A crucial idea for silicon PV cells was excluded by a patent for 20 years • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by nextweek2 » Sat, Jul 24, 2021, 9:00 PM UTC

mchusma wrote: post #41

xvilka wrote: post #3

Same story as with fractal compression algorithms. Patents shouldn't last that long.

I think they should be more expensive too. The government shouldn't give a monopoly for cheap. Maybe $100k fee for first 5 years, with the ability to pay something like $1m to extend another 5 years would be long enough. Maybe $10M for another 5 years, and $100M for another 5 years.

You're forgetting about the small inventor. If I'm sitting in my garage and come up with a cool idea that takes me 5 years of knocking on doors to get funded, then I'll get screwed by your approach.

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

#52

Post by evgen » Sat, Jul 24, 2021, 9:05 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #11

evgen wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything is obvious once you know the secret. This went under patent protection in 2000, which is decades into the hunt for PV improvements and decades into gallium doping silicon substrate (which started in the 50s at the dawn of transistors.) Papers from the early 2000s talk about this improvement and about open questions regarding the cell lifetime and mixing gallium and germanium ratios, so it does not appear t…

But did the applicants of the patent show a working model? Or did they just patent a bunch of possible improvements in the hope that one of them would lead to a breakthrough?

If you read the patent [1], you would see that a lot of the claims are around the process and environment that is necessary to get the proper doping. In particular, it seems to involve some rather specific pressure control within the crucible as well as control of the amount of oxygen in the crucible by using argon as a buffer gas. This patent is less about the use of gallium to dope the silicon as it is about a specific and precise manufacturing process that is necessary to prevent the whole ingot from having too much resistance or having a lifetime worse than a boron-doped silicon ingot.

[1] https://patents.google.com/patent/US6815605B1/en

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

#53

Post by bkor » Sat, Jul 24, 2021, 9:05 PM UTC

nextweek2 wrote: post #51

mchusma wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they should be more expensive too. The government shouldn't give a monopoly for cheap. Maybe $100k fee for first 5 years, with the ability to pay something like $1m to extend another 5 years would be long enough. Maybe $10M for another 5 years, and $100M for another 5 years.

You're forgetting about the small inventor. If I'm sitting in my garage and come up with a cool idea that takes me 5 years of knocking on doors to get funded, then I'll get screwed by your approach.

> You're forgetting about the small inventor.

How often will that happen? The existing system seems to massively favour keeping existing big companies big. A small inventor can easily ignored. Meaning, there's quite a difference between being right and ensuring a company does the right thing.

Some products (e.g. mobile phones) are covered by hundreds of patents. A small inventor having a huge benefit from patents? It maybe happens, but I really doubt the benefits outweighs the clear damage that patents are having.

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

#54

Post by a1369209993 » Sat, Jul 24, 2021, 9:06 PM UTC

riffraff wrote: post #36

fn-mote wrote: post #23

PV = photovoltaic If the title read "silicon solar cells" it would be clearer to the layperson (like me). Many of us read the comments to decide if the article is worth reading, so it helps.

For a non native speaker it's hard to connect P with the F sound in photovoltaic, so this title was extra confusing for me.

> it's hard to connect P with the F sound in photovoltaic

Strictly speaking, it ought to be "PhV" (compare "PhD"), but no one does that for some reason.

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

#55

Post by unchocked » Sat, Jul 24, 2021, 9:09 PM UTC

nextweek2 wrote: post #51

mchusma wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they should be more expensive too. The government shouldn't give a monopoly for cheap. Maybe $100k fee for first 5 years, with the ability to pay something like $1m to extend another 5 years would be long enough. Maybe $10M for another 5 years, and $100M for another 5 years.

You're forgetting about the small inventor. If I'm sitting in my garage and come up with a cool idea that takes me 5 years of knocking on doors to get funded, then I'll get screwed by your approach.

Honestly I'm okay with that.

