[Caoimhan]

How would the world have been different if someone actually owned a patent on the basic process of smelting steel? (Setting aside for the moment the fact that there are many patents on particular variations of this process).

I ask this question, because the ability to smelt steel was a major contributor to the industrial age, and the large scale production of large buildings, roads, bridges, tunnels, trains, automobiles, large ships, etc... the list goes on and on.

But the cost of smelting steel was, and still is, pretty low. Call it "cheap building material".

Cheap energy in the form of oil, too, is without patent. What if someone owned the patent on the process of drilling for oil? (Setting aside for the moment the fact that there are many patents on particular variations of this process).

I bring this all up because it suddenly occured to me what a wonderful building material carbon fiber can be. It's incredibly lightweight and strong, with varying amounts of rigidity (as required by the application) and it has the added advantage of being a possible means to sequester carbon into a useful form.

But is the fact that carbon fiber is a patented material making it prohibitively expensive as a replacement for steel in most applications?

This comparison to construction materials makes me understand the problems that patents have caused the energy industry. No one owns a patent on any of the basic energy technologies we use today on a large scale. They were all "open source", available for enhancement and development by just about anyone. And there seems to be a correlation between usage and the amount of secondary patents. Photovoltaics have a lot of patents on specific formulas and methods of growing crystals and applying them to a substrate, for instance.

Is there an inverse correllation between how patent-bound a technology is, and the degree to which that technology is put to use?

The fact is... there is only one completely new energy technology to come along in 100 years... nuclear... and I don't think anyone patented the process of splitting atoms in a controlled chain reaction.

PVs were developed greatly in the last 100 years, but the PV effect was observed in the 19th century, and no one thought to patent the process of getting electricity out of semi-conductors sitting in the sun.

If you develop a new technology and hold the patent too tightly, and don't allow it to freely develop with the ingenuity of thousands or millions of people... you're likely dooming it to obscurity.

Any comments?

Caoimhan

[The_Toecutter]

Speaking of carbon fiber, the defense industry by the likes of Boeing, DuPont, and Lockheed Martin own a monopoly on its production for varying applications(Like DuPont has the monopoly on providing it for armor). This keeps prices prohibitively expensive.

Sure, vaccuum molding it is not cheap by any means, but I remember a Daimler Chrysler source quoting $10/pound if it were widely available for use in an automotive application. Not that the auto industry would be likely to make use of it on their own for a mass market application, but even still, the benefits can be easily reaped in the form of cars today losing over 800 pounds of weight while becoming much more safe.

On a side note, a lot of weight can be removed by simply stripping out all the trim and sound deadener and replacing the dashboard and seats with something lighter in weight by removing all that useless foam placed into cars now days. The interiors of cars now days often add more than 400 pounds of weight, which is precisely why cars have climbed in weight so much over the past two decades.

My personal opinion on patents varies depending on whether the entity with a patent is an individual person or small business, or government-chartered incorporated entitiy. If incorporated or some government think tank? Patent should be open source so as to keep companies/governments from hiking up the prices or even supresing the development. If individual person or non-incorporated small business? It should be your own damn property so that you may profit from it. The constitution and its resulting patent protection in Article I Section 8 Clause 8 was supposed to apply to individual people, not bureacracies. But Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, in a case that was never even ruled, of which gave companies the full rights of individual people(without the responsibilities) changed that.

[Caoimhan]

Things go the other extreme, too...

There are some things that are so cheap to produce, with no patent protection, they end up becoming pretty much unprofitable to produce, even if they could be very valuable.

One such item is MDMA (street name: Ecstacy). It is a drug that has no patent, can be made very cheaply, and has a number of potentially valuable uses as a prescription drug. But drug companies don't want to fight for a change of its prohibited status with the government, because even if it were allowed by prescription, the price per pill would be so extremely low, it's not worth it for them to pursue.

