A patent is not the only way to protect an idea. In practice, trade secret law may be more important. This is particularly true when the idea to be protected is not the product itself, but the process used to produce it.
Consider the high-K metal gate process used by Intel at the 45nm and 32nm nodes. Intel published a small amount of information about the process when they introduced it. And competitors have undoubtedly reverse engineered the results, determining the precise geometries and elemental makeup of the devices. But they do not know the process used to produce them. They are forced to hypothesize about the process technology and then test each hypothesis. Certainly, knowing the final result is a huge advantage over having to dream it up in the first place. But reverse engineering the manufacturing process is still daunting, even for engineers already "skilled in the art". I think there may be analogies in LENR. Now frankly in the long run, I don't expect this fact to be especially significant. If this stuff plays out as some of us hope, the economic incentive will ensure that what can be done, will be done, and quickly. If it doesn't play out, there are no useful secrets to protect. But trade secrecy may have a large effect on the likelihood of people like me, a curious non-specialist, ever being able to satisfy my curiosity about what the heck is going on. Bummer. ;-) Jeff, speaking for myself. I have never been employed by Intel or had access to any Intel trade-secret information through NDA or anything like that. On Thu, Aug 30, 2012 at 12:23 PM, Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com>wrote: > I wrote: > > >> Generally speaking, in my experience, the value of a technical claim is >> inversely proportional to the level of secrecy applied to it. >> > > I am not being cynical. Well, not completely cynical. In technology, when > you make an important claim you file a patent. A patent must reveal > everything or it is invalid. In pure science, when you make an important > breakthrough you rush to publish it as soon as possible to establish > priority. > > Sometimes, foolish people make what they think is an important > breakthrough and they try to keep it secret. These "breakthroughs" are > usually mistakes or stuff that everyone knows already. > > Howard Aiken's dictum applies: "Don't worry about people stealing your > ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's > throats." > > - Jed > >
