On a completely different front, let's say the paper completely checks out and they have discovered this miracle. How strong are the patent protections on materials science?
For example, if someone could replicate the effect with lead + gold, would that be considered a novel material which would not be subject to licensing? Is it the material itself or the method of production?
I'm sure it depends on jurisdiction, but in the US, you can't patent a material, only a method to make it.
If I recall correctly, their patent for method covered a wide range of constituent elements, but left off gold. I would feel pretty bad for them if they genuinely discovered an RTP superconductor but that omission prevents them from becoming billionaires.
But more likely the issue is that their current method has lots of room for improvement and someone else finds one that is substantially better.
ETA: apparently wrong, can patent composition of very novel materials.
You can get a composition of matter patent (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_of_matter) for something shockingly novel, and this might be. It's super hard to find anything that would qualify, but I've been awarded them before for materials science research.
You can write stuff down generally enough that it's hard to make small changes and get around it. I did a lot of "1-10%" stuff in the claims.
Oh, that's weird. They missed all the other noble metals besides silver too. No platinum, rhodium... those things have really really interesting orbital structures, I'm surprised they're worth leaving out of something so tricky when it might be important. Strange.
The only thing I can think of is that they did it and know that those noble metals don't work very well, and so they're getting everyone else to follow a wild goose chase down a very expensive rabbit hole while they already have a better approach.
... but the tech doesn't look that developed. Very strange.
It could be that they found something incredible by chance and they’re at the limits of their personal capability to further understand and refine. The fact that they’ve known about this for over 20 years suggests maybe. It’s not a bad thing if they are, they’ve already taken one of the biggest leaps. New teams with fresh eyes and varied backgrounds will look at the problem space and undoubtedly see room for refinement.
Agreed, that's what makes the omission odd. Normally you'd expect them to list any candidate that they have any possible reason to think might be relevant, especially if they aren't entirely sure what is going on.
Is that clearer what I mean? I think the only reason to exclude those things is if they were super confident they weren't a good idea for some reason we don't know. Or they just... forgot? That would just be very surprising.
I'm no patent lawyer, but there is literally a US patent-office category covering "material" for exactly this kind of invention. Section 505 - "Superconductor Technology: Apparatus, Material, Process".
> This is the generic class for subject matter involving (a) superconductor technology above 30 K and (b) Art collections involving superconductor technology. Apparatus, devices, materials, and processes involving such technology are included herein.
It means "art" in the broad sense of "prior art" (e.g. a creative endeavor), not art in the sense of MoMA or the Louvre. Though both kinds of art are beautiful in their way.
I have been SWE for 30 years. My youngest is off to college and I immediately enrolled in a masters program, apparently because I want to understand QFT which no amount of my own reading without doing much homework has enabled.
Maybe success in life and science isn't about becoming a billionaire?
Even so - if this works out, their prizes and paid speaking gigs will cover a very comfortable life if that's what they want. I'm not sure why they should be entitled to more than that.
Hey Jacques, It's been fun watching your comments on this, you're very knowledgable. :) I had a question, I see some "we made a totally perfect/pure LK-99 it didn't work" - is pure/perfect what they should be going for, to me perfect/pure != correct, however I knew literally nothing about this subject till this week so I have no idea what I'm talking about. Thank you.
I really couldn't tell you what they should be doing, but I'd love for the original samples to be tested by another lab. That seems to me the easiest way to verify the original claims and reduces the uncertainty introduced by the lack of good process documentation and the chance that even the original researches do not quite know how they did what they did, assuming it is all true. The fact that that hasn't happened yet is the biggest source of my continued skepticism, at the same time my optimism is powered by the partial results of the other labs. It's a very strange combination of data, not unlike other things in the past that did not pan out but only time will tell which way it will all resolve.
I think a Nobel is pretty much guaranteed at this point.
They'll make a ton of money either ways. Maybe not billionaire level, but they'll be venerated wherever they go, will be granted countless prizes, will sit on the boards of important companies, and have their pick of academic jobs - all of it entirely deserved, of course.