It's a similar story with marijuana and industrial hemp. Marijuana has had known pharmaceutical uses for decades, and recent research has shown its value in helping alleviate side-effects of chemotherapy, but the Federal government is reluctant to remove it from the banned substances list. It was originally put on that list partially due to pressure from the tobacco industry, who feared that the easy-to-grow-yourself-in-a-pot-on-your-balcony herb would replace the hard-to-grow tobacco plant as the smoking herb of choice in America.

And, of course, we know about industrial hemp and William Randolph Hearst... who wanted to make a killing in the wood-pulp paper industry.

So... we have this narrow band of goods out there... ones that are expensive enough to be profitable to make, yet not so expensive that they can't compete in the marketplace.

Right now, electric cars are "below the band" in being not profitable enough at competitive prices with gasoline cars... especially when oil companies pass money to the car companies to make sure that electric cars never happen.

Sickening... totally sickening.

[gg3]

Y'all are on to something interesting here, and I like the way you think.

The fundamental problem is the disconnect between the world of technology and the world of finance.

Originally patents were granted for 17 years and renewable once, total of 35 years. This was at a time when, obviously, the pace of technological change was slow.

Now we live in the age of Moore's Law, when technological change is measured in smaller and smaller time increments. And yet the patent still stands for 35 years, and the copyright has been extended to (if I'm not mistaken) well over a century (that was done to protect Disney's hold on Mickey Mouse of all things!).

If we factor for the rate of change, it's as if the patent has been extended to 350 years and the copyright for 1,000 years. And the standards have been loosened such that today one could patent the concept of "computer" or "automobile" or "nuclear reactor" without even having a working implementation, and thereby tie down an entire industry for as long as one's lawyers could extract the "royalties." (And I thought we threw out royalty in 1776!)

All driven, of course, by the ability of large vested interests to utilize government as a tool by which to distort the free market into a system for protecting monopoly fiefdoms.

While the world of technology is fundamentally concerned with finding better ways to do things, the world of finance is fundamentally concerned with obtaining as much return on investment as possible from everything it owns: and this, in conjunction with monopoly and oligopoly powers, is what causes progress to stall, even as it provides incentives for progress by would-be competitors.

So here we have to do a balancing act. There needs to be enough profit in something to make it worth doing; but on the other hand there needs to be a point of closure, beyond which one can no longer coast parasitically on past achievements.

[Liamj]

Great topic, good example for showing problem of patenting.

For starters there were probably many 'patents' of their day for iron smelting (and stone chipping too maybe), i'll bet most warlords worked out that stronger swords good and they'd try to hold onto their secrets or steal those of others. Of course none completely succeeded, but the patent protection apparatus has come a LONG way since then.
I think thats a bad thing.

The transperant and free association of ideas and technologies has to be parrallel to both their appropriate use and the development of new & better ones.
How can investors or buyers choose wisely when they can't know how x works and often aren't allowed to tinker with x even after purchase? Doesn't limiting broad knowledge about what is possible and how, result in a lot more reinvented wheels, more wasted investments in inappropriate & unfixable technology, and perhaps also force more specialisation?

I recognise this is just a string of assertions, and my bias' are distinctly Copyleft.
But since gone this far, doesn't patenting also represent a free market failure, thru imperfect information?

[Zentric]

To add a concrete possibility to an abstract discussion, consider the position that China's in today, where those in their central planning are considering whether, just maybe, the demand for Salad Shooters(tm) and other junky plastic items has peaked and now they have to decide what should be made inside their factories instead. They must figure that perhaps now would be a good time to start producing more smart, compact and resource-efficient or conserving items. But perhaps many patents are in place that would prevent this.

At the same time, America and China escalate their sabre-rattling, and the American finacial bubble (which is an ever-increasing threat to US bond holders like China) only continues to grow. At some point, China says, "F**k you and your patents, America. Since you can't get your house in order, we're going to make these great new products without your approval." And they would commence to do so, and the whole world would buy these products, tacitly relieved that China has found a way to keep its economy on track without resorting to the heavy production of munitions and other military hardware.

