[open-science] Danes step away from patenting in favour of ‘open science’ | THE News

[Jenny Molloy]

Thanks Peter - that's very useful!
One other thing to point out is that patents have a useful property - they
expire in 20 years (usually) and at that point the technology is publicly
and demonstrably open. An excellent situation compared to copyright.

We should do more championing of technologies that have entered the public
domain, which in the next few years will include anything patented in the
20th Century. Expired patents should offer a great resource for open
science, subject to the pace of development in the particular areas you're
interested in. The fact that patents covering Fused Deposition Modeling
(FDM), which forms the basis of a lot 3D printers, expired has been
credited with some of the growth of designs and open technologies in that
area.
Here's a relevant article on techcrunch:
https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/15/how-expiring-patents-are-ushering-in-the-next-generation-of-3d-printing/
Some 3D printing enthusiasts have also got their act together to publish
upcoming patent expiries:
https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/more-3d-printing-patents-are-expiring-soon-heres-a-roundup-96561/

I don't see so much proactive filtering and advertising in other fields -
anyone know of examples? Presumably generic pharma companies are all over
it, but maybe don't share, I haven't looked!

Patents don't only expire. Again unlike copyright, maintaining patent
protection requires maintenance fees and if you don't pay them your patent
becomes inactive and the technology is public domain. Yuenyong Nilsiam and
Josh Pearce at Michigan Tech created a tool to look for inactive US
patents, because it can be a faff to do so through the patent databases:
http://freeip.mtu.edu/home/

Publication: Nilsiam, Yuenyong, and Joshua M. Pearce. "Open Source Database
and Website to Provide Free and Open Access to Inactive US Patents in the
Public Domain
<https://www.academia.edu/29781601/Open_Source_Database_and_Website_to_Provide_Free_and_Open_Access_to_Inactive_U.S._Patents_in_the_Public_Domain>
." *Inventions* 1.4 (2016): 24.
Summary piece by Josh Pearce:
https://opensource.com/article/17/1/making-us-patent-system-useful-again

Jenny


On Thu, Aug 10, 2017 at 6:44 PM, Peter Suber <peter.suber at gmail.com> wrote:

> For other items likely to be relevant, see those tagged with "oa.patents"
> in the Open Access Tracking Project. As of today, this tag library contains
> 476 items.
> http://tagteam.harvard.edu/hubs/oatp/tag/oa.patents
>
> I'm sure it omits many relevant items, including some posted to this
> thread. I'll be adding those from this thread very soon.
>
>      Peter
>
> Peter Suber
> bit.ly/petersuber
>
> On Wed, Aug 9, 2017 at 9:45 PM, Heather Morrison <
> Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca> wrote:
>
>> Patent-free research seems a logical step for open science - comments?
>> Does anyone know of any other initiatives like this?
>>
>> https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/danes-step-away-pa
>> tenting-favour-open-science
>>
>> best,
>>
>> Heather Morrison
>>
>>
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