- bdamm 12y ago
  Perhaps there is room for a specialized marketplace?
  - quote 12y ago
    There are plenty already, by all sorts of players. However the issue is search - which is probably one major aspect of the "friction" mentioned in the parent post: 1. Patents are often not exactly written to easily give their secrets (I would say there are specific forms of patent legalese). 2. You need (costly) experts to look at potential offers. In addition, there are more disincentives to "easy" IP transactions: 1. Even when you've found a matching patent it doesn't mean that you can just pop out a product. Most of the actual work is still ahead of you. 2. Pricing and contract negotiation is rather difficult and costs as well. 3. The existing marketplaces are mostly rather small with the largest having maybe 20-30k offers. Just not enough to impact the myriads of problems available... Still interested? Just reply, maybe I can help.
JackC 12y ago
which means instead of a discovery in lab A spurring a totally new way of thinking in lab B, it restricts lab B from ever thinking that way. This is not necessarily true. Patents, unlike copyrights, are additive. If you write a book based on the Harry Potter characters, JK Rowling owns the copyright to your derivative work. But if Lab A patents a way of making graphene, Lab B is free to research and patent non-obvious refinements. So you tend to see a tree of patents by different people: 1. Awesome new invention Foo! (Lab A) 1.A. Small but commercially important refinement of Foo. (Lab B) 1.A.i. More performant version of small refinement of Foo. (Lab A) 1.A.ii. Different way of increasing performance on small refinement of Foo. (Lab C) ... where you definitely need to license Patent 1 from Lab A if you want to sell your own Foo, but if you want to sell a Foo with Lab C's performance improvements you need to license Patent 1.A and 1.A.ii as well. This is why there is a "race to patent every single miniscule discovery" in the first place -- Lab A getting Patent 1 doesn't remove the incentive to discover refinements. It is not obvious that the search for refinements would happen faster without this incentive.
- new299 12y ago
  In order to develop on Patent 1, Labs B and C should officially license Lab As patent. As I understand it there's no "research exception" for patents, and they don't just apply to "selling". I'm basing my understanding on this article: http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v25/n11/full/nbt1107-1225.html http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v25/n11/full/nbt1107-1225.... It's also true that researchers rarely take any notice of patents, and the issue just gets ignored.
  - _delirium 12y ago
    A university patent office explained it to me as follows (note of course that doesn't guarantee this person was correct): patents do cover any "practice" of the patent, which includes practicing it for the purpose of even merely understanding and improving it. So research is not legally exempt. But in practice, patent infringement damages are almost exclusively at a court's discretion, and courts are almost exclusively interested in unlicensed commercial exploitation. A court can in principle issue a wide range of relief: an injunction against practicing the patent; a mandatory licensing fee; compensatory damages; or some combination of those. The nature of the relief is supposed to depend on the nature of the infringement and considerations of public policy. A widespread assumption is that it's not worth suing researchers who are trying to improve an invention without commercially exploiting the patent, because a court will be very unsympathetic to the patent holder, and unlikely to award any substantial relief.
WalterBright 12y ago
The US airframe industry was so hamstrung by patents that innovation and progress shifted to Europe. It took the government to force the industry to accept a patent pool and move forward. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers_patent_war#The_patent_pool_solution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers_patent_war#The_...
- throwawaykf05 12y ago
  This is actually a myth that was recently busted. See this paper, which presents compelling empirical evidence of the aircraft industry from that time to show that there was no such hold-up: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2355673 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2355673 Unfortunately, this is one of those myths, like the one of Watt's patents holding up development of steam, that gets repeated so often that people accept it without question.
_greim_ 12y ago
> it restricts lab B from ever thinking that way Is it not possible to look at existing patents and build on them, filing new patents which build on the existing ones? What would really restrict lab B from ever thinking that way would be if lab A never filed a patent, and just kept the discovery locked up as a trade secret.
- nkurz 12y ago
  In principle this would be possible. In practice, the standard advice is that inventors should avoid looking at competitors' patents to reduce the danger of "treble damages" due to "willful infringement". This fear is likely overblown, but I've certainly never heard of anyone excited to hear that their competitor has published a patent because they hope that the new information revealed in the patent will help them to innovate better. I'm sure it's industry specific, but I've don't think I've ever even heard someone claim that they learned something from a patent that they could not have legally learned in some other way. Given that this spread of knowledge is part of the ideal that is presented for the existence of patents, it would be nice to hear from anyone who works in area where patents are felt to actually help in the spread of knowledge. I'm willing to believe that promising a monopoly can help to incentivize research and innovation, but I'm doubtful they positively affect the rate at which knowledge is shared.
rayiner 12y ago
> advancing early discoveries could move at an exponentially faster pace. Faster pace towards what though? Someone swooping in, doing the last 1% of the work, and making all the profit. E.g. it's sad how much more money Apple has made on Siri than SRI did. Patents do a pretty awful job of making sure researchers and inventors get compensated. But they're one of the few things to tip the balance in favor of researchers and inventors.
- nkurz 12y ago
  But they're one of the few things to tip the balance in favor of researchers and inventors. My guess coming into this thread was that the business people and lawyers would be more pro-patent than the researchers and inventors. Of course one can be both, and I don't know the backgrounds of many participants, but it's interesting that in this thread both you and JackC have strong backgrounds in law. Have you found many researchers or inventors without comparable legal expertise who perceive the balance to be tipped in their favor? And moreover, that think this advantage is maintained rather than threatened by patents?
  - rayiner 12y ago
    I got my degree in aerospace engineering, and worked at two R&D companies. I spent those years surrounded by engineering PhDs. Everyone supported the patent system, even though it was a huge hassle, because it gave them leverage against the Big Co's with outsourced manufacturing muscle. I don't think the scales are tipped in favor of the inventors. I just think it's important to have something to even out the imbalance between commercialization and invention. I look at software, where there isn't a tradition of patenting things, and see the guys who built the technology that makes the world go around (UNIX, C, TCP/IP) leading comfortable professional lives while the WhatsApp creators exit for $16 billion. I don't think that state of affairs is indicative of the right balance, and I think it creates bad incentives for people in the industry. I'm not saying that the patent system is the right solution. I'm saying that there is a problem that needs to be solved.
- WildUtah 12y ago
  There are a mountain of patents to block innovation in speech recognition. Dragon and many others are ready to knock down any kind of real innovative small company that has success.[0] SRI never had a chance in that market to make it alone and that was understood from the beginning. Only Apple's and Google's cash and legal muscle makes it possible for new speech recognition tech to be commercialized in the face of patents blocking innovation. Anyone smaller and less intimidating can just be crushed by incumbents. "researchers and inventors" That's disingenuous. It's the researchers and inventors that want the patent system out of software, information, and communication. [0] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/technology/patent-wars-among-tech-giants-can-stifle-competition.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/technology/patent-wars-amo...

