Another Big "What If?"

[Brian McDermott]

This situation you describe seems to parallel the ordeal between Farnsworth and RCA over the Television. I'll let Richard and the Perfesser address that.

I don't mind the jokes at all.

[Mike Veldman]

When Brian gets his 12 gridded fusor power source perfected please let me know. I have several friends who keep bugging me to come up with a stable power source for this spaceship idea they have. They seem to think it's time we ventured out for our own look at the universe, remote viewing is not enough of an experience. We'll save you a seat on the joyride.

mike

[Richard Hull]

John understands people and what makes the world really go round.

Smart money sees to it they have
1. sex (brothel)
2. A get rich quick hope or carrot hung out that lures them to the promise of riches for no work. (gamlbing includes investment schemes)
3. A source of drugs and food of their choice to lose themselves when they are bored with sex and have little or no money, having lost it all in the casino (bar&grill).
4. Try not to be noticed. A low profile is a must for if they see you doing well off their money in a sober moment, you are cooked.

Folks are not great cerbartionists on whole and allow any number of siren songs to call them off hither and thither. The man who uses and satisfies their inherent weakness is on the main track to a good life of wealth and prosperity.

Richard Hull

[3l]

Hi Guys:

You missed the legions of people who hold the coats for the lawyers. Middlemen will always get a cut no matter what!
Pimps,congressmen,senators,spokespeople,lobbiests and exwives will not be denied!
Anything usefull or next to any money source will draw these people like ants to a picnic.

Happy Fusoring!
Larry Leins
Fusor Tech

[Coulomb]

I know this is an old thread, but it is still a good question. How could you make the appropriate return off something so revolutionary, that would probably be easy and inexpensive to duplicate and pirate?

Because of regulatory and public relations issues, it would be very time consuming and expensive to get a fusion power plant licensed and built in the U.S. You could not build without a license, EIS, etc. But the licensing regulations and standards do not even exist. It would be a long time before the money comes in, instead of flowing out. And the value of a workable fusion technology would far more than any corporation would be willing and able to pay.

A likely candidate might be China, since they have a positive balance of trade ratio (swimming in dollars), a large manufacturing base, huge population with a growing demand for electrical power, and essentially no problem at all with regulatory issues.

You could do a lot worse than just selling the "exclusive" rights, directly to the Chinese government. (To lessen the public relations fallout, the same offer could be made first in the U.S.)

Other possibilities might be France, Japan, or South Korea, but they would all be tied for a distant second place.

[Carl Willis]

>Because of regulatory and public relations issues, it would be very time consuming and expensive to get a fusion power plant licensed and built in the U.S.<

Supposing one had a monumental breakthrough like a benchtop fusion power plant to offer, I think your logical option would be straightforward: patent it, build it, and demonstrate it first, worry about licensing and perhaps serving a stint in the big house later (or not at all). It's all about priorities. The reality is that Investors won't touch an idea with a ten-foot pole--they only appreciate demonstrable hardware (and with sound reason). Asking for money to get the gig licensed before building it is a dead end. Just build it, win the Nobel Prize in physics, and if you turn your backyard into a Superfund site while doing it...well, at that point, people will be groveling at your knees for the privilege of being allowed to clean up your mess.

-Carl

[djolds1]

Doubt he does make any money. Not much at any rate.The example of the cotton gin in the 19th century is relevent. The patent(s) would be violated globally with impunity. Maybe the inventor gets a minor settlement after a time, but the inventor does not ride this tiger to become the next Bill Gates. Its simply too useful and too fundamental for the various nations & global interests to respect the usual law.

Duane

[Richard Hull]

It is always nice to place the cart before the horse and dream.

Carl put it right. If you have something, build it. Demo it. Stand back so as to not get trampled by the crowd beating a path to your doorstep.

If you can't build it or can't prove it via demo. Drop it. It won't work.

There is very little energy seeking sucker money left out there unless you develop a good bunko scam and prepare for the associated jail time.

Richard Hull

[Coulomb]

Good points. The Cotton Gin was a VERY pertinent example.

