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

Patents are meant as a reward for making an invention, the deal being that you get a monopoly on this new invention for a while and in exchange you have to tell the public how to implement your invention. If you could patent known things that would defeat the whole point.

What changed is that until recently the US operated under a first-to-invent principle, so if two people invented the same thing and they both wanted a patent on it, the one who invented it first would get the patent. As you can imagine, proving when you invented something can be quite difficult at times, and the whole process can be messy. First-to-file just means that in such a situation, the first person to file wins, which puts the US rules in line with other countries and makes things much simpler.

The article itself doesn’t provide much detail to back up its claims. And specifically it would be interesting to understand the patent issue better.

The patent they cite says claims “ A silicon single crystal produced according to Czochralski method using a melt in contact with a quartz crucible, to which Ga (gallium) is added as a dopant that controls resistivity of the crystal in a range of 5Ω.cm to 0.1Ω.cm, wherein a diameter of the single crystal is 4 inches or more, and the single crystal is used for a solar cell.”

Which seems pretty broad. Would that really have held up in court if it was tested? Was this patent really blocking fabrication of gallium doped silicon?

A text from 2015 suggests there were open issues around fabricating gallium doped silicon:

https://books.google.co.jp/books?id=S43SBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA253&re...

So it seems likely that there were open issues around fabrication until at least 2015. Have there been other process developments that have made Gallium doping viable in recent years?

The patent largely covers the fabrication process, and was recently licensed to a Chinese fabrication company. Is it likely that this IP was really blocking them? I.e. given that they may not publicly disclose their fabrication process, how would you know they were infringing.

If this IP was of such fundamental importance why was it not challenged? This is rare in my experience (outside of semiconductors at least).

So, it doesn’t seem clear cut to me. And it would be interesting to understand the issues better.

He used his political connections to extend his patent and only after that expired could the various improvements made by users (paricularly the cornish tin miners) be used more widely.

And as with anything that threatens the establishment, there's some right wing economist writing a paper about how it's all a myth:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/658495

Looks like he works for the Cato Institute now so we should probably consider this alongside their climate change commentary in terms of baysian likelihood of truth.

But interestingly, he's mostly responding to libertarian economist who argue that IP in general is a government monopoly with all the stuff you'd associate with that:

https://mises.org/library/james-watt-monopolist

20 years in case of utility patents.

Meaning that the patent holder is the only one that can license the patented disclosure.

Furthemore, in US, the patent never needs to be materiliazed by the patent holder, at all. They never have to write software that they patent, never have to build a machine/machine part they patented. Not in 3 years after the patent is granted, not in 15 years after the patent is granted.

Otherwise, all these patent trolls had to actually build the things they claim.

If a patent is directed (applies to), so called 'Judicial Exceptions' -- it cannot be granted.

However, in many instances the inventors (and their patent lawyers) become very creative as to avoid being directed to these 'Judicial Exceptions'.

>"...

n addition to the terms "laws of nature," "natural phenomena," and "abstract ideas,"

judicially recognized exceptions have been described using various other terms,

including "physical phenomena,"

"products of nature,"

"scientific principles,"

"systems that depend on human intelligence alone," "disembodied concepts,"

"mental processes,"

and "disembodied mathematical algorithms and formulas."

It should be noted that there are no bright lines between the types of exceptions, and that many of the concepts identified by the courts as exceptions can fall under several exceptions.

For example, mathematical formulas are considered to be a judicial exception as they express a scientific truth, but have been labelled by the courts as both abstract ideas and laws of nature.

Likewise, "products of nature" are considered to be an exception because they tie up the use of naturally occurring things, but have been labelled as both laws of nature and natural phenomena.

Thus, it is sufficient for this analysis for the examiner to identify that the claimed concept (the specific claim limitation(s) that the examiner believes may recite an exception) aligns with at least one judicial exception. ..." [1]

So to answer your question, patents in the way they are granted today, evade the judicial expceptions standards, and, therefore, enable unreasonably burden on businesses and individuals to compete with the unfairly granted monopolies on the inventions.

[1] https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2106.html#ch2100...