[Sci-tech-public] ITWG, Thursday, March 9, 12:30-2:00

[Kara Swanson]

The Ivory Tower Working Group will host a luncheon discussion of

*Patenting the Bomb:  **Nuclear weapons, intellectual property, and 
technological control

*    a presentation by Alex Wellerstein, History of Science, Harvard 
University
    12:30-2:00, Thursday, March 9, 2006 in Room 269 of the Science Center
** Lunch is provided!  Please rsvp to kswanson at fas.harvard.edu.
   
/    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.
    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. /
   

**********************************
Kara W. Swanson, B.S., M.A., J.D.
Ph.D. Candidate
History of Science 
Harvard University 
Science Center 371
Cambridge, MA 02138
kswanson at fas.harvard.edu
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