In your opinion(s), assuming that our researcher had produced a working net positive energy output prototype without loss of life or limb, would he be advised to:
(a) conduct a public demonstration and wait for business proposals, then sell out
(b) submit evidence to recognized, accredited organizations and journals, and wait for business proposals
(c) conduct a private demonstration for a small group of major utilities and corporations
(d) contact the "Energy Czar" of the federal government, try to "grease the skids"
(e) incorporate, feed the frenzy, announce a worldwide Initial Public Offering, retain all development rights, find a hospitable country willing to allow large scale development
(f) release the technology into the public domain for the good of all mankind, feel the love, sell books, wait for the Noble Prize
(g) forget the whole thing, they don't deserve it

[djolds1]

(Shrug)

Irrelevent. I was replying to the scenario as stated. Yes, POC is the requisite first step in validating any potentially viable fusion power tech, first actually proving it works, but that is stipulated in the scenario.

Duane

[djolds1]

> Good points. The Cotton Gin was a VERY pertinent example.
>
> In your opinion(s), assuming that our researcher had
> produced a working net positive energy output prototype
> without loss of life or limb, would he be advised to:

> (a) conduct a public demonstration and wait for business
> proposals, then sell out

No. Too much chance of replaying the Cold Fusion experience.
POs the physics establishment and risks pariah status if you get a few details moderately wrong.

Note that I am not asserting that cold fusion was an actual nuclear process, only that the intra-academic & real-world political consequences would be similar.

> (b) submit evidence to recognized, accredited organizations
> and journals, and wait for business proposals

Yes. Get the concept validated by multiple experts in the field.
Once its validated, you move on to money and glory. If you get a few details wrong, people will keep plugging away at it to tweak it into shape.

First step.

> (c) conduct a private demonstration for a small group of major
> utilities and corporations

Same problem as "a."

> (d) contact the "Energy Czar" of the federal government, try
> to "grease the skids"

Unnecessary. Once validated, money for scale up via national level programs will appear.

And hopefully Scamamaks will be defunded (evil grin).

> (e) incorporate, feed the frenzy, announce a worldwide Initial
> Public Offering, retain all development rights, find a hospitable
> country willing to allow large scale development

Good odds you're written off as a crank. Even if you're right, no one with resources and/or a rep to make it stick will bother to look at your work for 1-2 generations.

> (f) release the technology into the public domain for the good
> of all mankind, feel the love, sell books, wait for the Noble Prize

Someone up thread proposed this. Don't bother trying to enforce patents and legal rights that every nation on Earth will ignore. Make the announcement, take the honors, receive multiple generous grants and awards with money to boot, and spend the rest of your life as a highly paid consultant and guest lecturer making 70k USD (2007 dollars) per speech.

Fight for the legal rights and you end up poor, bitter, and held in contempt by world opinion.

I agree with this.

> (g) forget the whole thing, they don't deserve it

I am Ming the Merciless! Nothing will stop my fusion powered ravening armies of death!!!

:)

Duane

[MSimon]

If you want to do something at the margins the best thing to do (provided it is not too repulsive - heh) is to get as much publicity as you can and to have some stalwart friends.

It is not a sure thing - what is in this world - but what is done in secret can be done away with in secret.

BTW better thatn a whore house - the girls can often be hard to manage - is an escort service. The more upscale ladies tend to be more reliable. Same for the bar - a club is better. As to the casino fill it with $5 slots and bacarat tables to keep out the riff raff.

It is just like the fusion business. If you are going to fail would you rather have the ITER budget? Or Dr. Bussard's current level of finances?

[Richard Hull]

Coulomb did not enumerate a group of different fusion victory paths above. He effectively enumerated the different personalities in this fray and the paths they would take.

You can bet that no one in this current world would give a lone wolf discoverer an even break, but would break him, instead. The path anyone would take if they had a worldbeater idea is based not so much on what would succeed, but the path that would suit their personality.

Whether it soars them to fame and fortune or leaves them destitute and broken is a matter of a chain of events which may or may not relate to the path they have taken.

One could undoubtedly do the same thing twice in different times or circumstances and have two different or alternate outcomes.

I doubt if anyone of us will be faced with such a situation where we are set, in fact or just in our minds, to change the world and be forced to choose a path.

Richard Hull

[Carl Willis]

The right thing to do, essentially regardless of the nature of the project, would be:

1. Document the work exhaustively like any good scientist

2. Patent the intellectual property in whatever jurisdictions are appropriate to the inventor's commercial vision

3. Publish complete details of the physical apparatus and any measurements in the peer-reviewed scientific and engineering literature. Attend conferences. Go on the lecture circuit. Go to Stockholm to pick up your little medal thingy from the King of Sweden.

