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submitted 5 days ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/science_memes@mander.xyz

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[-] Devial@discuss.online 28 points 5 days ago

If he wanted it to be freely available, why did he even sell the patent ? Just disclaim at the patent office. Selling is just asking the new holder to start enforcing.

[-] squaresinger@lemmy.world 37 points 5 days ago

They sold the patent to the University of Toronto, so they didn't exactly sell it to a for-profit patent troll.

But also, that was in 1923, so the patent has long since expired.

[-] buddascrayon@lemmy.world 39 points 5 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

They also don't make insulin the way that he did back then. Not justifying the price hike cause the way its made now is way cheaper than it was with the old method (which was basically grinding up animal parts to extract insulin). These fucks are just profiting off of the suffering of Americans who have literally no choice but to use their drug.

https://youtu.be/naqbi_qVoVY

[-] Devial@discuss.online 6 points 5 days ago

I mean, that's better than selling to a private person, still feels weird, since disclaiming a patent is absolutely possible, and has a 100% chance of leading to the desired outcome, vs whatever small chance there may be that the University starts taking profits on it. Or even just sees themselves forced to sell the patent, because of potential financial issues.

Yeah, the risk is small, but eliminating it in it's entirety would've been easily possible, so it just feels a bit weird he didn't do it.

[-] squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 points 21 hours ago

Remember, the 1920s is long ago. Giving the patent to the equivalent of a non-profit organisation was probably better than disclaiming it, since it's easier to have one large, well-known entity that will fight off people trying to re-patent it than to disclaim it and hope that no patent clerk ever lets a fraudulent re-patent go through.

In 1920 you couldn't just google for prior art when fighting a fraudulent patent.

[-] Devial@discuss.online 1 points 21 hours ago

Ok, that is a fair point I hadn't previosuly considered. Though disclaiming a patent doesn't loose you all legal recourse.

If someone else tries to repatent it, even if it gets approved, you can still file a challenge against the new patent with the PTO. You (or anyone else, really) would also have a virtually guaranteed court win, even if someone got the patent through and tried to enforce it. All you'd have to prove in court is that prior art of the invention exists, therefore the patent is invalid and unenforceable, granted or not, so it's unlikely someone would even bother trying to enforce such a patent. A previous, diclaimed patent, of literally the identical technology being on record is pretty iron clad and unavoidable evidence that the patent isn't original.