crusso 12y ago

which means instead of a discovery in lab A spurring a totally new way of thinking in lab B Without the patent system's protections, lab A would be unlikely to divulge its discoveries to lab B.

jacquesm 12y ago
That's fine, they're going to have to market their stuff some day.
- Someone 12y ago
  That doesn't guarantee that the secrets come out. Counterexamples are Damascus steel and Roman concrete.
  - nitrogen 12y ago
    That doesn't guarantee that the secrets come out. Counterexamples are Damascus steel and Roman concrete. Both of those have been reverse engineered by now. We have the advantage of the scientific method and a robust (reverse) engineering culture that would keep secrets from remaining secrets for too long.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
      - staunch 12y ago
        The brightest minds weren't exactly hard at work at this.
    - cthalupa 12y ago
      Damascus steel has not been completely successfully reproduced to this day, though we're probably 95% of the way there. Though, it's not exactly a field with hordes of scientists looking to reproduce it.
      - wyager 12y ago
        >Damascus steel has not been completely successfully reproduced to this day Because it sucks compared to modern knife steels. VG-10, S30V, or any other high-end steel beats the hell out of Damascus/wootz steel. If there were any serious benefit to Damascus steel, we would have certainly reverse-engineered it by now.
DannyBee 12y ago
So the grants they depend on require divulgence to get the grant. It's not like they are funding themselves ...

