The Rush To Patent the Atomic Bomb

dooling writes "In case you were thinking of building your own atom bomb, you may want to weigh your intellectual property liability. It seems there are over 2000 patents covering the atom bomb. To avoid publishing the patents, a central tenet of the patent system, "the project made use of an obscure law whereby patent applications could be filed but no one would actually look at them or evaluate them. They would just be stamped secret and stored in a vault at the patent office." The irony here is that while all the patents were essentially stored in the same place at the patent office and written to be understandable by any engineer, the Manhattan Project worked diligently to compartmentalize knowledge, using code names for just about all aspects of the project and keeping tight security on all information. It seems the patents were filed to give the U.S. government an essential monopoly on the burgeoning nuclear industry and protect it against others who might patent similar technologies later."

Well...

[Chairboy (88841)]

If I'm building an atomic bomb, the threat of being hit by a patent lawsuit seems somewhat lower than, say, the threat of being bombed into a metaphor.

Plus, this is just the patent office. Now if the _IRS_ were involved...

Mutually Assured Patent Destruction

[Doc Ruby (173196)]

If I've got an atomic bomb, I'm not going to pay any attention to your patent lawsuit.

As should be pretty obvious from all the other people who got atomic bombs.

Obvious to anyone, except evidently the retarded capitalists, lawyers or bureaucrats who shared the most secret and dangerous info in the world with an office whose primary mission is publishing technical info, for no use whatsoever except increasing the risk of proliferating the weapons.

Patent dementia. The kind of thing communists mean when they say "capitalists will sell the rope for the nooses to hang them".

Re:

[Nathrael (1251426)]

Well, you got a point about saying it's wrong to hand over technical informations, but the hard thing is not _how_ to build an atomic bomb, it's rather to get hand on refined uranium - most of the major terrorist fractions/rogue governments/other groups already possess at least the basic knowledge to build a basic nuclear bomb like Fat Man.

Re:Mutually Assured Patent Destruction

[Daniel Dvorkin (106857)]

I think you're thinking of Little Boy. Fat Man was the plutonium-implosion bomb detonated over Nagasaki, and those are hard to get right. Little Boy was the gun-type uranium bomb detonated over Hiroshima, and you're right, those are absurdly easy to build if you can get the refined uranium.

Re:

[Adambomb (118938)]

Hope no one tells them about neutron bombardment and enriching techniques...

It's happened before [dangerousl...tories.org] heh

Re:

[mdwh2 (535323)]

Patent dementia. The kind of thing communists mean when they say "capitalists will sell the rope for the nooses to hang them".

You can't blame capitalism for patents though. Patents are a Government granted and enforced monopoly. In fact, I'd say they're very un-capitalist, in that the state steps in to control the free market, and preventing private individuals from manufacturing (effectively taking away the means of production from them). Patents are about Government control of the market and means of prod

Re:

[Doc Ruby (173196)]

Well, I can't blame "capitalism", because it's an economic system, not a person. But I can blame some capitalists, especially the monopoly capitalists who are the most extreme capitalists. They love a state-created (and defended) monopoly, which they don't even have to pay much to create or to defend.

A monopoly capitalist with the noose patent would try to stop you from hanging them by pricing the license out of reach, but if you could pay it they'd take it.

The most extreme capitalists hate a "free market"

Re:

[IdleTime (561841)]

You don't need to know the contents of any of those patents to build a fission bomb, it's easy! I can tell you the details from the top of my head if you want me to. The problem is to get enough fission material and to be able to buy the equipment needed like milling machines, furnaces, explosives, detonators for explosives etc.

The areas where you need to access these patents would be if you wanted to maximize the yield, to build multi stage thermonuclear devices etc. But for a small fission device, none

Re:

[mollymoo (202721)]

If I'm building an atomic bomb, the threat of being hit by a patent lawsuit seems somewhat lower than, say, the threat of being bombed into a metaphor.

You wouldn't be violating the patents (the unexpired ones, that is) if you only built the device for research anyway.

Where's the editor?

[by Anonymous Coward]

To avoid publishing the patents, a central tenant of the patent system,

The word is tenet, as in canon, rule, orthodoxy, creed, etc. I think.

Re:Where's the editor?

[argent (18001)]

The tenants of the patent system are the patent trolls.

Re:

[popmaker (570147)]

Unless someone actually rents an apartment in the center of the patent system. :)

Re:

[geobeck (924637)]

No, he means that the publishers live in the middle of the system...

So

[CrazeeCracker (641868)]

It seems the patents were filed to give the U.S. government an essential monopoly on the burgeoning nuclear industry and protect it against others who might patent similar technologies later.

