Sharing science/knowledge vs Proprietary $ecret

[Shannow]

Originally Posted by Kestas
I don't believe there are beneficial and groundbreaking discoveries or patents that are withheld from the public. The "200 mpg carburator" is a good example.... not that such a device exists, but it shows that if a hoax can make the rounds, a device with merit will leak out and go viral.


Thousands of the patents applied for every year are denied/withheld for national security.

At that point you can't profit, nor even talk about your idea

https://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/2016/10/invention-secrecy-2016/

 

[kschachn]

Originally Posted by sloinker
Bell Labs patented the transistor after American military scientist's reverse engineered the crashed Roswell flying saucer and spoon fed the technology to favored contractors........

Lol.

If the only thing an interplanetary spaceship had was transistors then those were some lame aliens.

 

[Nyogtha]

I like Shannow's explanation best, after all it has pics for proof! If only that first pic was a gif, we could hear the lowing of the penguins. It makes Antarctica have a bit of Texas flair, although in Aus I think Shannow would call them cooos (I think I phonetically spelled that right?)

 

[PandaBear]

You will know if you have classified info that you cannot share. If you don't know then most likely it is not classified.

Trade secret wise, your employer pays you to come up with those ideas. If they are freely available they won't need you.

Open source / public domain, those are more about "we would rather work with everyone so we won't be gouged by a monopoly" than "we would like to do good to the society". For individual, it is more of a "this is what I can put on my resume for a better job".

 

[PandaBear]

Originally Posted by Kestas
I don't believe there are beneficial and groundbr
Personally, I think patents should be scrapped entirely, or restricted to the very, very few cases that are really so innovative that a competitor couldn't come up with the idea in a few minutes. I used to work in a patent-heavy industry, and all it really meant was that every company had to cross-license its patents with its competitors, which prevented newer, more innovative companies from entering the field as they had no patents to cross-license. So, far from encouraging innovation, the patents reduced it.


Patents these days are all about bullying the little guys or squatting and gouge a deeper pocket than coming up with innovation. Filing a patent to choke any future progress, never build it, sue the guy who did all the work, bargain for a big royalty, profit.

This is not why we didn't get the 200 mpg carb, but rather why we didn't get mass production of a lot of technologies until the patents expired.

 

[PimTac]

The government hides lots of secrets. National security is the usual reason given. For example they have the real Ark of The Covenant stored in a big warehouse. I saw it on a movie once.

 

[Number_35]

The whole argument behind copyrights and proprietary information is that if there were no legal protections for inventors, their hard work would expropriated by others who could reproduce the product more cheaply (because they, the 2nd ones in, would not have had to pay for the R&D).

So if there were no legal protections, there would be little incentive to develop new products. But there's also the argument that if the inventor has a permanent monopoly on the product, then at some point the public good suffers.

So, the compromise is to have patent protection in place long enough to allow the inventor to recoup their research costs, before they (the inventors) are undercut by copycats.

Does it work well? Not perfectly - for example, there have been various new miracle pharmaceuticals on the market that could have saved many lives, but they've been unaffordable until the patents have expired and there are affordable generic clones.

I don't have a good answer, although sometimes the public sector has put resources into developing products for the common good. I think the polio and smallpox vaccines are a couple of examples - someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

If the "200 MPG" carburetor were out there (and yes, I remember the conspiracy stories back in the day about the oil companies buying off or assassinating the inventors), I'd like to hope the inventor would get the information out there in the public domain for the greater good.

 

[Number_35]

Originally Posted by kschachn
Originally Posted by sloinker
Bell Labs patented the transistor after American military scientist's reverse engineered the crashed Roswell flying saucer and spoon fed the technology to favored contractors........

Lol.

If the only thing an interplanetary spaceship had was transistors then those were some lame aliens.

Well, that was the later ones, as at Roswell. The Martian ships in War of the Worlds were still running tubes.

 

[spk2000]

The 200 mpg carburetor does exist. It's on a hybrid 30cc moped that you charge and pedal to get to 200 mpg.

 

[Garak]

The problem when it comes to science is that in certain fields or subfields, you basically have to get the education, get your hands dirty, and go to work. Many things can be self-taught. You can learn a pile of mathematics on your own if you have the drive, aptitude, and put in the time and effort. When you get to things like motor oil formulation or gasoline formulation, let alone something like nuclear weapons design, you simply have to get the education and get into the industry. There are no shortcuts, really. Obviously, oil companies want to protect proprietary information, which is understandable. Further, these things advance all the time and are very R&D driven.

 

[Nyogtha]

Tonight's episode of 60 Minutes clearly showed why businesses need trade secrets.

I signed all sorts of BDA's and had access to all sorts of Business Confidential info throughout my career. Thus far I still haven't disclosed any of it, been retired 6 years now.

 

[Nyogtha]

NDA's -typo