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Comment by calebclark | Hacker News Reader

Why is the government filing patents? The research is paid for by our tax dollars. Patenting it doesn’t seem right.

I don’t have a problem with it. This prevents a private entity from monopolizing a possibly world-changing invention. The government can auction licenses to create competition, or even give it away for free.

This kind of technology would be so world-changing that I can't believe anyone with the knowledge and capability to develop it would actually allow something like patent law get in their way. Whomever gets this working basically becomes a godlike power compared to the rest of humanity. Who cares what the lawyers say at that point, let them try to subpoena you at the Mars colony that houses your space fleet.

This made me crack up, thank you

I think it's more about preventing international private entities from profiting. AFAIK, they would get the same anti-monopoly effect just publishing about it because nobody can patent prior art.

U.S. patents are only enforceable within U.S. territories. And if the tech truly were break-through, even if the patent were enforceable outside the U.S., no foreign government would comply.

No it doesn't. There's no monopoly without a patent.

The best way to prevent a private entity patenting an invention and monopolising it themselves, is to patent it first. Proving prior art is notoriously difficult and patent reviewers frequently overlook even obvious examples, but pre-existing patents are impossible to ignore. So the government patents them to preserve broad access to the invention.

> So the government patents them to preserve broad access to the invention.

I would assume or at like to believe this is true with federal government patents, but it's not true for state governments, government-funded universities, etc. It would be nice to have a law or official policy to point to that states outright that the federal government can't or won't sue anyone for using the technology in those patents (or the opposite).

Used to be you could negate a patent by citing prior art. The date of invention, not the date to file was important. Now that has changed. Date of filing is all that is considered. Previously I can show my signed and dated notebooks to prove I was first to invent in a patent challenge. That's no longer the case.

If I invent something and don't patent it, Bob might come along and patent it instead.

Alternatively I can file it as a trade secret, where there's documentation I invented it, but no public disclosure. So I don't get patent monopoly protection, but I can prove prior art if someone else tries to patent it. This wouldn't work for public research that isn't a secret.

Government research filings mean that someone else who didn't invent it won't be able to patent it, or at least as easily.

Patent examiners rely quite a bit on earlier patents to determine if something is new. They are not experts in all unpatented but invented research taking place in all fields, so filing this patent helps the PTO block similar patents filed later by other parties.

Also, having a patent portfolio of impressive things as the inventor of record, even if some other entity owns the patent, is very useful to your career. It's comparable to having a track record of published papers in prestigious journals. So allowing inventors to document their inventions with patents is likely useful in terms of attracting talent. A government agency, as employer, being owner of the patent, also prevents the inventor from going off and patenting it on his own after no longer working for that agency and thus privatizing the invention.

See Executive Order 10096[1]. An article from 1990[2].

[1] https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/execu...

[2] https://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/matters/matters-9004.h...

To make money so those tax dollars have been soundly invested?

To protect the invention from commercial patents?

Sounds sensible to me.

This used to be the attitude within government. However, it has changed, and this is for the better.

It is quite rare that government R&D is sufficient to demonstrate that a particular technology is commercially viable. Without a patent to license to a private entity there is little changc such an entity will invest the time/money to perform this R&D. They need that patent protection to raise funds.

I have personal experience with this process.

To stop someone else patenting it and then trying to claim license fees from the Navy.

> To stop someone else patenting it

prior art.

Prior art is very difficult to prove and patent reviewers often miss obvious examples. They can't so easily ignore a pre-existing patent. It also protects the invention from exploitation by foreign competitors, in jurisdictions with reciprocal patent protection.

It depends, obviously. Prior art is easy to prove by pointing at an existing patent. It is also easy to prove by pointing at an article in a mainstream publication in the local language. So "protective publication" or "defensive disclosure" is a reasonable alternative to getting a patent (and perhaps letting it expire at the first opportunity).

Prior art is only difficult to prove if you're relying on something along the lines of folk knowledge among the indigenous peoples of the lands where the Jumblies live.

It's non-obviousness that is notoriously difficult to prove.

Prior art doesn’t apply in foreign jurisdictions. A country that is first-to-file can file the patent then stop your domestic company from using the tech.

> Prior art doesn’t apply in foreign jurisdictions.

Can you elaborate on this? Japan, for example, requires you to disclose any prior art during application similar to the U.S. Israel recently adopted similar rules. These disclosures frequently include US and foreign (WO, EP, etc) patents and patent publications.

> A country that is first-to-file can file the patent then stop your domestic company from using the tech.

Assuming you filed first in your domestic country, then you just apply in the foreign country and claim priority from your domestic application - thereby granting your application an even earlier effective filing date.

Wouldn't try to enforce a patent on such revolutionary devices to a government be pointless?

If they wanted it, they would get it, no?

We're talking about bending gravity powered by a small fusion reactor.

That is not a proper answer.

If you publish a design, it becomes prior act, and nobody can patent it. You can even do that in the patent office without filling a patent, making them the registration of your design, without patenting it.

It seems clear to me that what they want is to appropriate someone else design because I do not believe they have a working prototype of this.

Publication can do this without the expense of filing patents.

From the DoD scientist point of view there are only so many ways to show productivity. Showing productivity is required for raises and receiving funding for projects. (National/DoD labs basically function like universities.)

It's really either papers or patents, and patents are generally counted equivalent to two papers.

I'm not sure what other metrics could be used.

While I think discussing whether military research should be patented is an interesting question, I think the nature of this particular patent (that is, that it’s total nonsense) kind of trumps any speculation here.

They also will gift these patents to businesses to get the technology out there, iirc. I don’t know fully how it works.

So that France cannot copy it?

Funny, seeing as the US essentially bullied France into selling it's nuclear technology.

(See: Alstom purchase by GE)

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