That's kind of my thinking - there is almost no chance they stumbled upon nirvana + did it in the best or most efficient way. There must be many possible optimizations to the chemical structure + fabrication techniques.
Is it possible that the inventors do not receive a dime of royalties?
I don't want to caveat a bunch of stuff with "IANAL" but I am not.
However, they have told me what I interpreted to mean that if someone improves it but uses it then they need to license the underlying patent. That just makes sense, it's required in order to implement their concept.
And in reverse the original company can keep doing whatever they want as long as it isn't covered by the referencing patent. Makes sense to me there too, if they come up with some other clever way to make it good enough more power to them. There's no reason for them to pay some other people who patented something they don't use.
If someone else is wrong and you know more, it would be great to share some of what you know so the rest of us can learn. But please don't post unsubstantive putdowns—they just make everything worse.
I hear you - but there are two problems with that argument.
(1) the internet is, to a first approximation, wrong about everything - so while posting "Wrong" tells us that you disagree with the GP, it doesn't tell us anything about who's actually right;
(2) shallow dismissals like "Wrong" have a degrading influence on the threads - they don't just encourage others to post more of the same, but worse. Basically, either your comments are contributing to improving the discussion culture or they're worsening it - there isn't really any level ground.
You can overcome both (1) and (2) by respectfully and substantively explaining why the other commenter is wrong. Then we all can learn something. Maybe (hopefully) even the other commenter can learn something.
If you don't want to do that or don't have time, it's better to post nothing than to just post "Wrong". That way you don't have a negative impact a la (2), and per (1), the internet is wrong about everything anyway, so you're basically just leaving things the way you found them.
Some indication of where to go for further information is preferable to none.
Consider that HN has ~5 million MAU and that a comment without clarity is confounding many people. Writing and communications generally is a service to the reader not the author.
If you don't have time to look up the precise source, a note along the lines of "I don't have time to find the direct link ..." or "I recall but cannot source ..." would help, along with where generally is the best direction to start looking.
Returning to that comment later to clarify/expand is also useful.
> let's say the paper completely checks out and they have discovered this miracle. How strong are the patent protections on materials science?
If it's literally a room-temperature superconductor, the present state of the law is irrelevant. China won't play by the rules. If Korea tries to corner it in the West, the rules will be replaced. (This would have been true had the inventor been French or American, too.)
Completely my train of thoughts. And it is not only china. Patents are based on laws and laws serve a society... If that does not work anymore (obviously after a long and broken process) the law changes.
Even without any change in law there'll be a seemingly endless swarm of "I can't believe it's not butter" almost the same varieties appearing and having to be knocked down (if possible) for infringement.
As long as there's profit to be made that exceeds the cost of delaying legal action and any eventual fines levied against what may turn out to be near bankrupt shell companies.
I hope they're as weak as possible. The worst possible outcome of a room temp superconductor being discovered is stifling innovation to make money off it
I'm generally anti-patent, but if there were any valid case for patents, this is it. Long, hard labor to discover something entirely new that has massive uses for society.
I'd rest my hopes on them not being dicks about it, not on them not getting benefit from it.
I honestly can't comprehend how anyone wound think having a monopoly on a material is valid. They will make money without being the cartel of the superconducting sector.
It wouldn't necessarily have to be a monopoly. There's such a thing as compulsory licensing and statutory licensing. That is, government(s) could decide that the patent is valid, but anybody can use it (without needing the patent holder's permission), as long as they pay the patent holder. And the government could decide to set the price.
Patent have reasonable terms. They will have a 20 year head start and then everyone will be competing with them. It's something that will be free in the same lifetime as the researchers, most likely. It's not abusive like current copyright that locks ideas for two generations.
Just to be clear: you're arguing that it's actually a good thing to deliberately slow down application of a revolutionary technology, so that people can make money?
yes, the time frame is limited enough that people can have an incentive to innovate, without being brutally oppressing. we're not locking civilization into the stone age for multiple generations while coros become filthy rich, it's just 20 years and then it's free game for everyone.
now, if it were to death + 75 years, or whatever inane number is copyright today, you'd hear a different story from me. but it is not.