Certainly, things wouldn't play out exactly like that, but I do believe such a vibe has to be in the air.

[Devil]

Would the previous posters please check their "facts"?

Patents cannot be renewed beyond 16-20 years in most countries.

The original high-performance carbon fibres were produced in Japan more than 40 years ago, so they can no longer be patent-protected

Carbon fibres are produced in many countries. There is no monopoly.

The current production COST price of aeronautical grades is about $25-30/kg but commercial tow is cheaper and OK for most applications.

[Caoimhan]

So why don't we see cars mass produced with carbon fiber frames?

Is it because steel is superior? Or because it's cheaper? Would steel be cheaper if it weren't for subsidies to the steel industry? Has the steel worker's union blocked efforts to make cars out of carbon fiber?

(Once again, an industry built up around buggy-whips doesn't want us to build horse-less carriages).

[Devil]

Grow up, will you? Not only is steel cheaper per kg, but the carbon represents only about 25-50% by weight of the bodywork. The rest is some form of cross-linked synthetic resin (polyester) which is quite expensive in itself, needs to impregnate the carbon fibre mat without air bubbles and be moulded, all expensive processes, time and energy-consuming processes.

Do you guys really have to see collusion and corruption everywhere? Just accept that carbon-bodied cars cost more in all respects, without long-leggity beasties going bump in the night.

[Caoimhan]

Devil, this article isn't about the automotive industry, but it shows the mindset of a lot of companies, and the mindset of the occasional company that is willing to take risks with new technology:

http://www.skyaid.org/Skycar/CarbonFibe ... uction.htm

[The_Toecutter]

Enter into a search engine: "Carbon Fiber Antitrust Litigation". This applies specifically to America, and not the rest of the world; some of the defendents have settled. The case is still ongoing. Carbon fiber may be more expensive, yes, but it's certainly doable.

You quote $25-30/kg, which is 15%-35% higher than that Daimler Chrysler quote. The Rocky Mountain Institute concluded in 1995 that the material itself needs to come down to $5/pound to match steel. Considering back then it was over $15/pound(not necessarily in America!), at the time entailing a price premium of $5,000 per car, now it entails a price premium no higher than the current 'hybrids' if you peg the price at $10/pound.

The cost of carbon fiber has dropped in recent years in the states, but not as much as it could have by removing the monopoly hold. Five years ago it was tough to find 50" wide 5.5 oz cloth for under $50 a yard, now that has dropped to about $30 a yard for a carbon/aramid matrix. Still nowhere near what it should be and could be today. Might be different in other places though.

My university's aerospace department has all the things needed to produce and mold carbon fiber. I'm thinking of taking a course on working with it, and maybe building a carbon fiber body for my sports car. But that is definately getting into pipe dream territory.

[RiverRat]

When I raced Superbikes in the mid 90’s, carbon fiber and titanium was just coming on the scene.

This stuff was light, strong and EXPENSIVE. Needless to say I was not able to partake in the exotic materials.

When racing motorcycles, I always strived to reduce weight. It was the number one priority. I stripped my bike practically naked (I even removed the starter and had to ‘bump it’ to fire it up).

Weight savings measures make a difference and should be a focus of major car makers. I just can’t think of anything off the top of my head that can be easily stripped from a car to reduce weight. Too bad … because it is a cheap way to improve efficiency.

[The_Toecutter]

I just can’t think of anything off the top of my head that can be easily stripped from a car to reduce weight.

Look at the interiors of cars today. That's the best place to start. Those seats you sit in are easily over 50 pounds each, most of that weight useless filler material positioned inside the seat that's not needed. You'll find all sorts of filler material and sound deadener stuffed inside your dashboard, underneath your carpets, ect. that all adds a huge amount of dead weight.

[Caoimhan]

I'd love to have one of those kinds of chairs that you see in high-end offices these days... the "aero chairs" with the mesh back and seat. Probably much lighter...