<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type">
<title></title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">
<br>
The Ivory Tower Working Group will host a luncheon discussion of <br>
<br>
<b>Patenting the Bomb: </b><b style=""><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Nuclear
weapons, intellectual property, and technological control<br>
<br>
</span></b><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"> a
presentation by Alex Wellerstein, History of Science, Harvard University<br>
</span><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">12:30-2:00,
Thursday, March 9, 2006 in Room 269 of the Science Center</span><br>
** <span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Lunch
is provided! Please rsvp to <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated"
href="mailto:kswanson@fas.harvard.edu">kswanson@fas.harvard.edu</a>.<br>
</span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span>
<br>
<i> Practices of patenting and
practices of secrecy have traditionally been invoked as polar opposites
in
literature on intellectual property; the former a practice of
openness, the
latter, concealment. But during the Second World War, this truism was
turned on
its head in the patent practices of the Manhattan Project,
when an army of
government patent agents worked to secure secret patent applications
for the
atomic bomb and its methods of production. When the aggressive
wartime
patenting program became publicly known after the war, it provoked one
Senator
to confront its chief administrator pointedly, “What is the
necessity for
covering the bomb itself by applications for patents?” The reply
offered—so
that the government would have first-to-file status, which
helps with
interference lawsuits—not only did not answer the question of why
nuclear
weapons would be regarded within this particular system
of intellectual
property, it begged it. <br>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"> In
his paper Alex examines three interconnected
wartime patent practices: the vigorous pursuit of title-taking patent
policies
against contractors and project scientists by Vannevar Bush; the
production of
thousands of patent applications, in 493 different subject classes,
covering
everything “from the raw ore as mined to the atomic bomb,” many
of which have
neither been released nor ever will be; and the wartime censorship of
the
patent applications filed by private inventors. The
ultimate goal is to seek a
satisfactory answer to the central riddle: Why patent the bomb? Why
have the
motivations for a patent program, spoken of as vitally
important by head
Manhattan Project officials, become utterly incomprehensible today? The
answer
to this, borne out of the neglected history of the wartime patent
policies,
lies in a re-examination of two standard assumptions: the openness of
patents,
and the secrecy of nuclear weapons. </span></i>
<br>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <br>
</span><br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">**********************************
Kara W. Swanson, B.S., M.A., J.D.
Ph.D. Candidate
History of Science
Harvard University
Science Center 371
Cambridge, MA 02138
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated"
href="mailto:kswanson@fas.harvard.edu">kswanson@fas.harvard.edu</a>
***********************************
</pre>
</body>
</html>