Re: patenting colimits?

[David CHEMOUIL <David.Chemouil@onera.fr>]

On Tue, 26 May 2009 19:53:32 -0700, David Spivak <dspivak@gmail.com> wrote:
> One reason a mathematician may want to patent a practical use of his idea is
> because if he doesn't do so, someone else can.  If some corporation spent
> the money to understand a mathematical construction and then patented its
> application, not only does that corporation stand to make a lot of money (on
> a construction the corporation was hardly involved with), it can also keep
> competitors from using the ideas.  Or, the corporation can "bury it," by
> patenting the ideas and then not using them, but still using litigation to
> prevent others from putting the ideas to good use.

First, patent laws are national laws. But it is generally acknowledged, even
in the most patent-friendly countries, that a patent should protect something
*original*. As long as you have published your idea with a clearly
identifiable date of publication, for instance in a scientific journal, no
one should be able to patent it afterwards (I write "should" because patent
offices are often a bit skimpy).

Secondly, and once again, many countries do not allow patenting mathematical
results. Things are less clear for algorithms.

> Once you patent, you control the rights to the intellectual property, and
> can make the product more or less widely available.  To me, the patenting of
> an application of category theory is not an issue; the problem would be if
> someone patented such an application of category theory and then restricted
> its use or attempted to make undue amounts of money from it.

As a matter of fact, considering the cost of patent registration, the
depositer must expect something... Either to earn money, or to have its
competitors lose money, or (that may be the case for many public institutions)
to give evidence for "valorisation" of results to public authorities. 

Except for the last case where patents may, perhaps, not be used to prevent
scientific work, other applications of patents are likely to be problematic
both ethically and economically as far as scientific research is concerned
(think about scientists working in institutions unable to afford royalties or
attorney expenses). 


dc
-- 
David CHEMOUIL
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