An idea I’ve had for a long, long, time. Never been able to find the money to test it. Almost certainly wouldn’t have been a good person to test it if I could have found the money.
Anyway, couple of years back a scientist contacted me to ask amout summat rare earthy. And I said, well, if you can do xy then why not apply it to z because xyz would be a very cool thing to be able to do.
He went silent, his gaze was either internal or thousand yard for 15 seconds and a “Yes, I see”.
Apparently this does, in fact, work. It is possible to do xyz. No, I don’t own a piece of it – ideas don’t, practice does. I’m awaiting more news on “how well” this works in terms of real costs. But so far, without those details, it looks like a very cool – as in no, really cool – soliution to certain recycling problems. And dependent upon costs in volume might, in fact, be the solution to the global rare earths industry.
Which would be very cool indeed.
Yes, yes, I know, mine, money etc. But even without that, very cool indeed. That initial idea I’d been nurturing as a “But this should work” does in fact work. And, given scale costs again, would knock out the major bottleneck and cost in rare earths. Very cool indeed.
Sounds exciting, Tim. Great work.
Umm, this wouldn’t be MXenes, would it?
No…..
Tim, if this idea does make some dosh, it would be nice if he recognised the value of your idea and gave you a bung (or, in the parlance of my youth, if he ‘played the white man’).
Well, yes, but unlikely. He’s already sold a use of the patent for $1 million and up…..
No, I don’t own a piece of it – ideas don’t, practice does.
Isn’t that what patents are for? Why does he have a patent for your idea?
It’s decades since I used to translate patents, but my understanding was that you can’t patent an idea or a theory, only a practical application.
Patents don’t protect an idea. They protect a process. It’s the *way* something is done that gains the patent.
OK, getcha.
What about if you’d got him to sign a non disclosure agreement about xyz before telling him?
I know that I’m not the person to get this tech up and running. So, happy to see it running….
A consideration might have been nice, though. Perhaps you can suggest a few bob after this bloke has made his first billion.
Patents don’t protect an idea.
And thank heavens they don’t. Or all our thinking would be subject to patent infringements.
“Patents don’t protect an idea. They protect a process. ”
Yes, which is why a lot of patent applications used to include a working model or similar. This process has been corrupted in the last couple of decades.
There’s the intrusion of patent protection for software, i.e. algorithms. Which are ideas.
There’s patent protection for drugs. Which in many cases are naturally occurring. So this is a discovery, not an invention.
And then there’s sheer laziness on the part of the patent office. I mean, there’s a patent for at least one FTL drive (possibly expired by now). Is there a working model or demonstration? Of course not. Rubber stamp.