Open science and patents
Anna Kushnir
Thursday, 18 September 2008 19:30 UTC
The current issue of Nature contains an interesting interview with Cameron Neylon and Jean-Claude Bradley, both high profile advocates of open notebook science. Their labs “publish” or post all acquired data as it comes in, thus making science more transparent and “improving scientific communication.”
The drawbacks of the approach, touched on in the interview, include potential difficulties in publishing papers and obtaining patents on open science data. My question is where does open data fit in obtaining a patent? Can it count as prior art and prevent someone from patenting a discovery? Does one need to time stamp each entry, with services such as WebCite? Can it prevent an open science researcher him/herself from obtaining a patent, since all the data is already out in the open?
Updated 18 September 2008 20:20 UTC
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Replies
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Can it prevent an open science researcher hum/herself from obtaining a patent
Yes, it’s a typo, but I feel a song coming on.
Sorry Anna.
Please hum your Patent ideas to an iHum device near you.
Apparently, or should one say, allegedly, the owner of these, stinky-poo-poos (they don’t in reality – I know) might be a reasonable place to
pick brambles,-fart- start.:-
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Bah. Just as well.
I read the interview more carefully, and think that I (or Jean-Claude) answered my question:
“Bradley: If patenting is important to you, you cannot do open-notebook science, it’s that simple.”But why? Patenting and open notebook science are firmly mutually exclusive? How come? And how to patent laws change? Do they ever? What’s the ‘mutation’ rate of the law, or the pace and which it keeps up with the evolution/change of society and science? Does it change at all to accommodate?
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Hi, I’m new hear. First post! I’ve been studying patent law for the past 6 mos or so, and I thought I’d give a stab at addressing this issue. As is being discussed in another thread, once you publish an invention (including on the internet), you only have a year to apply for a patent application. So if the data they are posting constitutes an invention, putting it on-line limits their time to apply for patent protection. I think one of the most important outcomes of the patent process is that it brings new technology out into the open, instead of keeping it hidden behind closed doors, and ensures that it will be dedicated to the public after a number of years. This law ensures that people who want to patent their inventions do so quickly. If someone sits on an invention for 10 years before filing an application, that’s 10 more years before the patent expires and the invention belongs to the public. Open notebooks are a nice idea, as long as you are aware that you are seriously compromising your right to patent by making your discoveries public in real time. And I’m not convinced that this represents any problem with the current patent system.
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