4. Seek licensees or buyers for the intellectual property, or form partnerships as appropriate to continue developing the property and marketing any deliverables. Since this is an energy innovation, government grant sponsorship is likely. Expect folks like General Motors, the Coal Council, and OPEC to engage in aggressive denial of the science and issue focus-group-tested negative advertising which, while ultimately futile, will be annoying for a few years.

-Carl

[mheslep]

3.a) Claim only what you carefully measure and observe ("I found He") and what you did not see but were expecting ("I found no Neutrons"). Do not loosely speculate on the cause. That is, if you are zapping some deuterated Paladium in Utah and have evidence of He, you can say you found some He. Do not call the press and say this must be fusion because you don't know that's the case.

[DaveC]

Well put Carl and Falstaff. This is undoubtedly the generic path, that is followed for most successful discoveries.

To my mind, it seems reasonable that had Farnsworth been as successful with his early fusion efforts, as the Fission effort had been, then he would not have been a tired and discouraged inventor at the end. He would played a key role in the multifaceted development of a Fusion energy resource.

The ITT organization seemed to be poised to give it shot, not with unlimited money, but some money and a few years. As things seemed to stall, others were brought in to help, but, in the end, no one was able to get far enough to keep Sr. Mgmt interested. There's nothing either sinister or unusual about this. It happens everyday, somewhere, in Government or industry.

One thing you can be sure of, is that the mainstream fusion scientists are well aware of almost everything that impinges on their work. Despite their own strongly entrenched mind-sets, paradigms, and rationales, the facts of science speak... eloquently to these folks.

If you have the contrarian approach, and have results to show, you WILL be on the program of the next conference, and your work WILL get reviewed, sieved, scrutinized, picked apart, and countered. If it holds up under this onslaught, you definitely have something. And, if it is a fusion process, that actually works, unquestionably,... you WILL one day be needing a ticket to a Scandanavian locale for a well deserved 15 minutes of fame and glory.

But the sorting process is not kind to the players and workers. The true scientist is not a complaining wimp, but a gutsy, intuitive, hard working individual. On occasion, one of their number has come along who is truly a visionary, able to put a number ot isolated facts together, making a new grander thing.
But most are in the laboratories, producing, facts.

We are presently awaiting the sufficient assortment of facts and that certain someone with the grand vision to assemble them.

Dave Cooper

[MontyRoberts]

Two years later and I stand by my original post, now with even more conviction. Things have changed technology wise and everybody is thinking with the old frame of reference.

I think the airplane is a good example to look at here. There were many who had proposed and even demonstrated various flying contraptions prior to the Wrights. Some of them actually were better ideas. The difference was the Wrights made something demonstrable and repeatable that flew under its own power. That was what they did right.

What they did wrong: They patented a, wing warping, biplane, canard pusher. How many wing warping biplane canard pushers do we fly in today? Many others got around their patents by building better more advanced designs. The Wrights bitterly fought over patent rights in the court system, even after the state of the art had passed them by.

The patent is a legal monopoly sanctioned by the state and enforced via the courts. It has no real value otherwise and no analogy outside of the framework of the law. In other words it is simply words on a piece of paper. I would argue the concept of the patent is obsolete, so is copyright. Information technology has rendered it so. Those who ignore this fact do so at their own peril. Those who embrace it and structure their business accordingly will thrive.

The pace of change in the marketplace is stunning. Most products will be totally obsolete long before the patent expires. The idea will be sliced, diced and dissected, reinvented, improved and changed 100 times before even the first round of patent litigation is appealed.

The manufacturing sector is on its way to becoming totally automated distributed and very responsive. A factory making one product this week can be making another next week. In fact most manufacturing is now customized with one factory making related products for many different companies. Things are different now.

Conceiving, designing, and producing all the applications of a new technology are beyond the abilities of an individual or even a single company. You have expertise in one area. It is a better system if you work with many companies and individuals to apply that expertise broadly.

Whatever you patent will be obsolete before the ink dries.

Your work is merely an advertisement for your skills and abilities. Just make sure you get the credit so the work comes your way. You must document and keep processes and methods confidential, or publish what you do to prevent others from trying to patent your work. You must be able to show prior art.

Stay at the bleeding edge and what do you need with patents?

Let the competition play catch up and sue. It will be like an anvil around their neck, just as you are grabbing the next balloon.

I see no reason why a working fusion device is any different than any other product. If anything what I am saying is even more applicable due to the huge demand for such a device.

I say publicly release the details of the working device widely all over the world (with your name on it), sit back and watch the show.

I am sure you will be amply rewarded.

