Re: [DIYbio] Counter Culture Labs + BioCurious do iGEM: Real Vegan Cheese!

Is it legally possible to abandon a patent in this way, so that they
have no defined owner from whom they can be taken by liquidation,
lawsuit or bankruptcy? Unless you are sure that ownership can be
permanently discarded in this way, the patent remains a loaded gun.

On 04/07/14 10:59, Marc Juul wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 3, 2014 at 6:39 AM, Cathal Garvey <cathalgarvey@cathalgarvey.me>
> wrote:
>
>> On-topic; Hey Patrik, really exciting to see this up! I'll try and rub
>> some euros together to throw your way. :)
>>
>> First up, disclosure; as you probably know, I'm a mentor and design
>> consultant to Synbio Axlr8r teams, including Muufri. I offered them some
>> assistance on their first designs, and may continue offering help.
>> However, I'm not being paid (yet, at any rate), so it's not very
>> intensive assistance and I have no monetary bias, just social!
>>
>> I've been badgering all the teams here in Cork to stay open and to
>> resist the lure of old-guard patent-heavy business, the kind of nonsense
>> that's clouded and delayed biotechnology for decades already. Time will
>> tell how my efforts pan out, but the Muufri guys are here more for a
>> mission (panveganism) than for personal gain, and they tell me they
>> aren't planning to patent their outputs. So, that's pretty awesome.
>>
>> OTOH, you guys are planning to patent, which confuses me:
>> https://wiki.realvegancheese.org/index.php/Real_Vegan_Cheese
>>
>> "We plan to patent and abandon to keep this technology free for everyone"
>>
>> ..it's cool that you want to abandon it, but isn't that what prior art
>> is for, instead? And, by registering a patent in the first place, you're
>> creating a disincentive to those who don't *know* that you've abandoned
>> the patent.
>>
>> Worse, if the patent is held by a legal entity or person who later goes
>> bankrupt or into liquidation, the patents may be forcibly sold to
>> someone who'll quite happily use them to destroy others' livelihoods and
>> innovations.
>>
>> There *is* scope for using patents in an open-source way, by using
>> licenses like the DPL that establish an irrevocable license for use and
>> re-use, but it would be my view that the stultifying impact of even
>> registering patents, and the absence of a "patent metadata" search
>> function for people to know that it's DPL licensed, still makes it a net
>> lose versus simply registering public prior art.
>>
>>
> Hi Cathal. I will try to explain. First, let me start by saying that all of
> our patent considerations so far are based around the U.S. patent regime.
> We are researching other regimes but do not yet fully understand the
> differences.
>
> We are trying to ensure that everything we do that is potentially
> patentable is put into the public domain permanently. We have had long
> conversations with several lawyers, and long conversations in our groups
> where we considered the benefits and drawbacks of different approaches.
>
> You can prevent a patent from being granted by showing prior art. The
> problem is that the U.S. patent office does not have the time or resources
> to go search the world for possible prior art. At most they will do a
> search of published scientific articles, but sometimes they just check
> existing patents. You can still use prior art to invalidate a patent after
> it was granted, but that involves a going through the courts with all the
> costs associated. Effectively you must file your work with the patent
> office to establish prior art in a way that is meaningful. Now, in 2012
> laws went into effect that created a period of 6 months during the patent
> pending period where anyone can file documents to show prior art. There are
> two problems with that approach, the first is that you have to constantly
> remain vigilant and check pending patents to see if any of them are
> relevant to your work, the second is that we've been told there are ways to
> get around having this period (though I haven't verified if this is
> actually the case).
>
> So, we have to file our patents if we want to prevent other patents. That
> sucks. The good news is that we can do a few things once we have our
> patents. One is to use a license such as the Defensive Patent License,
> which I think is super interesting and which would totally be my choice for
> this project since it has some (minimal) chance of preventing large
> corporations with large patent portfolios from using the patents while
> allowing everyone who shares to use your patents. It's like a stronger GPL
> that says you have to GPL everything you (or your organization) publishes,
> but for patents. Most of the other people thought it was problematic. I'm
> still not convinced that we shouldn't use the DPL, but we will have more
> time to discuss and make final decisions in the time it takes to get our
> patents.
>
> The current solution on the table is to file our patents and explicitly
> abandon them. This creates prior art that will definitely be seen by the
> patent office and at the same time puts the patents _permanently_ into the
> public domain.
>
> So, we are patenting because the system is so broken that we have to patent
> in order to put it permanently in the public domain. It sucks but that's
> how it is for now.
>

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