swamp40 12y ago

If you think provisional patents are stifling innovation, you should see what happens when you tell these researchers that they no longer have the possibility of getting incredibly filthy rich someday from their discoveries - because all patents have been eliminated and a new era of "share and share alike for the common good" is upon us.

warfangle 12y ago
Do the researchers themselves even own the patents -- or will the company/university they work for own the patents? You should see what happens when they realize they aren't ever going to become filthy rich someday from their discoveries... just like everybody else.
- krschultz 12y ago
  They do actually own some % of it. They also do actually get filthy rich if the patent is worthwhile. The college I went to actually had two guys that invented most of the multi-touch technology that went into the original iPhone. Apple bought the patents out and the professor and doctoral student that had done the research made a good deal of money.
baddox 12y ago
I imagine lawyers being more upset about that than researchers.
hyperbovine 12y ago
Nobody I know in research is in it for the money. There are much, much more direct ways for technically gifted people to get rich--look up "quantitative finance".
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
locopati 12y ago
Hell, yeah! Good thing Jonas Salk buttoned-up his polio discoveries so he could make mad cash. Oh, wait, he didn't. "There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?" - Salk

higherpurpose 12y ago

So much for standing on the shoulders of giants for progress. It's more like standing on your own shoulders.

hiou 12y ago

The problem with patents is not whether or not they should exist, but the massive friction involved in licensing them to others. If the patent system had more requirements or controls about requiring a fair system of licensing and ownership division it could serve its original purpose much better in my opinion.

bdamm 12y ago
Perhaps there is room for a specialized marketplace?
- quote 12y ago
  There are plenty already, by all sorts of players. However the issue is search - which is probably one major aspect of the "friction" mentioned in the parent post: 1. Patents are often not exactly written to easily give their secrets (I would say there are specific forms of patent legalese). 2. You need (costly) experts to look at potential offers. In addition, there are more disincentives to "easy" IP transactions: 1. Even when you've found a matching patent it doesn't mean that you can just pop out a product. Most of the actual work is still ahead of you. 2. Pricing and contract negotiation is rather difficult and costs as well. 3. The existing marketplaces are mostly rather small with the largest having maybe 20-30k offers. Just not enough to impact the myriads of problems available... Still interested? Just reply, maybe I can help.

JackC 12y ago

which means instead of a discovery in lab A spurring a totally new way of thinking in lab B, it restricts lab B from ever thinking that way. This is not necessarily true. Patents, unlike copyrights, are additive. If you write a book based on the Harry Potter characters, JK Rowling owns the copyright to your derivative work. But if Lab A patents a way of making graphene, Lab B is free to research and patent non-obvious refinements. So you tend to see a tree of patents by different people: 1. Awesome new invention Foo! (Lab A) 1.A. Small but commercially important refinement of Foo. (Lab B) 1.A.i. More performant version of small refinement of Foo. (Lab A) 1.A.ii. Different way of increasing performance on small refinement of Foo. (Lab C) ... where you definitely need to license Patent 1 from Lab A if you want to sell your own Foo, but if you want to sell a Foo with Lab C's performance improvements you need to license Patent 1.A and 1.A.ii as well. This is why there is a "race to patent every single miniscule discovery" in the first place -- Lab A getting Patent 1 doesn't remove the incentive to discover refinements. It is not obvious that the search for refinements would happen faster without this incentive.

new299 12y ago
In order to develop on Patent 1, Labs B and C should officially license Lab As patent. As I understand it there's no "research exception" for patents, and they don't just apply to "selling". I'm basing my understanding on this article: http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v25/n11/full/nbt1107-1225.html http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v25/n11/full/nbt1107-1225.... It's also true that researchers rarely take any notice of patents, and the issue just gets ignored.
- _delirium 12y ago
  A university patent office explained it to me as follows (note of course that doesn't guarantee this person was correct): patents do cover any "practice" of the patent, which includes practicing it for the purpose of even merely understanding and improving it. So research is not legally exempt. But in practice, patent infringement damages are almost exclusively at a court's discretion, and courts are almost exclusively interested in unlicensed commercial exploitation. A court can in principle issue a wide range of relief: an injunction against practicing the patent; a mandatory licensing fee; compensatory damages; or some combination of those. The nature of the relief is supposed to depend on the nature of the infringement and considerations of public policy. A widespread assumption is that it's not worth suing researchers who are trying to improve an invention without commercially exploiting the patent, because a court will be very unsympathetic to the patent holder, and unlikely to award any substantial relief.