People will want to pay you rather than try to reinvent the wheel. They don’t have the time, resources, or expertise. If you attempt to hoard all the goodies then rest assured they will hire a lot of smart people who do have the expertise to get around you.

Try to guard it, keep it secret, patent it, or otherwise control it and you will be left behind with a lot of legal bills and a very sad outcome.

Monty

[Coulomb]

Good posts, interesting points.

Not stated anywhere here, but perhaps a factor, would be the size and economic scale of the fusion device. A breakthrough fusion technology toward the Tokamak end of the size/cost scale would be less likely to be copied by every Tom, Dick, and Harry than a tabletop fusion technology such as a Fusor. Any breakthrough based on a Fusor would be modified and deployed by numerous trade schools, small-scale entrepreneurs, and refrigerator repairmen. A large-scale, very expensive technology would only be reproducible by large governments or major corporations, which would be more inclined to honor patent and licensing conventions, since they would have something to lose in litigation.

(not that we have any choice in which scale will eventually be successful)

[mheslep]

Monty Roberts wrote:
>The difference was the Wrights made something demonstrable and repeatable that flew under its own power. That was what they did right.
>
Yes I saw the Nova program too, great show. What they got right was aircraft _control_, not just lift and propulsion. As Nova showed lotsa folks could ~ do lift and propulsion but the Wrights were way ahead in terms of control which they achieved by systematic investigation of aerodynamics and Bernoulli.

> What they did wrong: They patented a, wing warping, biplane, canard pusher. How many wing warping biplane canard pushers do we fly in today?
So? Can you elaborate as to why patenting their concept, which required large sacrifice, effort and time, is 'wrong'? Scratch that. Please see Federalist 43.

>
> The patent is a legal monopoly sanctioned by the state and enforced via the courts. It has no real value otherwise and no analogy outside of the framework of the law. In other words it is simply words on a piece of paper. I would argue the concept of the patent is obsolete, so is copyright.

Ah excellent!! Guys Ive got this great new song I want to distribute and sell. Goes something like:
"You say you want a revolution
Well you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it's evolution
Well you know ...."

Falstaff

[Richard Hull]

Patents in the Wright's time were cheap and rather easy to obtain. A private joe had no problems.

Has anyone HERE, in the US, actually privately started the patent process and seen it through to the end, having patent in hand?!!

What did it cost? In time? In money? In heartache?

If you are with a company and patent through them, that is really not your patent and it doesn't count.

Patents are very, very useless to the ingenious, inventive, private joe working 9-5, for all the reasons given above in other postings.

Back to the scale issue.... Who knows at what scale fusion will first morph itself into real power? I have a sneaking suspicion it will be big, very big. Nothing really patentable there. Will it stay big? Probably not.

Somehow I think fission is the natural winner and fusion will be a loser unless such a masterful new thing happens that it will push fission into being considered one of the worst power systems ever created. Fusion will probably not arrive in any usable form until the last sentence can be the whole truth, without reservation. It just will not happen in my lifetime, of that, I am sure.

Richard Hull

[George Schmermund]

Richard - I can raise my hand and say "yes, I've prosecuted three utility patents from scratch." Nolo Press publishes a good book for DIYers. There are also other patents with my name on them that have been assigned to other people. I have no problem with that because they rewarded me handsomely as a consultant.

I may have forfeited any future money that the assigned patents might bring, but I went into the deal with my eyes open. I wouldn't have patented the assigned material myself, anyway. The ideas for those projects were only mildly interesting to me. But, that technology was the very core of the assignee's manufacturing process, so it meant a lot to them.

The real value of owned or assigned patents (that I'm directly aware of) is the huge bargaining chips they give me. To be granted a utility patent (the hardest to get) an invention must be 'novel' and 'unobvious' to a person skilled in that technology. Now that anyone can Google patents, it's not hard for me to convince a potential client that I can easily think outside of the box and that the Patent Office has already rewarded me for doing so. Also, the sum of all allowed patent 'claims' can magnify the effect.

What is "the ingenious, inventive, private joe working 9-5" doing there in the first place? If he stays in a job that doesn't reward him for being very creative, he's a chump. To him "Patents are very, very useless" forsooth.

[Richard Hull]

Your last statement was correct. Unfortunately most all of the new energy people and the like who speak of secrecy surrounding their devices due to patent issues are just the type I described. Average joes, inventive, poor, skilled of hand if not mind and often have low end jobs that keep food on the table. They, to the man, have a breakthrough device that only needs funding and can't speak of it in technical terms due to said patent issues that they hope to resolve soon. They seek the illusory protection of a patent they will never receive.

