IP's Next Big Wave - Taste & Smell Patents

Magnavox writes "Futurist Thomas Frey has written an article about Monday's Nobel Prize in medicine opening the door for taste & smell patents. Dr. Richard Axel and Dr. Linda B. Buck won the prize for scientifically describing how odor-sensing proteins in the nose translate specific tastes and smells into information in the brain. Patenting smells in the past was limited to describing the chemical composition of the substance. Receptor patterning opens the door for a variety of new patenting possibilities... Perhaps more important will be the decision as to whether smells can be trademarked as symbols of the products or services they represent. Sounds and colors are commonly trademarked today because of the commercial impression they leave on consumers. Smells cannot be far behind. Now I'm wondering if we can patent the smell of money."

Patents...bah, worry about Trademarks.

[example42]

The patenting of smells doesn't worry me so much since patents expire quickly (14 years IIRC). Trademarks on the other hand are perpetual and pose another intellectual property land mine. I'm sure we are all familiar with the International Olympic Committee being totally evil in "protecting" their trademarks. It would be most unfortunate to have Starbucks swing a huge legal hammer at small coffee vendors whose coffee smells similar.

Re:A few beefs

[lothar97]

I think he meant that there are trademarks of logos that involve colors and trademarks of jingles that involve sounds, not that a solitary color or sound itself can be trademarked. (the implication being that there would be trademarks that are partly smell)

Adding colors to logos and marks expands the amount of marks available. It expands the possible permutations available, and gives you a way to differentiate marks that might be considered similar. You cannot trademark a sound & words- that would be covered by copyright, which is a whole different kettle of fish.

That said, it's taken 100 years for colors to be brought into the international trademark framework, and very few sounds. I doubt smells will be included in our lifetime.

IP, the only thing left for the US

[nolife]

Considering the US only produces a small fraction of the physical goods that it used to, the only thing businesses and our economy can compete with for actual generation of money in the global economy is IP (copyright, tradmark, patents etc). I see it as a big gamble or some type of last ditch attempt to give the US some type of advantage over the rest of the world as the manufactoring of real products is all but gone and not coming back. Can the US actually create and secure more IP then the rest of the world and sustain itself from the money that might flow in with it? I see the IP laws following this trend and I assume it will get much worse in the power grab. As I see it, IP can only support a much smaller crowd or group of people then real property does as you do not a large support structure to create it and maintain it.

Re:A few beefs

[Anonymous Coward]

As with many products in that price range (i.e. extremely over-priced to the lay persion), it's not always the product that they're paying for but the brand. Chanel could likely sell a mediocre-grade product with a large price-tag, just so people can brag about owning it.

My favorite example of this is a pair of flip-flops that Gucci sells (or sold at one point) for 120USD. The flip-flop is your standard black rubber sole with cloth thong strap flip-flop. Something that you could by at Wal*Mart (et.al.) for no more than $5. Of course the pair at your local discount store won't say "GUCCI" on them. This Gucci model has no functional or stylistic advantage over the generic version. In fact, it's probably made by the same manufacturer. Nevertheless, the consumer is paying for the brand.

The people that buy things like these flip-flops and Chanel #5 are the type of people who not only have enough money to do so (or have enough credit, at least), but who also like to prove it to people in their own "subtle" ways.

As such, even an chemically duplicated Chanel #5 selling for $5/bottle would undoubtedly not affect Chanel's sales.

Oh, I don't know

[IBitOBear]

How can you patent "put it on my tab" (one click shopping) or the division of labor (anything "client server")?

How can you patent parts of the human genome?

Simple, someone with money makse a "persuasive green folding argument" that they should be allowed to...

Re:A few beefs

[hazem]

if someone were to do a molecular analysis of chanel 5 and determine exactly what makes it smell the way it does they could easily release a new product indistinguishable from chanel 5, and sell it for $5/bottle

That's where branding becomes so important. Good companies work hard to build and protect their brands because customers will associate the brand with the product.

You could sell your knock-off product, but there will still be plenty of people who will pay more for the *real* Chanel. They *know* they are getting a good product that way.

For some reason, something in the human psyche reacts to branding. It's probably the basis for things like patriotism, racism, jingoism and esprit de corps.

The BS economy

[Saeger]

Does it seem to anybody else that fewer and fewer people are actually doing actual useful work these days (yay productivity-gain hoarding! not), and thus if you're not unemployed you're increasingly likely to be producing new kinds of bullshit for newly created bullshit markets?

Instead of trying to create yet another kind of BS "intellectual property" in the form of taste & smell patents, we should be reevaluating our fucked up socio-economics. Everybody wants to feel useful and justify their existence I guess... whether you're a bogus patent peddler, a dead-weight manager, a yoga instructor, or a herbal supplement phony.

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IP insanity at it's best

[Pecisk]

I'm not a economy specialist or the lawyer, but such things which shows tad all IP is going to the extremes - coorporations want to be everything owned by someone. I personally thing they won't succeed - but it will be along fight before some sanity shows up in this situation. Before that, I give myself a half a laugh, half a shiver about all that. It is scary as it is funny to see how they try to run for money - oh, yes, it is needed for living, but not so much. Oh, ok, whatever...tired from all this.

Re:Patents are getting ridiculous

[The_Laughing_God]

Yes, you can patent improvements, but if I understand your intent correctly, you are missing the point. You can *only* patent the improvement, so you'd still have to license the underlying patent. One good example was the now-famous example of Robert Kearns, who invented the delay windshield wiper (and then fought for over 25 years to get the automaker who stole it to pay up). The automakers didn't continue to use his 4 part (one moving part) 1962 design for decades without ever once improving it; they did improve it -and patented the improvements, but were still in violation, because they hadn't licensed the underlying patent.

In simple terms: Say I invent a fizzbin, and you improve it to make a faster fizzbin, a dual stage fizzbin, etc. I can't market a fizzbin with your improvements without licensing them -- but you can't market any fizzbins at all without a license from me. All your improvement patent entitles you to is the right to collect license fees on (or block, should you so desire) the use of your improvement.

That's US law. In other countries, like Japan, the practice is completely different (I don't know the actual law, but I do know many examples of how it is customarily applied) It is quite common for a large competitor to force a patent-holder into a "mutual licensing deal" by creating so many derivative patents that the original holder can't use or license their patent at all. (Their standard for patenting is looser, so if you invent a fizzbin lightbulb, and Mitsubishi wants to use it, they can patent "improvements" like colored fizzbin lightbulbs (including colored lenses and covers), "fizzbin lightbulbs for use at night" and separately "for use in day", "in displays", etc. -- pretty much any use a lightbulb already has, the idea of doing it with a fizzbin lightbulb is considered an improvement on both the use patent and the fizzbin lightbulb patent. Now *you* can't use your patent for any of those useful purposes, unless you cut a deal with them. They can afford to blitz the field with hundreds of patents, and to put a dozen salarymen on the task of listing common uses for existing lightbulbs; you can't.)