Friday, March 29, 2024

Re: Ethics of patenting O&P ideas

Gary A. Lamb

OK I’ll bite;

We practice in a world of acronyms, and I love to keep learning, the last

new one (for me) was BOHICA at the AAOP national meeting.

What is ….IMHO?

Thanks,

Gary

—–Original Message—–

From: Orthotics and Prosthetics List [mailto:[email protected]]On

Behalf Of Anderson Harold R.

Sent: Friday, August 18, 2000 11:39 AM

To: [email protected]

Subject: Re: Ethics of patenting O&P ideas

David, you get no argument from me regarding the reasons for patenting

products and systems. I’ve worked in industry and been involved with much

of the industrial espionage that goes on when one company develops a great

new product or system. But that doesn’t negate the effect that patenting

trimlines and keeping ideas secret from the rest of the profession (unless

they pay for it) has on the ultimate patient/client.

Our profession is a profession of innovators. Except for components that we

use within our systems, most of what we do is custom. That’s one of the

things that drew me into this profession. Rather than designing an item for

mass production, I can design a device for one individual to fit his or her

needs. If the PLS AFO design were patented, I would have a significant wall

put up in my ability to help a patient who could benefit from that

particular design. Yet the person who patented the design would be well

within their rights to have done so in order to recoup the research costs of

developing the design and hoping to make an extra million or so for the

effort.

Keeping techniques secret in our profession also creates a quandary in that

those techniques cannot be evaluated by peer review.

So it’s a problem that we have that doesn’t have an easy solution. I’m

suggesting that our profession acknowledge the problem and look for ways to

come up with a solution.

Why are some of the great ideas in our field public domain? Look back at

some of the great innovators in our profession who have and are continuing

to explore new ideas and ways of doing things and sharing them with their

peers. Then why are some ideas and processes patented or kept secret? How

can we encourage increased sharing of research? Perhaps grants are an

answer. Perhaps recognition is an answer. I don’t know but I think it’s

something we should be talking about…IMHO:-). We should also be asking

those who are doing the patenting and keeping research secrets what it would

take for them to be more forthcoming.

Harold Anderson, CO

> —–Original Message—–

> From: David Hendricks, CPO, FAAOP [SMTP:[email protected]]

> Sent: Friday, August 18, 2000 7:46 AM

> To: [email protected]

> Subject: Re: Ethics of patenting O&P ideas

>

> This is a public reply to Harold Anderson’s posting about the practice of

> keeping secrets in O&P by patenting ideas and processes in order to

> personally benefit from them. I agree with most of what Harold said and I

> applaud the selflessness of his motives, but I disagree on one point.

>

> Harold wrote: “By patenting an idea or making it secret, we are throwing

> walls up in our profession.”

>

> My answer is that the whole idea of patent law is to get new ideas into

> free

> circulation. It’s part of our free market system and it works like this:

> By

> granting a researcher a monopoly for a limited time, our government

> encourages the researcher to spend the time, energy and money involved to

> develop a new process. It is the profit motive the provides the impetus

> for

> the innovation. But after that limited time of monopoly, which is designed

> to

> repay someone who has undertaken the expense of developing a new idea or

> process, the idea or process becomes in the public domain and no one can

> either keep it secret or personally profit from it.

>

> So actually the patenting process is a force designed to get new and

> useful

> ideas into the public domain. Without it, many innovative people simply

> would

> not to through the expensive and time-consuming process of inventing only

> to

> have someone copy it as soon as they had perfected it.

>

> For example, suppose a prosthetic researcher works for six years testing

> chemical after chemical until he develops an AK prosthetic “skin” that

> flexes

> just like human skin around the knee without the AP squashing and the

> peripheral wrinkling which accompany all continuous AK “skins” today. He

> comes out with it in a sprayable resin which costs him $30 a gallon to

> manufacture, but which he must sell for $150 a gallon to repay himself for

> his six years of research. And even at that, it will take him three years

> of

> sales to do so. Remember, he could have been earning $90,000 a year as a

> clinical prosthetist during those six years of research. But a month after

> his new product is out, another prosthetist sends a sample of his new

> resin

> to a chemical lab to have it reverse engineered. This new prosthetist pays

> $400 to determine exactly what is in the resin and within two more months

> he

> has a knockoff on the market which he is selling for $60 a gallon. Without

> patent protection in the form of government enforced monopoly, the first

> prosthetist will go bankrupt and will never be paid for the six years he

> spent, without remuneration, in the quest of something on one guaranteed

> him

> he would ever find. That’s why we need patent law. That’s how it

> encourages

> new ideas.

>

> This, of course, is IMHO.

>

> David Hendricks, CPO, FAAOP

>

>

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