WalterBright 12y ago

The US airframe industry was so hamstrung by patents that innovation and progress shifted to Europe. It took the government to force the industry to accept a patent pool and move forward. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers_patent_war#The_patent_pool_solution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers_patent_war#The_...

throwawaykf05 12y ago
This is actually a myth that was recently busted. See this paper, which presents compelling empirical evidence of the aircraft industry from that time to show that there was no such hold-up: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2355673 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2355673 Unfortunately, this is one of those myths, like the one of Watt's patents holding up development of steam, that gets repeated so often that people accept it without question.

_greim_ 12y ago

> it restricts lab B from ever thinking that way Is it not possible to look at existing patents and build on them, filing new patents which build on the existing ones? What would really restrict lab B from ever thinking that way would be if lab A never filed a patent, and just kept the discovery locked up as a trade secret.

nkurz 12y ago
In principle this would be possible. In practice, the standard advice is that inventors should avoid looking at competitors' patents to reduce the danger of "treble damages" due to "willful infringement". This fear is likely overblown, but I've certainly never heard of anyone excited to hear that their competitor has published a patent because they hope that the new information revealed in the patent will help them to innovate better. I'm sure it's industry specific, but I've don't think I've ever even heard someone claim that they learned something from a patent that they could not have legally learned in some other way. Given that this spread of knowledge is part of the ideal that is presented for the existence of patents, it would be nice to hear from anyone who works in area where patents are felt to actually help in the spread of knowledge. I'm willing to believe that promising a monopoly can help to incentivize research and innovation, but I'm doubtful they positively affect the rate at which knowledge is shared.

rayiner 12y ago

> advancing early discoveries could move at an exponentially faster pace. Faster pace towards what though? Someone swooping in, doing the last 1% of the work, and making all the profit. E.g. it's sad how much more money Apple has made on Siri than SRI did. Patents do a pretty awful job of making sure researchers and inventors get compensated. But they're one of the few things to tip the balance in favor of researchers and inventors.

nkurz 12y ago
But they're one of the few things to tip the balance in favor of researchers and inventors. My guess coming into this thread was that the business people and lawyers would be more pro-patent than the researchers and inventors. Of course one can be both, and I don't know the backgrounds of many participants, but it's interesting that in this thread both you and JackC have strong backgrounds in law. Have you found many researchers or inventors without comparable legal expertise who perceive the balance to be tipped in their favor? And moreover, that think this advantage is maintained rather than threatened by patents?
- rayiner 12y ago
  I got my degree in aerospace engineering, and worked at two R&D companies. I spent those years surrounded by engineering PhDs. Everyone supported the patent system, even though it was a huge hassle, because it gave them leverage against the Big Co's with outsourced manufacturing muscle. I don't think the scales are tipped in favor of the inventors. I just think it's important to have something to even out the imbalance between commercialization and invention. I look at software, where there isn't a tradition of patenting things, and see the guys who built the technology that makes the world go around (UNIX, C, TCP/IP) leading comfortable professional lives while the WhatsApp creators exit for $16 billion. I don't think that state of affairs is indicative of the right balance, and I think it creates bad incentives for people in the industry. I'm not saying that the patent system is the right solution. I'm saying that there is a problem that needs to be solved.
WildUtah 12y ago
There are a mountain of patents to block innovation in speech recognition. Dragon and many others are ready to knock down any kind of real innovative small company that has success.[0] SRI never had a chance in that market to make it alone and that was understood from the beginning. Only Apple's and Google's cash and legal muscle makes it possible for new speech recognition tech to be commercialized in the face of patents blocking innovation. Anyone smaller and less intimidating can just be crushed by incumbents. "researchers and inventors" That's disingenuous. It's the researchers and inventors that want the patent system out of software, information, and communication. [0] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/technology/patent-wars-among-tech-giants-can-stifle-competition.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/technology/patent-wars-amo...