A policy paper written by Associate Professor Janet Freilich and Lisa Larrimore Ouellette and published in the journal Science has become a topic of discussion in the science community. The paper, featured in PHYS.ORG unpacks the practice of applying for patents on inventions that have not yet been demonstrated or products that are still in the experimentation phase.
As Freilich and Larrimore Ouellette note, it is perfectly legal to apply for a patent for what they describe as “predicted experimental methods and results.” They further note that it is a common practice in biology and chemistry research, especially when researchers are working on time-sensitive experiments. The reason a company would apply for a patent before actually creating a product is concern about being scooped by a competitor. Freilich and Larrimore Ouellette have no quarrel with the process. What disturbs them is the way that many researchers fill out their application forms.
They note that very often, researchers describe their prophetic projects as if they have already demonstrated that a technique works. To prove their point, they did a search on 100 randomly chosen patent applications found to be prophetic in nature—99 of them were written in a way that made it very difficult for non-lawyers to see that the patent author had not actually conducted the work of demonstrating the product.
See additional media coverage on this topic:
Scientists Are Citing Patents for Things That Don’t Actually Exist
Freilich & Ouellette: USPTO Should Require Prophetic Examples to Be Clearly Labeled to Avoid Confusion
The Bizarre World of Hypothetical viz. Fictional “Prophetic Examples” in Patents