So the cold war was really just about patent infringement?

Six Party talks

[by Anonymous Coward]

Next up in the North Korean six Party talks:

USA: But we patented it, you're building the bomb in violation of our intellectual property!

North Korea: Well now that's finally a sound argument. We'll stop then. Have a nice day.

*white peace doves are sent flying*

Re:

[Tuoqui (1091447)]

All the US can do is try to stop importing of atomic bombs, then again by then it may be too late.

Re:

[confused one (671304)]

You miss the point. The cheapest ICBM of all: The standard 40' shipping container.

Line shipping container with shielding (reduces neutron signature)

install bomb in container

Set bomb to detonate when container is opened

Put container on ship, bound for foreign port.

wait for boom.

If you detonate a nuclear weapon in a port city, you're likely in a major city where you could do a lot of harm to people, property and logistical capability of the target country.

If I were a small country with, say, 5 crude a

Terrorism

[erikina (1112587)]

It's good to finally see the patent system serving a purpose. Protecting us from nuclear terrorists. There's no way they couldn't infringe at least one patent!

Re:

[nurb432 (527695)]

No, but it does help in that no one can ever SEE the patents to get ideas from.

Re:Terrorism

[Foobar of Borg (690622)]

Building it in a country which doesn't have patent treaties with nuclear weapon producing countries would do the job.

Well, there is also the fact that the patents have loooong since expired. Unlike copyrights, patents still have sane terms. It's 20 years from filing now. I think it was 17 years from the time of the patent grant back in 1955, which was when the patent shown on the NPR site was granted.

Secret patent?

[MichailS (923773)]

How does this work?

"You are infringing on my patent, the nature of which I can't disclose. Hand over money!"

Re:Secret patent?

[by Anonymous Coward]

How does this work?

"You are infringing on my patent, the nature of which I can't disclose. Hand over money!"

SCO lasted five years with that line alone.

new category?

[nten (709128)]

The parent isn't funny, and while insightful probably fits, I think a category of depressing should be an option.

Re:Secret patent?

[sir_eccles (1235902)]

In the UK at least, it works thusly... Every single patent application goes through one special office with a locked door and a big heavy safe to be vetted for National Security purposes. Most things will just get a cursory glance but if you mention stuff like radar, munitions, nuclear power etc it will get a closer look to see if it poses a risk. It may or may not then get published. Still gets searched and examined I think. I would assume any infringement proceedings would take place in closed session.

Re:

[DustyShadow (691635)]

I believe that same process happens in the US.

Take that Terrorists!

[Timesprout (579035)]

pay up before you kill us

What about when the patent runs out?

[CastrTroy (595695)]

What about when the patent runs out? Why even patent it at all, and risk the information being leaked. Better to just keep it secret. It's not like anybody building a nuclear bomb is worried about getting charged with patent infringement.

Re:

[Hal_Porter (817932)]

It sounds like they were more interested in having prior art to invalidate someone else's future patents in future rather than the patents themselves. A bunch of documents stored at the patent office would be great for this since they obviously couldn't take the usual prior art route of publishing. Getting a patent would be bad too, since that would be published.

Re:

[zappepcs (820751)]

What would make you think that the US Government would halt their work because someone had a patent on it? They would simply declare it a state secret and continue. They didn't need anyone's permission to invade Iraq. The whole thing is a big bizarre. I think it was just misguided thinking at the time, or perhaps those involved thought that a patent would stop the government... my how times have changed.

No more atomic weapon patents

[CajunArson (465943)]

Yes this story is mostly for historical amusement, it has very little significance. Also, remember is applies to patents from the ORIGINAL Manhattan Project era. If you go out an invent a novel invention useful solely for atomic weapons you won't get a patent on it today: From the MPEP

706.03(b) Barred by Atomic Energy Act [R-2] - 700 Examination of Applications
706.03(b) Barred by Atomic Energy Act [R-2]

A limitation on what can be patented is imposed by the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. Section 151(a) (42 U.S.C. 2181(a)>)No patent shall hereafter be granted for any invention or discovery which is useful solely in the utilization of special nuclear material or atomic energy in an atomic weapon.

The terms "atomic energy" and "special nuclear material" are defined in Section 11 of the Act (42 U.S.C. 2014).

Sections 151(c) and 151(d) (42 U.S.C. 2181(c) and (d)) set up categories of pending applications relating to atomic energy that must be brought to the attention of the Department of Energy. Under 37 CFR >*1.14(d)1.14(d)Director))

    And for the record I AM a registered patent agent.