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

#56

Post by Gibbon1 » Sat, Jul 24, 2021, 9:12 PM UTC

folli wrote: post #43

Gibbon1 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Random thought to throw out. Value patents based on the amount of work required to come up with them. So patenting some random shower thought is worth what you put into it. And what you can recover in a lawsuit is also tied to that. "Yeah we violated your 'something but on the internet patent' Here's a $50 Home Depot card."

How will you objectively measure "amount of work required to come up with them"? That sounds rather infeasible.

How do we measure the value of anything objectively.

But there is a world of difference between, 100's of people working for a decade on a problem kind of patents. And someone sitting on their couch for an afternoon patents. You seriously want to protect the former. And not really the latter.

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

#57

Post by riskable » Sat, Jul 24, 2021, 9:14 PM UTC

nextweek2 wrote: post #51

mchusma wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they should be more expensive too. The government shouldn't give a monopoly for cheap. Maybe $100k fee for first 5 years, with the ability to pay something like $1m to extend another 5 years would be long enough. Maybe $10M for another 5 years, and $100M for another 5 years.

You're forgetting about the small inventor. If I'm sitting in my garage and come up with a cool idea that takes me 5 years of knocking on doors to get funded, then I'll get screwed by your approach.

Small inventor already can't afford a patent. Let's say the small inventor spent the large amount of money for lawyers and patent searches and got a patent... How will they defend it when litigating a patent starts at around $1 million?

What this means is that any practical implementation of an idea needs to be a multi-million dollar idea in order to be worth patenting. Otherwise you're just wasting money.

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

#58

Post by amelius » Sat, Jul 24, 2021, 9:41 PM UTC

folli wrote: post #43

Gibbon1 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Random thought to throw out. Value patents based on the amount of work required to come up with them. So patenting some random shower thought is worth what you put into it. And what you can recover in a lawsuit is also tied to that. "Yeah we violated your 'something but on the internet patent' Here's a $50 Home Depot card."

How will you objectively measure "amount of work required to come up with them"? That sounds rather infeasible.

The same way the government funds any kind of project.

Contractor says: we can do this for $X.

Government says yes or no to the project.

You do the same for patent applications.

It's basically answering the question "how much is this technology worth to society?" If they don't pay for it, then the technology will end up as a trade secret.

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

#59

Post by lostapathy » Sat, Jul 24, 2021, 10:05 PM UTC

riskable wrote: post #57

nextweek2 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're forgetting about the small inventor. If I'm sitting in my garage and come up with a cool idea that takes me 5 years of knocking on doors to get funded, then I'll get screwed by your approach.

Small inventor already can't afford a patent. Let's say the small inventor spent the large amount of money for lawyers and patent searches and got a patent... How will they defend it when litigating a patent starts at around $1 million? What this means is that any practical implementation of an idea needs to be a multi-million dollar idea in order to be worth patenting. Otherwise you're just wasting money.

In some ways, I think we need a way to file a defensive patent, especially for a small player. So if you are a small firm, you can patent something and ensure that a big fish can’t also patent it and run you out of business, but without obligation (and maybe without rights to) enforce it if someone else uses your idea.

I.e., a patent that protects you against a later filer, but that’s it.

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

#60

Post by marcosdumay » Sat, Jul 24, 2021, 10:06 PM UTC

riskable wrote: post #57

nextweek2 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're forgetting about the small inventor. If I'm sitting in my garage and come up with a cool idea that takes me 5 years of knocking on doors to get funded, then I'll get screwed by your approach.

Small inventor already can't afford a patent. Let's say the small inventor spent the large amount of money for lawyers and patent searches and got a patent... How will they defend it when litigating a patent starts at around $1 million? What this means is that any practical implementation of an idea needs to be a multi-million dollar idea in order to be worth patenting. Otherwise you're just wasting money.

Well, if small inventors can not afford it (what is approximately correct), then it should just not exist. We don't need more government-enforced restrictions on small enterprises, we need less of them.