I have in preparation a diary about the often troll rated scientist Fritz Haber who, among other things, is responsibile for the development of a technology that has allowed 5 out of 6 people now alive to be fed. There is and was a big argument over whether he was a bad guy.
It's a long diary and it's got lots of stuff in it, and it is examines the ideas of Jimmy Kunstler, a journalist who focuses on issues involved in so called "Peak Oil." It's so long with long pointless boring insufferable and self serving diversions that are not at all about Jimmy Kunstler and Peak Oil. That's my troll ratable style. Probably it will end up as a series.
Jimmy Kunstler has gotten into an exchange of troll ratings with the Oracle at Snowmass. I promise my diary, that will include diversions about the troll rating of Galileo, and the troll rating of the telescope, and lots of other great and important troll ratings, will talk all about troll ratings and Jimmy Kunstler's thesis. But that's all in the future.
Right now, I'd like to troll rate changes to the structure of US patent law.
I was sitting at a minor league baseball game recently in front of some corporate type chemists listening them talk about their publication lists. They were very amused because they had no idea what they published and in any case couldn't care less what they published. They had no idea that their names had appeared on several patents, but they found at that the corporate lawyers had in fact named them as inventors of stuff they didn't know they invented. They found out about their inventions by searching their names on SciFinder when they were bored and had nothing to do.
Ah, corporate law...
They were laughing like hell over the possibility that they would be called as witnesses in disputes about the stuff they invented, in which case they would have to study real hard to find out all about their own inventions. From the sound of it, that process, defending your own patents whether or not you know anything about them - is almost like a free vacation, at least in their company.
(I'm sure they are very serious about this stuff when their bosses are in the room though.)
Recently I was at a meeting with a bunch of intellectual property lawyers and scientists. It was one of those meetings where there are 15 people and nine or ten of them think that everything they know is a secret that they cannot divulge to the other 14 people.
One of the lawyers had something very interesting to say during a long digression that had nothing to do with the reason I was at the meeting. The digression concerned changes to patent law that will have a very, very, very, very profound effect on who can afford protection for their intellectual property. It's subtle, but I'll try to explain it simply.
Suppose that you discovered the properties of salt for the first time. This is of course impossible, since salt has been known since antiquity, but suppose. You find out that salt is great stuff and does lots of things, and you decide to patent it.
Here are the things you might wish to patent: Salt makes food taste better. Salt preserves foods. Salt melts ice. Salt converts water from an electrical insulator into an electrical conductor. Salt is a useful additive to IV solutions. Salt kills unwanted vegetation. Salt can be used to help wounds heal. Salt can be used to manufacture drain clearing chemicals and chemicals for treating wood to make paper and chemicals for making biodiesel and for effecting the separation of phases of immiscible liquids...so on and so on.
Under the previous patent law, you could file a patent on salt, and list all ten thousand uses for salt that you had discovered. For this you would pay just one fee to file, one set of payments to your patent attorney, and one set of patent maintenance fees.
No more.
The change to US patent policy will now limit you to five claims. This means that if you have 2000 applications for a new invention - and yes that is possible and of practical import - you will need to pay for 500 patents and all the related fees.
This means that you will have a hard time getting rich from innovation unless you are already rich.
This is one of those Bush era scams that goes under the radar.
If you would like to see patents, and how they are structured and how they work, you can read them by going to the USPTO website, and search using various criteria.
Patent Search Website.
For instance, if you want to find out all of the things patented since 1976 by inventors with the last name "Lovins" you can search "Lovins" using the "Inventor Name" field. You get the following list:
PAT. NO. Title
1 6,296,265 Recliner wheelchair having adjustable pivot point
2 6,247,717 Wheel mounting assembly
3 5,328,247 Extendable leg rest assembly for a wheelchair
4 4,478,744 Method of obtaining antibodies
5 4,046,090 Apparatus and method for making decorative tiles
You can read all of the details to find out whether the recliner wheelchair is a hydrogen hyperwheelchair or whether the decorative tiles are negawattian tiles.
If you want to see a patent of the type that will become impossible for anyone who is not Pfizer - one with lots of claims - try US Patent 4,542,132 issued to Pfizer for a class of compounds known as a diesterase inhibitor. This is one of a series of patents would lead to that drug which generated so much interest from the world, Viagara, leading pharmaceutical companies to drop less profitable programs in novel antibiotics, etc.
Go where the money is.
Anyway, this patent isn't particularly broad but it gives a feel for the idea. There are much broader patents than this one, but only Pfizer types and rich types will be able to file them in the future.
I don't know if anyone grasps this matter, but it is very important and it is about to crush a lot of potential Edisons and Hewletts and Packards.
It sucks.
Here's a troll rate for this patent change.