Re:

[Daimanta (1140543)]

And for the record I AM a registered patent agent.

Yes, but you are not MY registered patent agent.

Surely you're Joking, Mr Feynman?

[argent (18001)]

The scientist quoted in the article, Philip Morrison, was still alive. So Wellerstein called him up. "He told me yes there was a patent, and he had to sign over his rights to it," Wellerstein says. "He was supposed to be paid a dollar, and they never paid him." Morrison died a few weeks after that call.

I guess this closes the story in Feynman's autobiography about the dollar!

About three months later, Smith calls me in the office and says,
"Feynman, the submarine has already been taken. But the other three are
yours." So when the guys at the airplane company in California are planning
their laboratory, and try to find out who's an expert in rocket-propelled
whatnots, there's nothing to it: They look at who's got the patent on it!
Anyway, Smith told me to sign some papers for the three ideas I was giving
to the government to patent. Now, it's some dopey legal thing, but when you
give the patent to the government, the document you sign is not a legal
document unless there's some exchange, so the paper I signed said, "For the
sum of one dollar, I, Richard P. Feynman, give this idea to the
government..."
          I sign the paper.
          "Where's my dollar?"
          "That's just a formality," he says. "We haven't got any funds set up to
give a dollar."
          "You've got it all set up that I'm signing for the dollar," I say. "I
want my dollar!"
          "This is silly," Smith protests.
          "No, it's not," I say. "It's a legal document. You made me sign it, and
I'm an honest man. There's no fooling around about it."
          "All right, all right!" he says, exasperated. "I'll give you a dollar,
from my pocket!"
          "OK."
          I take the dollar, and I realize what I'm going to do. I go down to the
grocery store, and I buy a dollar's worth -- which was pretty good, then --
of cookies and goodies, those chocolate goodies with marshmallow inside, a
whole lot of stuff.
          I come back to the theoretical laboratory, and I give them out: "I got
a prize, everybody! Have a cookie! I got a prize! A dollar for my patent! I
got a dollar for my patent!"
          Everybody who had one of those patents -- a lot of people had been
sending them in -- everybody comes down to Captain Smith: they want their
dollar!
          He starts shelling them out of his pocket, but soon realizes that it's
going to be a hemorrhage! He went crazy trying to set up a fund where he
could get the dollars these guys were insisting on. I don't know how he
settled up.

Re:

[argent (18001)]

Yes, oh yes indeedy! I have gone through many many copies of it, most of which were loaned out (well, enthusiastically pushed on people) and never returned (and I can't blame the recipients).

I need to get a charm bracelet saying "WWFD?". :)

At Least One Of Those Patens Was Declassified

[MichaelCrawford (610140)]

Saddam Hussein really was working on Weapons of Mass Destruction - up until the first Gulf War at least.

I read a Scientific American article (sorry, I don't have a reference) about what weapons inspectors had uncovered, including copies of the declassified patent for an improvement to the Calutron.

Calutrons are large mass spectrometers used to refine Uranium. They are very simple in principle, but in practice they work very poorly. At first the Manhattan project tried to improve them - resulting in th

Patent violations could be interesting

[mikerich (120257)]

It'll be a brave lawyer who threatens North Korea with patent violation. ;) The nuclear chain reaction was patented in the UK in 1934 by Leo Szilard. To guarantee secrecy it was later transferred to the British Admiralty, but by 1938, Szilard had lost faith that chain reactions were feasible and recommended the patent be withdrawn. In January 1939, when he learned that fission had been observed in uranium, Szilard sent an urgent telegram to the Admiralty telling them to disregard the cancellation. I'm not

Re:

[dario_moreno (263767)]

If memory serves, the Joliot-Curies also secretely patented the nuclear pile and nuclear bomb in 1939 in France. They buried much of the material when the Germans arrived, and retrieved it after the war which allowed the french atomic pile ZOE to run as early as 1949. There was some kind of deal with the US about the patents.

Making of the Atomic Bomb

[dekkerdreyer (1007957)]

The reason for patenting ideas about the Manhattan Project are well explained in The Making of the Atomic Bomb [amazon.com] by Richard Rhodes which is a fantastic read. Nearly 1000 pages and Amazon is selling it for less than $15. The covers the recent history of modern science better than any textbook I've found.

Genius!

[Brian Stretch (5304)]

What a brilliant Republican contingency plan! In the (likely) event that the Democrats retake the White House, the trial lawyers who fund the Democratic Party will demand the (military?) enforcement of the patents that the Iranian theocracy is breaking! Absolute genius!