Do you think that having a monopoly on some invention will prevent widespread usage of that invention? Like, "yeah, we invented fully clean carbonless way of making energy for 1% of current prices, but no one will have it"? Currently it just means that the creator of widely usable technology will have some percentage of money for others using his invention instead of others making all the money from his invention while he has a pat on the back.
Yes, I do think that, because that is literally what has happened before.
Companies price their offerings so that the global north will buy it, and the global south will have to pay proportionately extortionate amounts, with no relation whatsoever to the cost of production or research.
Yes, because this is partly why everyone keeps working so hard to produce a revolutionary technology. This is also the way it works with drugs, we have just been through a pandemic and a lot of people made a ton of money over their inventions, rightly so.
The pandemic where governments in the global south were fleeced by pharma companies, while the global north enforced patents and let millions of people die? Which, by the way, is still happening in a lot of poor countries that just don't have the money to afford the vaccines.
Not to mention the fact that the vaccines were developed with public money.
Yeah, the pandemic where rich countries had developed economies capable of producing such vaccines, which they then donated massively to poorer countries [1] or sold to other countries at reduced price. If these companies did not exist, or if they had no profit motive, no one would have had vaccines.
Why do people ask for raises though? It is somewhat rewarded, but some people don't work long and hard and still have more money. Those working long and hard, having a big useable result want to be rewarded a little more.
Aren't these results mostly luck driven though? Lee and Kim were lucky to go to that university in Korea, lucky that their professor researched superconductor theory, and lucky that the professor's theory was correct.
At the same time, other researchers around the world weren't so lucky.
But because we don't know what's going to pan out without trying it out, the other researchers are just as integral to the process of discovery.
Is it fair to reward Lee and Kim for their luck, and let everyone else get screwed? Wouldn't it be more fair to make sure everyone is appropriately compensated to begin with?
> Wouldn't it be more fair to make sure everyone is appropriately compensated to begin with?
Yeah, it would be the perfect solution. Problem is how to agree on that, currently we have a market telling everyone what their "appropriate" compensation is.
Why compete if someone will just steal your product?
It would just be a waste of time and money.
Imagine you spend two years and $100,000 to make a invent a clever handheld MRI for the super conductor just to have 100 companies Steal Your Design. You would have been better off watching Netflix
Inventions are still subject to patents. If you make a handheld MRI then others shouldn't be able to steal it from you unless they design their own. The material itself is what shouldn't have a patent on it.
Reading comprehension mate, cmon, don't assume bad intent.
Setting aside the needless dig, if you agree that there is utility in some patents, consider now that LK 99 could be example of a whole group or class of compounds, with thousands of permutations that requires significant work to discover, refine, and industrialize. If the compound needs an additive to be able to be manufactured at scale, should that also be unpatentable?
What about the scientist who spent 23 years to develop lk99? There's a lot of solutions within the existing patent system. If governments wanted, they could simply offer them a stupid amount of money for the patent and open source it.
I see where you're coming from, you want the scientists to get paid rather than just whatever large corp manufactures the compound.
And I don't disagree with you, I think the scientists should get rewarded too. I just don't want access to technology that could help people to get held back by money, as it does with pharmaceuticals.
Transistors, lithium batteries, leds, etc all enjoyed significant patent protection, but still changed the world.
I yearn for a Star Trek utopia as the next, but we do live in a capitalistic world where I hope that someone can enjoy outsized rewards for upending some previously insurmountable physical barriers.
Sure, and millions of people die of preventable diseases in the global south every year because pharmaceutical companies deem it profitable to let them die, and because the global north enforces their patents.
You don't know how it's gonna go. The scientists are going to be fine, they have their careers guaranteed and will receive many prizes for their work.
They don't need a monopoly on a world changing material too.
Why would patent be the root cause, they should have access to 2003 level of medicine. If patent was the only thing holding them back, you'd see them having 2000s level of healthcare, which wasn't bad by any stretch.
For example, if someone could replicate the effect with lead + gold, would that be considered a novel material which would not be subject to licensing? Is it the material itself or the method of production?