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A crucial idea for silicon PV cells was excluded by a patent for 20 years

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Re: A crucial idea for silicon PV cells was excluded by a patent for 20 years

#21

Post by TheRealPomax »

Scoundreller wrote: post #17
adrian_b wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such a claim is naive. While I know nothing about this specific patent of the Japanese company Shin-Etsu, when a patent is owned by a very large manufacturer like this, they very seldom want to make money by licensing the patent but they use it to exclude any competitors. This is done by either refusing to license the patent, or more likely by requesting royalties so large that the products made by any other company…

Maybe there were a few (enough?) out there that will pay stupid high prices for a slightly better PV. E.g. satellite manufacturers? Military? Remote installations? If they sold a consumer version, then they're at risk of losing that business to shuckers (like 'external' HDs that are cheaper than bare units).

If there had been, we would have seen them.

Re: A crucial idea for silicon PV cells was excluded by a patent for 20 years

#22

Post by bArray »

msandford wrote: post #2

I don't love the language. It was patented. It could have been licensed no? The patent holder refused licensing at any price?

An alternative idea to the ones mentioned here already: Perhaps they simply didn't want to give away the fact that gallium doping is an idea worth holding onto. By letting the patent timeout they save themselves tonnes of licensing money in the future, whilst also offering a reason for customers to upgrade.

More cynically, they may have preferred the fact that the panels would degrade over time, driving sales. Now that the patent is expiring, they either dope with gallium or lose customers to their competitors.

Re: A crucial idea for silicon PV cells was excluded by a patent for 20 years

#24

Post by Animats »

msandford wrote: post #2

I don't love the language. It was patented. It could have been licensed no? The patent holder refused licensing at any price?

The patent holder, Shin-Etsu Chemical, did license the technology. They licensed it to to JA Solar, Longi and Trina Solar, all large solar panel makers in China. JA Solar panels have had gallium doping since Q3 2020.[1]

The article somehow doesn't mention that.

JA mentions gallium, but they seem to consider the weather-tightness of the surface film to be a bigger factor in lifespan.

[1] http://taiyangnews.info/technology/taiyangnews-500w-conferen...

Re: A crucial idea for silicon PV cells was excluded by a patent for 20 years

#25

Post by wallacoloo »

petra wrote: post #14
pfdietz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not talking about proving it in court, I'm asking you to consider it in your own mind. When the problem with boron doping was realized, how long do you think it would have taken everyone to go down that column of the periodic table and use gallium instead? It's not like there was a huge selection of elements to chose from.

Maybe they were the first to discover the problem?

Possibly, but I’d like to pose a relevant question: had they discovered it and then chosen to keep quiet, how long would it have been before someone else discovered it independently?

Answer: definitely less than 20 years. So why then should the first group to discover this be given 20 years of exclusivity?

People claim that this promise of exclusivity drives the research. On the other hand, why pour money into research if there’s a strong chance that my competitor will beat me to the punch and then forbid me from making use of the equivalent outcome that my own research yields (and of the in-house talent I developed along the way)?

Re: A crucial idea for silicon PV cells was excluded by a patent for 20 years

#26

Post by nwah1 »

bserge wrote: post #20
aerodog wrote: post #16

Aren't patents, per the constitution, to promote the progress of science? How can they act to do the opposite?

I guess if you patent something and then never use and/or sell it, it will just sit there, protected by law, like a valuable piece of land full of weeds and shrubs in the middle of a city.

Land titles and patents both have similar characteristics and both could be taxed by value to discourage idle use.

The key for both is that the government is providing exclusive security of tenure over some natural opportunity in order to facilitate production. But if people take the opportunity but don't do anything with it, whether for speculation or laziness, they are excluding others. That would only be acceptable if they have paid the community for that right to do so.

Re: A crucial idea for silicon PV cells was excluded by a patent for 20 years

#27

Post by eatbitseveryday »

aerodog wrote: post #16

Aren't patents, per the constitution, to promote the progress of science? How can they act to do the opposite?

Publishing open-access academic papers or providing royalty free patents is progress.

Otherwise, patents are to protect profits companies must recoup for their R&D spending.

Re: A crucial idea for silicon PV cells was excluded by a patent for 20 years

#28

Post by elcdodedocle »

You know why release a product to the market that lasts longer when you can just hold the patent and make shitty panels that have to be replaced every so often? Forget the competitors. Forgive the cynicism but this was clearly a 20 year long win-win for the industry. Long live the big wheel industrial complex. F the consumer.

*and the environment.

Re: A crucial idea for silicon PV cells was excluded by a patent for 20 years

#29

Post by setr »

aerodog wrote: post #16

Aren't patents, per the constitution, to promote the progress of science? How can they act to do the opposite?

The primary mechanism patents provide is the open publishing and explanation of the technologies/mechanisms/etc involved. The goal is to extract research from the depths of company archives and promote iteration on existing technologies without outright cloning them. In return, you get a guaranteed monopoly on your technology for X years, and protection from theft after your open-publishing.

This system has failed in a number of ways.

1. The rate of technological evolution was significantly slower, and a time-limited monopoly was less impactful, in previous history. The industrial revolution covers some 100 year period. The digital revolution covers about 40. Things get obsoleted much faster these days, to the point that a 20-year monopoly is literally the whole lifetime of the technology

2. Patents have been granted too easily for too little (largely because there’s no repercussion for filing, and re-filing, dumb patents) allowing for extremely broad interpretations, and a single technology incorporating hundreds of different patents (eg h265)

3. Because there’s so many of them, and they’re often so vaguely defined, I’m fairly certain almost no one actually reads them to learn how to implement something, or improve on the design. I’m also fairly certain that reading patents is a great way to “poison” yourself — if it can be shown you read the parent at some point, and then violated it, it’s a trivial lawsuit.

Re: A crucial idea for silicon PV cells was excluded by a patent for 20 years

#30

Post by fnord77 »

pfdietz wrote: post #7
msandford wrote: post #2

I don't love the language. It was patented. It could have been licensed no? The patent holder refused licensing at any price?

It was a completely obvious idea that, when the patent expired, was immediately widely adopted. It's clear in this case that the patent retarded progress rather than promoting it.

if it was obvious, why wasn't it obvious until the patent?
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