Word: patent
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...question the decision by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to allow the animals created through biotechnology to be patented ((Ethics, May 4)). We have destroyed the environment and are now creating new organisms that can exist in the conditions we have made. How long can this disregard for nature continue before our actions backfire? Have we the wisdom to understand the consequences...
...progress in the suddenly vigorous field of superconductivity: the increasing unwillingness of scientists to exchange information about their experiments. At the Woodstock of physics meeting, for example, some were miffed when Stanford researchers, following their presentation, refused to divulge further details of their research; they had been advised by patent attorneys to reveal as little as possible until their work was legally protected. The competition extends beyond legal rights. Two weeks after Chu's record-breaking temperature was announced, the Berkeley team independently came up with the same superconducting compound. They immediately mailed a report of their results to Physics...
...substance showed so much promise that Chu filed a patent application on Jan. 12. That promise was soon fulfilled. At the end of the month, after subjecting their creation to a series of heat and chemical treatments, Wu and his assistants began chilling a bit of the compound, by dousing it with liquid nitrogen, and sending an electric current through it. To their amazement, the sample's resistance began to drop sharply at a towering 93 K. Recalls Wu: "We < were so excited and so nervous that our hands were shaking. At first we were suspicious that...
...accomplishment of Chu and his team did nothing to dampen their competitors' enthusiasm. Indeed, the effect was just the reverse. In order to protect his patent, Chu refused to disclose the exact composition of his new material before the formal report was published in the March 2 Physical Review Letters, but other scientists thought they could easily guess its makeup and went to work...
...Patent Office sparks a furor with a new ruling: animals created by genetic engineering may be patented by their inventors...