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<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">Date: Sun, 05 Mar 2006 10:21:17
<br>
Dear Debbie,<br>
Could you please post the following announcement to the MIT
calendar? Sorry it's a little late.<br>
<b>Note that the Room number has been corrected</b> since I sent it to
the sci-tech-pub mailing list.<br>
Thanks,<br>
Kara<x-tab> </x-tab>Swanson
<kswanson@fas.harvard.edu><br>
___________________________________________________________________________<br>
The Ivory Tower Working Group will host a luncheon discussion of <br>
<font color="#FF0000"><b>Patenting the Bomb: Nuclear weapons,
intellectual property, and technological control</font><br>
</b> a presentation by Alex Wellerstein, History of
Science, Harvard University<br>
12:30-2:00, <font color="#FF0000"><b>Thursday, March
9, 2006</b></font> in <b>Room 252</b> of the Science Center<br>
Lunch is provided! Please rsvp to
<a href="mailto:kswanson@fas.harvard.edu">kswanson@fas.harvard.edu</a>
.<br>
<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 offeredso that the government would have
first-to-file status, which helps with interference lawsuitsnot only did
not answer the question of why nuclear weapons would be regarded within
this particular system of intellectual property, it begged it. <br>
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. </i><br>
<br><br>
<br>
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Kara W. Swanson, B.S., M.A., J.D.
Ph.D. Candidate
History of Science
Harvard University
Science Center 371
Cambridge, MA 02138
<a href="mailto:kswanson@fas.harvard.edu">kswanson@fas.harvard.edu</a>
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