(j/k, I think...)

So you mean...

[OpenSourced (323149)]

You mean all that info is stored somewhere in a Patent Office?. I thought you had to break into some maximum security complex to get at it, and then just to a part of it. But there, in some dusty patent office, there is that lot of interesting info. Reminds me of the end scene of "Raiders of the Lost Ark".

Reason for the Law

[usul294 (1163169)]

If you think the law is silly, here is why it exists: A government contractor develops a product, on their own(w/o being paid directly by the government), that has classified applications, the government can give you a contract to work more with it, but in the process classify the product. So you can still get a patent but its for classified work. An important note is that if you are under contract from the government, nothing you do for that contract can be work done towards a patent. This is so the govern

Like a patent's going to prevent a nuke

[British (51765)]

Dictator: I am going to build nukes! All other countries will given into my demands! Get on it.
Defense Secretary: Uh yeah, little problem here.
Dictator: What? We got the uraniam & stuff.
Defense Secretary: No, it's not that.
Dictator: Don't worry! Bush is busy in Iraq. What?
Defense Secreatary: Uh, it's about the patents. We legally can't build one.
Dictator: Oh darn, guess we won't be building one. We still have those bio-weapon plans around?

Re:

[gardyloo (512791)]

Sorry: prior art.

I doubt it

[NeverVotedBush (1041088)]

Another reason why there might be patents would be simply for the benefit of the researchers involved.

The members of the Manhattan Project were all research scientists and engineers. Technically, what they accomplished was nothing short of amazing. They went from brand new basic physics and science discoveries to deployable weapons in just a few years. And while the principal players were already working in the physics world, they weren't able to publish the results of their work because it was top secret stuff.

It is only speculation, but it could be that the scientists and engineers were allowed to publish their work through patents that wouldn't see the light of day and could be kept under lock and key. They get to add numerous patents to their CVs and account for their years of work without revealing the inner workings of the weapons to the world. At least that could have been the intent. A few spies managed to compromise a lot of the information and the USSR exploded their own, copycat weapon shortly after the end of WWII.

Almost as good as world peace

[EmbeddedJanitor (597831)]

Patenting the bomb could be almost as good as world peace.
1.Patent bomb.
2. Wait until Dick Tater builds own bomb.
2. Send cease and desist notices.
3. Dick Tater ignores these.
4. Send planes full of lawyers.
5. Dick Tater shoots lawyers.
6. Good enough result.

Re:

[mog007 (677810)]

It shouldn't be a surprise how quickly things got done with the Manhattan Project. If you throw as many people at a problem, and as much money, as the United States government threw at the project, you could get just about anything done in record time. Take the equivalent amount of today's money, and throw it at HIV or cancer research, and if you didn't get a full blown cure, you'd surely get a treatment that would make those diseases as dangerous as gonorrhea.

Re:I doubt it

[jamstar7 (694492)]

Yo, dood, you're missing the point.

If a terrorist somehow manages to build one of these suckers, he's not gonna have to worry about Homeland Security comin after him.

He's gonna have to worry about a pack of l*wy*rs from a patent troll hounding him to the ends of the earth.

Which would you rather face?

Re:Snort!.....

[NeverVotedBush (1041088)]

The Manhattan Project was actually run by the University of California. It's the only way Oppenheimer would accept running the program. He told the military that the only way he would be able to get the people he needed was if it was an academic institution running it.

UC not only ran the Manhattan Project start to finish, it also ran the Los Alamos and Livermore laboratories until the last couple of years.

Operating in an academic environment, I could very easily see that the researchers would be valued and their welfare looked out for by finding ways for them to "document" their contributions without releasing the information to the world through regular publishing channels.

Re:

[JamesRose (1062530)]

Hey! I resent that! The UK owns its own weapons completely. To be fair, we don't seem to be in complete control of the launch codes, but I'm sure when we call up america and ask for them nicely the old yanks'll just hand em right over, right?

Re:Just like the Yanks....

[Oktober Sunset (838224)]

Actually the UK scientists simply remembered all the experiments and did them again when they got back home, making the UK the 3rd nuclear state, they then tricked the US into going them their H-bomb research, after their own H-bomb failed, by building a giant A-bomb (the biggest fission bomb ever made) and pretending it was a H-bomb, so who's the shmucks now eh?

Re:

[superwiz (655733)]

Here's the link to November 1, 1917 NYT article, btw. Sometimes Google search is too cool. http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9905E1DC113AE433A25752C0A9679D946696D6CF&oref=slogin [nytimes.com]