Chumps? Probably so, but most likely, self-deluded and pitiable.

Richard Hull

[Pascal Dennerly]

I don't know if non-UK residents would find this interesting but Trevor Baylis (the back room inventor that got rich from the clockwork radio) has set up a business to help your average Joe through the patent minefield.

http://www.trevorbaylisbrands.com/tbb/h ... e.asp?A332

And it sees pretty genuine too!

[MontyRoberts]

falstaff wrote:
> >
> Yes I saw the Nova program too, great show. What they got right was aircraft _control_, not just lift and propulsion. As Nova showed lotsa folks could ~ do lift and propulsion but the Wrights were way ahead in terms of control which they achieved by systematic investigation of aerodynamics and Bernoulli.
>
Sorry I missed the show. I haven't watched TV for at least 15 years. No time. I'm just an aviation buff and read a lot. Actually their control was far less than ideal. The right flyer was unstable in pitch and was very difficult to fly. The US army grounded the entire fleet of Wright flyers because of unacceptable casualty numbers.


>> So? Can you elaborate as to why patenting their concept, which required large sacrifice, effort and time, is 'wrong'? Scratch that. Please see Federalist 43.
>
There was nothing wrong with patenting the idea. The problem was they devoted a lot of resources to trying to defend something that was obsolete in about 2 year’s time, instead of putting those resources into developing better technology.

> > The patent is a legal monopoly sanctioned by the state and enforced via the courts. It has no real value otherwise and no analogy outside of the framework of the law. In other words it is simply words on a piece of paper. I would argue the concept of the patent is obsolete, so is copyright.
>
> Ah excellent!! Guys Ive got this great new song I want to distribute and sell. Goes something like:
> "You say you want a revolution
> Well you know
> We all want to change the world
> You tell me that it's evolution
> Well you know ...."
>
Go ahead, just move to China or India, or some other place where intellectual property is meaningless, and remake the song. (you need to have the talent to go with it) Sell it on the internet. You will probably make money, and nobody will bother you. If they do, there may be a small "fee" to look the other way. The “fee” will be much less than the royalties you would have to pay otherwise.

Monty

[MontyRoberts]

Richard Hull wrote:
>
> Has anyone HERE, in the US, actually privately started the patent process and seen it through to the end, having patent in hand?!!
>
> What did it cost? In time? In money? In heartache?
>
I have been down this road. I think it was $10-15K for the patent. I should have spent the money on a big trip to Europe. It would have been more entertaining if less educational.

Time... a lot.

Heartache....a lot; although in the school of life some lessons cost more than others.

The product was a failure due to several factors beyond my control. This is the nature of the beast. The marketplace can change overnight. It did for my product. The patent was around 30% of the capital cost of getting the product to market if my time was free. If my time was billed at my usual rate it was much less.

I offered that patents are obsolete, not that they are useless. A lot depends on what you are trying to accomplish and how your business works. Patents are a legal barrier to entry. A way to place costs on your competitors. (You have to be in a position to afford the costs of putting cost on them)

For something like a table top fusion device, forget it.

For a massive plant, why patent anything? To patent you must disclose the technology, and then you have a limited window in which the patent is in effect. There is a huge capital cost and technical barrier to such an undertaking, why would you disclose your secrets? Why place all that capital and development at risk?

The only patents I have made money on are the ones somebody else paid me to develop.

I just have to laugh when some "inventor" approaches me with an idea he wants me to develop for a share of the "riches". What these poor deluded people don't understand is an idea (even the rare good one) is nothing more than a liability. Most of them require a lot of development time, engineering, tooling, marketing, packaging, distribution, agency approval on and on and on and on. Costs as far as the eye can see, with many chances for failure along the way. I am in the product development business. I am too poor to be a venture capitalist.

I politely tell these people that I require a substantial but reasonable retainer to bill against. That is usually the last I hear from them. This is how I separate the wheat from the chaff. If the check shows up (and clears the bank)...they know what they are doing or at least have the money to get started. Otherwise I'd rather have a root canal than deal with them. It's less painful.

A product is something that you have in your hand that somebody will purchase.

Ideas are like posteriors, everybody has one and some stink worse than others.

Are my opinions colored by my past?

YES!!

The bottom line is patents are not a playground for the monetarily challenged.

Monty